Gedenkstätte Pirna-Sonnenstein

Cemetery description

In the Sonnenstein Castle in Pirna, until 1945, there existed a mental hospital in which, within the extermination T4 Action of the years 1940-1941, approximately 13,720 persons, mostly mentally sick and mentally disabled patients were murdered. The gas chambers and the crematoria were located in the basement of the hospital. Additionally, in 1941, more than 1,000 prisoners unsuitable for work from the concentration camps of Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald and Auschwitz (Action 14f13) were murdered in Pirna. In late July 1941 alone, 575 Poles and Polish Jews - prisoners of Auschwitz - were gassed in the hospital. In the years 1942-1943, the vast majority of the personnel of Pirna extermination centre served in the Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka extermination camps.
In 1973, the site of the former mental hospital was marked by a memorial plaque, and in 2000, it was turned into a memorial site. Now, one can find memorial plaques and the list of victims murdered in Pirna in the rooms that functioned as the gas chambers and the crematoria during the war.

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