page_title: Sonnenstein Euthanasia Centre
section_title: Number of victims
hierarchical_section_title: Sonnenstein Euthanasia Centre / Number of victims
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler: Selbstportrait (um 1930); Öl auf Karton 43,0 x 45,0 cm
context_page_description: The Sonnenstein Euthanasia Clinic was a Nazi euthanasia or extermination centre located in the former fortress of Sonnenstein Castle near Pirna in eastern Germany, where a hospital had been established in 1811.
  In 1940 and 1941, the facility was used by the Nazis to exterminate around 15,000 people in a process that was labelled as euthanasia. The majority of victims were suffering from psychological disorders and intellectual disability, but their number also included inmates from the concentration camps. The institute was set up after the beginning of the Second World War as part of a Reich-wide, centrally coordinated and largely secret programme called Action T4 for the "Elimination of life unworthy of life" or the killing of what the Nazis called "dead weight existences". Today, the Pirna Sonnenstein Memorial Site stands to commemorate the victims of these crimes.
  The Nazi euthanasia facility at Sonnenstein Castle also supported the personnel as well as the organisational and technical preparation of the Holocaust. It was one of six that were in operation in Saxony, and was — not least due to the number of victims — one of the worst sites of Nazi war crimes in the state.
context_section_description: According to surviving internal T4 statistics, in the Sonnenstein Euthanasia Centre in 15 months between June 1940 and 1 September 1941 a total of 13,720 people were executed in the gas chamber:
  These statistics only cover the first phase of Action T4, that was ended by an order from Adolf Hitler on 24 August 1941. After the temporary interruption of Action T4, a further 1,031 concentration camp prisoners from Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Auschwitz were executed in Sonnenstein under the code name "Special treatment 14 f 13".. One of the best-known victims was the Dresden artist, Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler. Likewise the church solicitor, Martin Gauger, who came from Buchenwald concentration camp was murdered in Sonnenstein under 14f13.
caption: Self-portrait by Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler who was murdered at Sonnenstein
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