Together with youth of the AJZ-Chemnitz we visited the former sanatorium Pirna-Sonnenstein, an institution that had been renowned for its humanist tradition, before the National Socialists turned the sanatorium into a killing center.

15 000 people were murdered at Pirna-Sonnenstein in the years 1941 and 1942, most of them because they were diagnosed with (an alleged) mental handicap or illness. They were killed in gas chambers within the framework of the National Socialist medical murders, the so called ‘Action T4’. Over a thousand prisoners from National Socialist concentration camps also died at this site in the summer of 1941 (‘special treatment 14f13’).

The killing center Pirna-Sonnenstein served as a personnel, organizational and technical field of experimentation for the future extermination camps like Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobibor. In the upcoming workshop in Chemnitz, the participants will approach a range of biographies of the victims, made available by the memorial site, under the supervision of Sascha Hommer in an artistic way.