GERMANY: GRAFENECK

 May 21, 2025

This post is one of the hardest ones I think I have ever written. The subject matter is difficult, and six months out, I find I am still trying to process this day's events, both those that happened in 2025 and those that occurred exactly 85 years earlier in 1940.

Everyone has heard of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau, Sobibor, and other concentration camps, but I am guessing that very few Americans are familiar with Bernberg, Hadamar, Brandenburg, Hartheim, Sonnenstein, and--the one that matters most to me and my siblings--Grafeneck. Each of these were "extermination centers" that were part of the Nazi Aktion T4 program. 

Aktion T4 preceded the concentration camps extermination program, and in fact was a foundation for the killing methods used in the camps and the beginning of the systematic mass murder system that led to the Holocaust. Its goal was to rid Germany of "life unworthy of life," the mentally ill and disabled. 

A propaganda poster in the Grafeneck Memorial
Documentation Center showing a strong German trying
to "support" two mentally ill creatures and noting that
supporting a handicapped person until the age of 60
costs 50,000 Reichsmarks.

Victims were brought against their will and generally without the knowledge of their families to one of the six facilities I listed above. There they were gassed using carbon monoxide, which took about 20 minutes--a much slower process than the Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide) gas later used in the concentration camps--and their bodies were cremated. The Nazis called these "mercy deaths." Families were notified that their relative died of some randomly chosen but plausible cause, and often a container of indiscriminate ashes was sent to the family. 

The practice of killing the mentally ill and physically disabled was established by a decree signed by Hitler in October 1939. Protests of churches and citizens in 1941 led to the "official" cessation of the practice in that year, but in truth it continued in some form until the war ended in 1945. In 1940 alone, 35,000 people were killed, and almost 11,000 of them were killed at Grafeneck, which was the first functioning T4 killing center and industrial gas chamber to be established in Nazi Germany. It was isolated in the hills of the Swabian Alps, surrounded by forest, and had only two entrances, making it an ideal location.

In 2012, three years after my mother's death, we discovered that her father, our maternal grandfather, was one of those murdered at Grafeneck. This was a secret that our mother, uncle, and grandmother had kept hidden, although the evidence was always right under our noses on our family genealogy chart, which listed our grandfather's place of death as Grafeneck. However, like most Americans, we had never heard of Grafeneck, and so it never caught our attention. We can make educated guesses why our mother, uncle, and grandmother didn't feel like they could tell us the truth about our grandfather's death, but we will probably never know for sure. We recently learned that our grandfather was institutionalized in psychiatric hospitals off and on in the years prior to his death, so it doesn't seem possible that they didn't know why and how he died.

Our Fulbright researcher Alex discovered a lot of information related to our grandfather's life and death that I will leave for her to tell, but her work led our family to undertake a 60-mile scenic drive from where we were staying in Neubulach through small villages and the well-tended farmland of Baden Württemberg. Eventually we turned off the main road and up a long hill topped by a large four-story yellow building--Schloss Grafeneck, or Grafeneck Castle.

Built in the mid-16th century, Grafeneck Castle started out as a summer hunting residence for the Dukes of Württemberg. It was used by the forest service in the 19th century, and in 1929 it was purchased by the Lutheran Samaritan Foundation for use as an asylum for disabled people. The Nazi government seized the asylum in 1939 and repurposed it as a killing center for the mentally and physically disabled. Ironically, the 100+ disabled people living there at the time were all evacuated, and all survived what transpired on the property during 1940. 

The first of 10,654 murders occurred on January 18, 1940, and the last on December 13, 1940. As noted earlier, some say the killing stopped due to growing public awareness and pressure; however, others say that the regional population of hospitalized mentally ill and disabled people had been "disposed of" and there was no more need for the facility. In 1941 the property was again repurposed, this time as a temporary home for children evacuated from cities at risk of being bombed. In 1947 it was returned to the Lutheran Samaritan Foundation, and there is an area on the property that continues to operate as a center for people with disabilities to this day.

When we were there in May of 2025, the quiet peace and rich natural beauty of Grafeneck belied the horrors of 1940. But for us, the grounds felt haunted. It was impossible to walk down this road and not think of the last hour of our grandfather's life.

From the Grafeneck plateau we had a good view of the bucolic road on which the grey buses (operated by a group euphemistically called the "Charitable Patient Transport Company, Ltd.") traveled with their loads of mentally and physically handicapped passengers. 

Actually, the buses were originally red, but later were painted grey to make them less obvious.

One of the grey buses that transported victims. This
and the previous photo are on display at Grafeneck.

