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The Gas Chamber at Hadamar


Last Update 12 July 2006

  




Hadamar
At Hadamar (near Koblenz), a correctional institution for released prisoners was founded in 1883. In 1906 the facilities in Hadamar were instituted as a mental home.
From November 1940 until January 1941 sickrooms were converted into quarters for personnel and administration staff of the new Hadamar euthanasia killing centre of the T4 organization.
A gas chamber and crematorium with two ovens were installed in the cellar.

Gas Chamber Cellar
Gas Chamber Cellar
At Hadamar the extermination procedure was nearly the same as in other euthanasia killing centres:
-undressing and handing over of the valuables (rings, watches etc.) to the personnel,
-registration,

-a superficial inspection of the victims, to see which plausible cause of death the Hadamar administration could pass on to  the relatives,
-taking photos of the persons,
-taking the doomed persons to the gas chamber and gassing,
-cremation of the corpses in the institute's ovens,
-filling the urns with ash, (it was unimportant to the staff from which particular corpse the ash came)
,
-dispatching urn and death certificate to the relatives.


Gas Chamber Annex
Gas Chamber Annex
Gas Chamber
Gas Chamber
Large grey buses, carrying victims from nearby mental homes to Hadamar, arrived daily.
From the bus garage the victims had to go through the so called "sluice" (a narrow fenced-in path) to the extermination building. The Hadamar "sluice" became model for the "sluices" or "tubes", later used in the extermination camps of Aktion Reinhard. Approximately 100 victims were killed every day, lasting until August 1941.

By 24 August 1941 the killing at Hadamar was stopped on Hitler's orders. The installations in the cellar were dismantled and other rooms converted back to sickrooms. The surplus staff were ordered to the East to use their "knowledge" at the newly established extermination camps.


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