Kobierzyn
Southwest of Krakow lies Babinski mental hospital, which at the outbreak of war in 1939 had about 1000 patients. When the Germans took Krakow, two German representatives were appointed who immediately began to practice euthanasia on those patients who were considered ”uncured” in accordance with the Nazi racial ideology. In Kobierzyn, the patients were murdered by starvation and poison injections. Jewish patients were deported to concentration camps where they were murdered. In May 1942, the Nazis decided to liquidate the hospital and use it for other purposes. By then, about 500 patients had been murdered. Under the pretext of sending patients to a hospital in Warsaw, the final evacuation of the hospital began. In fact, 535 patients were sent by train to Auschwitz where they later were murdered in Bunker I, gas chamber, Birkenau. However, about 30 patients were too sick to be transported, they were instead killed by a poison injection.
Current status: Preserved with monument (2009).
Address: ul. Józefa Babinskiego 29, 30-393 Kraków.
Get there: Car.
Follow up in books: Friedlander, Henry: The Origins of Nazi Genocide – From euthanasia to the final solution (1995).
The official euthanasia that took place in Germany between 1939 and 1941 had clear directives which ones should be killed, but in Poland it was quite different. It did not follow any official directives from any central authority but was more arbitrary. Exactly how many Polish mental hospitals Nazi euthanasia was practiced at is difficult to determine. The killing methods were also different. If poison gas were used in Germany as the primary method perhaps shooting was the primary method outside Germany. But we know that poison gas was used outside Germany just as we know that poison injections were used in Germany.