We were fortunate to be hosted at Grafeneck by Thomas Stöckle, the Director of the Grafeneck Memorial. He met with us to guide us through the small onsite museum and archives and to answer our questions. According to him, some of the passengers may have been drugged to make their transport easier. A busload arrived just about every day, minus Sundays (Really?) and holidays.

On May 21, 1940, EXACTLY 85 years to the day before we stood on the Grafeneck grounds, my grandfather was on one of those buses. It is believed that upon arrival at Grafeneck, the passengers were briefly examined by a doctor before being led to the "showers" (an old coach house made into a gas chamber), stripped of their clothing, and killed with carbon dioxide. (One source I read said the CO₂ came from motor exhaust fumes.) After a doctor watching through a small window in the door confirmed that all were dead, personnel removed the bodies and cremated them in one of three ovens. 

Caption: "In the shed (site plan .2) the delivered
patients are killed by carbon monoxide gas."
(Photo part of the Grafeneck Documentation Center)

The barn/gas chamber was destroyed in 1965. I'm not positive, but I think I took this picture below because this section of a wall represents either the shed where victims were gassed or the ovens where they were cremated. If anyone reads this who knows if that is the case, please comment.

What the Grafeneck protocol lacked in quickness was made up for by its efficiency, and what the Nazi medical teams learned at Grafeneck and other killing centers was the foundation for the mass killings at concentration camps in the years to come. 

Letters like this one on display at the Grafeneck Documentation Center were sent to family members:

Translation:

Dear Sir
     As part of the extensive transfer measures for the mentally ill, which are related to the current war situation  . . . your son Theodor Heinrich was transferred to this institution on November 29, 1940.

     Regretfully, he died suddenly on December 3, 1940, from pulmonary tuberculosis with subsequent hemorrhage.

     Given your son's incurable mental illness, death is a relief for him and those around him.

     Since the transfers also included patients who, in addition to their mental illness, were suffering from infectious diseases, your son's body had to be immediately cremated according to an order of the health police to prevent communicable diseases. In this case, no special consent from you is required.

     We request that you send us a certificate confirming the purchase of a burial plot so that the urn containing the deceased's remains can be sent to the relevant cemetery. If we do not receive notification from you within 14 days, we will arrange for the urn to be interred elsewhere free of charge.

     . . .

     We are enclosing two death certificates, which you should keep safe in case of possible submission to the authorities.

     Heil Hitler!

It took a lot of people to keep up with the letter-writing charade. There were about 100 employees at Grafeneck, and many of them lived in the castle, which had been converted into housing and offices.

Photo from here

Today the building functions as offices for the Samaritan Foundation, so we did not go inside, but we did walk behind it to look over the stone wall at the valley below.

Our little group exploring the castle grounds

It looks like the current staff might come out here to enjoy the view.

So what happened to the Grafeneck murderers? According to the article "Grafeneck" in the Holocaust Encyclopedia (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum): 

"[A]pproximately 100 T4 operatives collaborated to murder thousands of patients at Grafeneck. Only eight of these perpetrators were tried. . . . Further, only three of the eight defendants were convicted. Their sentences ranged from one and a half to five years. The chief perpetrators escaped justice entirely. . . . [G]assing physicians Ernst Baumhard and Gunther Hennecke joined the German navy. Both died in battle in 1943. Grafeneck's first T4 physician, Horst Schumann, who later served at Auschwitz, evaded capture by West German authorities. Schumann fled to Africa where he operated a leper colony in Sudan. In 1966, he was extradited from Ghana. Schuman appeared before a German court in September 1970. However, precedings were halted in March 1971. Due to his ill health, Schumann was released from remand prison in July 1972. He died in 1983."  (Schumann's "ill health" was high blood pressure. He lived 11 more years after his release.)

It is difficult to reconcile all of the horror with the beauty and serenity of this place.      

Grafeneck has its own cemetery, which surprised me until I discovered that it was created for the patients of the Samaritan Foundation, not the victims of the Nazis, but it still includes memorials for the victims of Aktion T4.

A granite slab is inscribed with this message: "Grafeneck Memorial for 10,654 sick and disabled people who were murdered here in 1940 by the Nazi regime as lives unworthy of life."                                                                        There is an inscription on the two slabs on the ground as well, but I can't see the words well enough to get a translation.                                                               A bronze plaque at the cemetery notes that that there are two large graves containing 250 urns filled with victims' ashes in the cemetery, and maybe that is what this is. I wonder where they got the ashes and when those urns were buried. 

Perhaps this is the burial site for those urns? The inscription says, "I know the Lord will bring justice to the wretched and the needy. Psalms 140:13  In remembrance of the upholders of inhumanity. Grafeneck 1940"

Overall, the cemetery was what you would expect of a cemetery in Germany--well-tended and full of flowers. 

