Plaque unveiled at Nazi Germany psychiatric institution to honour murdered psychiatric patients

May 10, 2004

A memorial plaque in the crematorium next to a gas shower at the former Bernburg Psychiatric Institution in Germany has been unveiled to honor psychiatric patients murdered under Nazi rule.

The psychiatric institution in Bernburg is the only place were an original gas shower built during the Nazi era remains intact.

In what were the darkest years of psychiatry's history, Bernburg Psychiatric Institution was one of six German psychiatric institutions where, from 1940 to 1941 psychiatric prisoners and, from 1941 to 1943 jews from concentrations camps, were brought to be exterminated.

Between 1939-45, it has been reported that at least 200,000 psychiatric patients and people with learning and physical disabilities - including children - were murdered under Nazi eugenic policies.

Hagai Aviel, chairperson of the campaigning group, Israeli Association Against Psychiatric Assault, which organised the plaque's unveiling earlier this month, said: "Our aim in this event is to use memory as an active tool in constructing the moral of oppressed groups in their struggle for regaining human rights and human dignity, and by that to forge a link between us, living human rights activists, and the murdered victims of psychiatry."

"We dedicate this memorial plaque to the memory of all those murdered by doctors and psychiatrists in Germany, Austria and Poland from 1939 to 1948."

Photos from the unveiling of the memorial plaque
Israeli Association Against Psychiatric Assault

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