Landesheilanstalt Meseritz-Obrawalde

This was a hospital for mental and nervous illnesses. Most of the surviving files (in all 4,626 items) are the personal and case notes of patients (call no. 148-4626) and the personal files of nurses and auxiliary personnel. The papers of the hospital’s director and the doctors who took part in the euthanasia programme are missing, however. From 1933 and throughout World War II, Obrzyce was the site of crimes against individuals both sick and healthy who came into conflict with the German Nazis. From 1939 the hospital in Obrzyce was a transit point for sick people destined for sites of mass extermination. Further changes occurred in 1941, when Wiktor Grabowski was appointed its director. He was charged with the implementation of a euthanasia programme for the terminally or burdensome sick; euthanasia was carried out on site from 1942. The decision on a patient’s fate was taken immediately on their arrival at the hospital. Patients who were unfit for labour, and small children, were sent for immediate “liquidation”. In the years 1942-1945 the Germans murdered probably around 10,000 people in Obrzyce. Most of these were German citizens, but there were also Poles, Russians, French, Belgians, Italians, Dutch and others in that number.