More than almost anywhere else, cemeteries make me want to be a researcher. I would love to know the story of Heinz Graf, for instance, whose memorial says "In our sick world, you were the healthy one! Lovingly and calmly, you tried to master life. We miss you, Teddy Bear."

Every grave represents a life, and every life has a story.

Four of our six men taking a rest. Dave and Stephen, where are you?

Here are all eleven of us who made the journey--seven direct descendants of Karl Gustav Frey and four of our spouses--on the 85th anniversary of our grandfather's death, a man we had hardly thought about before Alex began her research, but to whom we now felt a growing connection.

We asked each other, "What would Mom, Uncle Heinz, and Oma say? What about our grandfather (our Opa) himself? Are they all watching us? Are they saying, 'All these years, we kept it quiet. Why did they have to dig up the dirt from the past?'" 

I hope they were watching, and if they were, I don't think that was what they were saying. This extraordinary coming together of facts and people and dates seems more than a coincidence; it feels heaven-ordained.

I want to believe that the burden of their secret has been lifted. Perhaps it had been lifted for a long time, but now the generational burden has also been lifted. I believe they are happy that we were together as we experienced this surreal moment of connection to our grandfather for the first time.

Here are seven descendants of Karl Gustav Frey--his daughter's five children, one of her grandsons, and one of his son's four children, standing on either side of the woman who made the miracles happen and brought us to this place. We can never thank her enough.

Before we left, we spent some time at the Documentation Center and Museum where Director Thomas Stöckle shared more details about Grafeneck. (I found this picture of Herr Stöckle on the internet. I hope it is okay with him that I'm posting it. He was so helpful, intelligent, and thoughtful, and I want to remember him.)

There were several things in the museum that had an emotional impact. For example, these small clay sculptures by the artist Jochen Meyder were part of an installation on display in the Documentation Center from 2016 to 2023 that included 10,654 terracotta figures: one for each of the Grafeneck victims.  These eleven figures are naked and unresisting as they unwittingly stand in line. A sign at the site notes that the figures have since traveled to many places and serve as a reminder of tolerance and understanding.

As powerful as that art was, this was even more powerful for me, The Name Book of the Victims of Grafeneck. 

The foreward notes (translated from German), "The names of  people murdered in Grafeneck in 1940 as part of the so-called 'Aktion T4' (Operation T4) mentioned in this book were first collected and recorded on behalf of the Grafeneck Memorial Association by Thomas Stöckle, a Stuttgart historian and current director of the Grafeneck Memorial. The book of names and remembrance, first presented to the public in 1995, contained approximately 4,000 names at the time. The book before you today contains over 9,600 names of the victims."

Another page contains a tribute written by "Regional Bishop L. R.": "He has given each of us our own unique nature and our own unmistakable name, by which He calls us and in response to which He promises, 'You are mine!' This also applies to the victims of Grafeneck. Each of them, too, had their own name by which they were called: those now named and those still nameless. This book, with its thousands of names, not only aims to keep the memory of the dead alive. It also aims to remind us, the living, not to overlook or forget the many nameless and disenfranchised of our time. We must not! And if we were to forget them, by God, not one of them would be forgotten. The staff of the Grafeneck Memorial Association and all other participants who painstaking searched for and compiled these names deserve our sincere thanks. With their work of collecting and sifting, they have accomplished a feat that deserves great respect. May this memorial book be a reminder to us living beyond this moment of that last great book in which our names, along with all those who are connected to us in grief and hope, must not be omitted: 'Rejoice that your names are written in heaven' (Luke 10:20). --October 1995"

On page 48 of this remarkable book, there are 52 names.

All are important to someone, but THIS is the one important to my family:

There is something very powerful in the simple listing of the victims' names. An old African proverb says, "As long as you speak a person's name, they shall never die." Ancient Egyptians had a similar saying, "You live as long as your name is spoken."  Jewish tradition says that a person dies twice--first, when the heart stops beating, and second, when their name is uttered for the last time. 

Having our grandfather's name written down in this book has a similar effect for us, and it irrevocably establishes his place in history. 

Just outside the Documentation Center is a wall of shallow shelves filled with rocks.

Clean rocks and paint are provided for those who want to memorialize a loved one or comment on what they've seen. The rock in the center of this group has the German words for "Human rights instead of right people."

The German words Nie Wieder! - Never Again! - appeared on several rocks.

My brother Dave spoke for all of us with this simple epitaph: 🧡KGF (the initials Alex used to refer to our grandfather, Karl Gustav Frey, and which we adopted) 21 May 1940 (the date of his death).