Dark chapters: Monastery Irsee is reminiscent of the Nazi patient murders

Dark chapters: Monastery Irsee is reminiscent of the Nazi patient murders

In the Irsee monastery, a dark chapter in Germany's history becomes alive again: A new exhibition deals with the terrible Nazi patient murders, which were carried out between 1933 and 1945 to over 1,000 people. The term "euthanasia", which was used cynically by the National Socialist regime, masked a cruel mass murder of mentally and physically disabled people. Historian Magdalene Heuvelmann describes that in the former abbey, which is now an education center, many of the victims have been systematically murdered - be it by overdose medication or by deliberate hunger. A place where the unimaginable belonged to the agenda is the prosecture, in which there are dissecting tables instead of altars and fake dead certificates were exhibited to cover up these crimes. Stefan Raueiser, head of the Swabian Education Center, emphasizes the need for remembering to never let such atrocities happen again, as Br.de

memories of victims and conscience research

The exhibition also documents the fate of Ernst Lossa, a 14-year-old boy who was murdered in Irsee in 1944. A total of 1,218 people died there, many of them under cruel conditions. While the perpetrators received only minor punishments after the war, the memory continues to live to the victims, especially through memorabilia such as the monument in the former institutional cemetery, which was inaugurated in 1981. Another step in the processing was the dedication of the prosecture as a memorial in the 1990s. These measures are part of a comprehensive examination of the history of psychiatry and the associated crimes, as well as Bildungswerk-irsee.de documented.