Historical and political education as a mission – we are seeking volunteer guides!

Would you like to get involved at the memorial site?

We are looking for volunteers to accompany visitor groups such as school classes, trainees, employees in nursing and social professions, police, armed forces and many more.

After comprehensive training by our team, you will learn how to independently give groups an insight into the history and present of Grafeneck. We offer a wide range of educational formats: from seminars and workshops to day seminars.

If you are interested, please contact the office.

Membership in the memorial association

The association welcomes new members!

History of the association

Origins

Much time passed before the events of 1940 in Grafeneck were brought up again, before the silence was broken. For almost 40 years, the murders of people with disabilities and mental illnesses by the Nazis in Grafeneck were not discussed. There was silence in the region and far beyond, as words to describe the horror were lacking. However, even during this “long phase” of denial and silence, there were countervailing tendencies. In the early 1960s, with the support of the state of Baden-Württemberg, the Samaritan Foundation created the first memorial site in the institution’s cemetery. This memorial, erected in 1962 and still standing today, consists of a semicircular enclosure wall, a roughly hewn stone cross over two meters high, and two urn graves. An explanatory memorial or information plaque naming the crime did not yet exist in those years.

The silence in the region and in Grafeneck itself came to an end in the 1970s. The Association of Euthanasia Victims and Forcibly Sterilised Persons, as well as anti-fascist groups such as the Association of Victims of Nazi Persecution/Association of Anti-Fascists (VVN/BdA), were the ones who organised the first commemorative events and wreath-laying ceremonies, in which the Samaritan Foundation now also participates. These events did not meet with any significant response from the general public. This only changed on the fortieth anniversary of the confiscation of Grafeneck Castle for ‘Reich purposes’ (14 October 1939). On the Day of Repentance and Prayer in 1979, over 1,000 people marched in a star march to the former site of extermination.

Establishment

The memorial service in 1979 was the initial spark for the founding of the Grafeneck Memorial Working Group: young people and pastors from the Münsingen church district, as well as employees of the Grafeneck Samaritan Foundation, came together within the Protestant Youth Organisation in Münsingen to rescue this dark chapter in Grafeneck’s history from oblivion. In the years that followed, the working group devoted itself primarily to organising the annual memorial service. However, initial attempts were also made to reconstruct the history of 1940 and raise awareness of it once again.With the construction of the memorial, the members of the working group took on new tasks. The emerging place of remembrance was to be filled with life and active commemorative work. The conceptual work was based on three pillars: commemorating the victims, warning future generations and, finally, preserving the memory.

When the memorial site next to the Grafeneck cemetery was completed in 1990, the history of this place became known to an ever wider public. Four years later, the working group was entered in the register of associations. The Grafeneck Memorial Association was founded. Today, the association’s members include private individuals, church congregations and local authorities, as well as institutions affiliated with the Diakonie social welfare organisation, Caritas, state and private disability support services, and psychiatric centres, primarily in Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria. The ongoing support of the Samaritan Foundation, which runs the care taking institution in Grafeneck and owns the memorial site, made it possible to hire a historian in 1996. The memorial work in Grafeneck is financed by membership fees, voluntary subsidies from many institutions providing assistance to people with disabilities and psychiatric care, and, last but not least, by memorial site funding from the state of Baden-Württemberg and the federal government (project funding).

The work with people with disabilities and mental illnesses at the Samariterstift Grafeneck, which was resumed shortly after the Second World War, is a special feature that is questioned by many, but considered by others to be a unique opportunity to connect the history of the place with the people living there today in a way that could hardly be more clear and impressive.

Development

The book of names, which was presented to the public by the Grafeneck Memorial Association, contains the names of over 9,600 victims of mass murder and is still being updated today. Some of the victims who were previously nameless and forgotten have thus been rescued from anonymity. Since 1998, the Alphabet Garden, created by American artist Diane Samuels, has also commemorated the known and unknown victims of Grafeneck. The 26 letters of the alphabet, set into the ground as granite blocks, have become an integral part of the memorial.

In recent years, the original core tasks of remembrance and warning have been increasingly supplemented by historical research and political education work in the field of youth and adult education. Today, around 400 visitor groups and 40,000 visitors come to the Grafeneck care taking institution and memorial site. Between 2004 and 2006, the Grafeneck Memorial Association pursued the establishment of a documentation centre at the historic site. Opened in 2005, the documentation centre now houses a comprehensive permanent exhibition, as well as a library and archive.