Another strategy of the National Socialist extermination policy was “extermination through labour”. For this purpose, Jewish prisoners and workhouse inmates were registered as of 1942, and mentally ill offenders as of 1943.
"Extermination” through labour
Step by step, the Reich Ministry of Justice registered the Jewish inmates of prisons, “habitual criminals”, persons in preventive detention and “asocial people” in workhouses. One by one, they were handed over to killing centres or concentration camps for gradual “extermination through labour”. By the decree of the Reich Minister of the Interior of 8 August 1943, the psychiatric institutions were asked to draw up lists of mentally ill offenders who could be handed over to the police, i.e. to the concentration camps.
At the request of the Berlin Main Health Office, the Wittenau Sanatoriums drew up a list of 143 sick persons on 29 October 1943. In two cases, there is later an entry that the patients were handed over to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Two other sick people were handed over to the police authorities; 18 others were released without further details before the end of the war. Nothing is known about their fate. The “extermination through labour” campaign was not completed because the institutions held back sick people who were fit for work. Women and sick persons who were not fit for work were sent to Obrawalde.