The theme of the exhibition "Forgotten Victims of Nazi Euthanasia - Murder of Patients of Silesian Medical Institutions from 1940-1945" organized by the Foundation of Saxon Memorial Sites | The Pirna-Sonnenstein Memorial Site is a dark and so far unknown chapter of Silesian history: murder of mentally ill and mentally handicapped people from Silesia during the Nazi dictatorship. Stigmatized as being "worthless" and subjected to forced sterilization, these people were systematically killed from 1940 onwards. Most of the murders were carried out in Saxony.
In 1941, 1,575 patients from Silesia alone were murdered in the gas chamber of the Pirna-Sonnenstein plant. By the end of the war, several hundred people had died of starvation or overdose of medicines in the Saxon medical and nursing homes. But even in Silesia the sick were murdered. In special wards of children's medical centres in Wrocław and Lubliniec, doctors killed young people and children who were considered irreversibly disabled.
In the Auschwitz and Groß-Rosen concentration camps, prisoners who were unable to work were selected and then killed in the Pirna-Sonnenstein and Bernburg plants.
The exhibition is part of a project funded by the Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future".
The exhibition can be visited at the Krzyżowa Palace (1st floor, hall).
