Remembrance of the victims of action T4: History warns of respect!

Remembrance of the victims of action T4: History warns of respect!

commemoration of the victims of action T4

On September 29, a significant memorial event was held at the Gertrudenberg memorial in Osnabrück. The "T4" campaign, named after the address at the time in Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin, symbolically stands for the cruel destruction of mentally ill and disabled people by the National Socialist regime. On this day, not only the victim was thought of, but also the massacre that took place 85 years ago in Wejherowo, where many psychiatric patients were systematically murdered.

Nicole Verlagen from the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) opened the event with moving words, followed by a representative of grandmas against the right, which highlighted the immeasurable human losses of over 70,000 victims of the T4 campaign. The 1939 euthanasia decree, which legalized the grid search after "unwarfly life", had devastating effects and led to a broad deportation and murder of over 200,000 people in Germany and the occupied areas. This historical offense brutally shows how the racial madness of the Nazi regime was anchored in and outside of institutions.

dragged and murdered

Hartmut Böhm from the VVN-BDA focused on the local history and recalled six Osnabrückers, which were deported and murdered by the Nazis. These fates were honored by stumbling blocks that were laid in these locations.

For example, Jakob Beckers, born in 1864, was a victim of the campaign. After a compulsive accommodation, he was killed in the gas chamber of Hadamar in 1941 at the age of 77. Annelore Juliane Benning, born in 1940, also experienced a tragic story; Like many of her peers in 1944, she was reported as terminally ill during the Nazi "children's campaign" and presumably murdered. These memories illustrate the cruel reality that many people were exposed to during this time.

More victims such as Anna Sophie Blanke, Luise Brammer and Caroline Cord were also mentioned. Their stories are impressive witnesses of immeasurable suffering that many of them suffered in the Provincial Healing and Nursing Institute Osnabrück. Terrible circumstances led to the killing of people who had no way to defend themselves. This remains a dark chapter in German history.

Wilhelm Dallmeyer, a teacher and poet, lived his last years under terrible conditions before he was also deported and murdered in the concentration camp. The reference of such individual fates at today's days was illustrated by the speakers - the risk of discrimination and the stigma towards people with disabilities are still present.

The event was enriched musically by Nicole Goedereis-Buller, a flutist from the University of Osnabrück. Their performance offered a strongly emotional framework for the memory, which was supplemented by the possibility of taking flowers at the memorial.

The reminder of mindfulness towards current and future discrimination was urgently underlined by Böhm. "Never again fascism, never again war" - this sentence is not just a look back at the past, but a request to fight for any form of devaluation of people.

The memorial event was organized by the DGB, the VVN-BDA and grandmas against the right. The emphasis on respect and value of every life runs as a thread through the reports of those affected. The use of acceptance and participation is still of enormous importance to ensure that such terrible events never repeat.

If you want to learn more about these unbearable events and the memorial events, you will find in-depth information here .