More than 400,000 people living with psychiatric illnesses, intellectual and physical disabilities were forcibly sterilised and more than 200,000 were murdered in Germany and occupied territories between 1933 and 1945. The guiding principle for the selection of patients was the person’s supposed “value”. Doctors, nursing staff and functionaries passed judgement on the patients committed to their care on the basis of their “curability”, “learning ability” or “capacity to work”. The registration, persecution and extermination took place within the institutional and hospital systems.

The exhibition is specifically aimed at a wide audience. It focuses on the question of the value of life as a guiding principle and considers the intellectual and institutional preconditions of the killings, summarizes the events from exclusion and forced sterilizations up to the Holocaust, provides examples of victims, perpetrators, accomplices and opponents and finally looks into how the events have been dealt with from 1945 until the present day. Exemplar biographies run throughout the entire exhibition: the many different actors involved in the crimes become tangible in the victims’ files. Their views of patients are contrasted with the patients’ own statements.

The final section of the exhibition comprises numerous voices – doctors, politicians, representatives of self-help associations, relatives of victims, nursing staff, health administration representatives and others – who look back on the events of the time and ask themselves from different perspectives about the personal significance of those events.

Please note this is a COVID safe event. Tickets (free) are required. If tickets are unavailable at time of registration this means the venue is full. We apologise in advance for any inconvenience. The exhibition as well as the accompanying lectures and film screenings (part of the program accompanying the exhibition) are fit for viewing by persons aged 15 years or more.

Map showing RBWH Conference and Education Centre: https://www.cornerstoneparking.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/RBH-Campus-Map.jpg (click on image to enlarge - venue is located at the central bottom area of the map),90m from the RBWH bus station.