page_title: Pirna
section_title: Holocaust
hierarchical_section_title: Pirna / History / Holocaust
caption_attribution_description: English: The Human rights memorial Castle-Fortress Sonnenstein in Pirna's old-town.
context_page_description: Pirna is a town in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, capital of the administrative district Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge. The town's population is over 37,000. Pirna is located near Dresden and is an important district town as well as a Große Kreisstadt. It is also known for the gassing of about 15,000 disabled people in Sonnenstein Castle between June 1940 and August 1941, killings which ceased after pressure was exerted on the authorities by the local population. Today, a small plaque at the base of Sonnenstein Castle and the Sonnenstein Memorial remembers the dead.
context_section_description: World War II - From early 1940 until end of June 1942, a part of the huge mental asylum within Sonnenstein Castle overlooking Pirna was converted into a euthanasia killing centre: the Sonnenstein Nazi Death Institute. This was the first use of techniques later rolled out and refined for use within the Final Solution. A gas chamber and crematorium were installed in the cellar of the former men's sanitary (building C 16). A high brick-wall on two sides of the complex shielded it from outside while a high hoarding was erected on the other sides. Four buildings were located inside the shielding. They were used for offices, living rooms for the personnel etc. Sleeping quarters for the "burners" (men who burned the bodies) were provided for in the attic of building C 16. It is possible that other sections of the buildings were also used by T4.
  From end of June 1940 until September 1942, approximately 15,000 persons were killed in the scope of the euthanasia programme and the Sonderbehandlung 14f13. The staff consisted of about 100 persons. One third of them were ordered to the extermination camps in occupied Poland, because of their experiences in deception, killing, gassing and burning innocent people.
  There they were trained by the killing groups who mounted the killing machinery in the later camps like Treblinka from TishBeAv 1942 and the others.
  During August and September 1942, the Sonnenstein killing centre was closed and incriminating installations such as gas chamber installations and crematorium ovens dismantled. After October 1942, the buildings were used as a military hospital.
  This part of the history of Pirna went largely unrecognized in Germany until 1989, but after that efforts to remember that catastrophe started. In June 2000 the permanent exhibition opened .
caption: Sonnenstein Castle
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