Das Alte Zuchthaus im heutigen Stadtzentrum Brandenburgs an der Havel war 1790 als „Königliches Landarmen- und Invalidenhaus“ erbaut worden. Damals lag es außerhalb der Stadt vor dem Plauener Tor. Es beherbergte invalide Soldaten und deren Familien und bot darüber hinaus ca. 300 verarmten Bürgerinnen und Bürgern der Mark Brandenburg Obdach.
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Beginning in 1810, the Brandenburg poorhouse also housed prisoners from the overcrowded prison in Spandau. The decision to use the site as a permanent prison was made in 1820. It was for this purpose that the existing buildings were renovated and the entire premises was enclosed with a wall. This increased the site’s capacity to about 600 men. The prisoners were exclusively male.
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The Brandenburg concentration camp was established on the empty prison grounds in May 1933 upon the request of the local police administration. This was due to mass arrests of political opponents by the Nazis, who had just come to power. Along with the concentration camp in Oranienburg, which had existed since March 1933, Brandenburg qualified as a state concentration camp beginning in October 1933. The camp’s official director was the director of the police academy, who however ceded on-site command to the SS.
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Beginning in early December 1939, a large section of the prison complex in the city center was converted into a euthanasia killing facility in the context of what was called the T4 operation. A gas chamber was installed in the former prison barn. The euthanasia facility in Brandenburg an der Havel was the only one of six T4 killing facilities that was built in an empty prison rather than in a hospital. In order to conceal the facility’s purpose, it was called the “Brandenburg an der Havel State Nursing Home.” Between February and October 1940, killing facility staff murdered over 9,000 patients from northern and central Germany with poison gas.
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The Memorial’s permanent exhibition, which opened in August 2012, addresses the murder of more than 9,000 sick and disabled persons from psychiatric hospitals in northern and central Germany, including Berlin.
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