Liebenau10/02/1940
Staff from the Liebenau institution check the identities of several patients behind a red Reichspost bus while T4 staff put a stamp on their forearms. The red Reichspost bus in which the men were deported to the Grafeneck killing center is still empty.
Courtesy of Stiftung Liebenau
Historical context
Deportation from Liebenau to Grafeneck on 10/02/1940
Between July 1940 and April 1941, over 500 people were deported for murder from the former care and nursing institution Liebenau (now known as the Liebenau Foundation) and the associated Gertrudisheim Rosenharz home as part of the Nazi euthanasia program. On October 2, 1940, the last major “transfer” from Liebenau took place. On that Wednesday morning, staff from the Grafeneck killing center picked up the victims in front of the entrance of St. Joseph’s House. In cooperation with the institution’s doctor and a nurse, Josef Willhelm, director of the institution, managed to halt the deportation of 25 people out of the one hundred Liebenau patients whose names were on the transport list of the Ministry of the Interior. The others were guided by the Liebenau staff from their homes to three former post buses. Before boarding the buses, their identities were checked and their forearms were stamped. The 75 people were deported to Grafeneck, where 74 of them were murdered by carbon monoxide gas. One person, Maria Spiess, who had Parkinson’s disease, was spared for reasons which are unclear to this day and was taken to the state institution of Zwiefalten where she died in 1941.
Sources
About the image series
Liebenau, 10/02/1940
Description
Father Alois Dangelmaier documented the deportation of 75 residents of the Liebenau care institution on October 2, 1940, in a color slide framed with glass. Although the Liebenau Foundation’s archives hold several versions, the original is either lost or unidentifiable. Its frame was labeled: “1.3.5.6 Euthanasia transport Liebenau 1940, taken by Father Alois Dangelmaier, G. Ritter (M.D.) and nurse M. Fausta,” the latter two being shown in the photo. Dangelmaier took the picture from a window of St. Joseph’s House, slightly elevated above the scene. The window frame is faintly visible in the shadow at the left edge. Staff from the Liebenau institution and the Grafeneck killing center can be seen registering the patients for deportation in the foreground, with a Reichspost bus in the background.
- Provenance
In the late 1950s, the photographer Father Alois Dangelmaier handed a parcel with 31 slides to Dr. Bernhard Ehrmann, senior physician of the Liebenau care and nursing institution at the time. They showed pictures taken during Dangelmaier’s visits to the institution between 1940 and 1942. The senior physician kept the pictures for himself until the 100th anniversary of the Liebenau Foundation in 1970. Since its publication by Ehrmann in 1970, this deportation photograph has played a key role in the remembrance of the euthanasia murders in the Liebenau Foundation and countrywide. Today Dangelmaier’s photographs are distributed across the holdings of the Liebenau Foundation and cannot be identified any more.
- Call number at source archive
- Ohne Signatur
- Title at source archive
- Stiftung Liebenau Busbild
- Acknowledgements
We thank Susanne Droste-Gräff from the Liebenau Foundation for her dedicated support and Kathrin Bauer from the Grafeneck memorial for her expert advice.
- Research & Text
- Lisa Paduch
