We started the day with a 1.5 hour drive to Hadamar. The scenery along the way was beautiful, lush green rolling hills. It reminds me of the setting for the Sound of Music.
We arrived at Hadamar at the same time as a High School tour of the facility. I was impressed that this site was a field trip for schools (during their last week of school, none the less…and we thought our schools ran late into summerJ).
Hadamar was a psychiatric clinic where 15,000 men, women and children were killed between 1941 and 1945 in what is known as the Nazi euthanasia program, or the “T4” program.
These were killed by the resident physicians and staff – not by the Nazis themselves. The victims were German patients with disabilities, mentally disoriented elderly persons and psychologically and physically disabled men women and children. Although these acts were initially were carried out somewhat humanely with lethal injection, they eventually degraded to the gas chambers and firing squad executions.
July 5, Celle, Bergen Belsen
I am still processing my visit to Bergen Belsen concentration camp. I need time to review my notes and collect my feelings on what we saw and experienced there.
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