Press release: Act of remembrance for victims of Nazi-rule forced sterilisation

Nr. 18/2011 - 15.02.2011

Under Nazi rule, Göttingen doctors carried out the forced sterilisation of more than 780 women and more than 800 men. In memory of the victims, an act of remembrance open to the general public took place on Tuesday, 8 February, 2011, at a lecture theatre in Humboldtallee. Following the event, two memorial plaques were unveiled on the walls of former buildings of the University Hospital: one at the German Philology building at Käte-Hamburger-Weg 3, formerly the Surgery Department of the University Hospital, and the other at the Deanery of the Faculty of Humanities at Humboldtallee 17, a building that used to house part of the University Hospital’s Department of Gynaecology.

The Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Prof. Dr. Hedwig Röckelein, and the Dean of the Medical Faculty, Prof. Dr. Cornelius Frömmel, gave opening addresses. The central address on the subject of “Forced sterilisation under National Socialism” was held by historian Prof. Dr. Gisela Bock of the Freie Universität Berlin. Margret Hamm, chairperson of the ‘AG Bund der “Euthanasie”-Geschädigten und Zwangssterilisierten’, an association representing those who have suffered through euthanasia and forced sterilisation, informed listeners on “The protracted compensation post-1945 of those sterilised against their will under Nazi rule”. Students also contributed to the proceedings: Franziska Frome-Ziegler and Jonathan Kühne spoke on behalf of the Göttingen students who last year seized the initiative and proposed that the victims of forced sterilisation be remembered publicly.

Between 1934 and 1945 more than 360,000 forced sterilisations took place in Germany. Approximately 4500 women and 500 men died, among them a number of Göttingen citizens. In many cases those who survived suffered serious physical and psychological damage. The basis of this inhuman practice was laid by the passing on 14 July, 1933, of the “Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases”.