The massacre of patients at the State Institute for the Mentally and Nervously Ill in Kobierzyn was the systematic murder, carried out during World War II by officials of Nazi Germany, of more than one thousand patients of the psychiatric hospital in , (present-day Dr. Józef Babiński Clinical Hospital in Kraków). The chain of crimes consisted of three stages: the starvation of patients, the deportation of patients of Jewish nationality in September 1941, and the mass murder through the deceptive transport of patients to the Auschwitz concentration camp on 23 June 1942. Including the victims of starvation, approximately 900–1,000 people were killed in total. The main perpetrator, the German-appointed hospital director , evaded punishment.
Kobierzyn hospital before the war
From February 1929 until the outbreak of World War II, the institution was directed by Dr. – vice-president of the Chamber of Physicians and Dentists, president of the Kraków Regional Medical Chamber, and senator of the Republic of Poland in the fifth term (1938–1939). Under his leadership the hospital achieved economic self-sufficiency: it operated its own farm and garden, shop, craft workshops, and employees were allocated garden plots. The facility also maintained its own kindergarten and a works fire brigade. The outbreak of the war found Dr. Stryjeński in Warsaw. Together with members of the Polish state administration, he was evacuated to Romania. The position of chief physician was then held by Dr. Władysław Issajewicz.
Hospital under German administration
First weeks of the occupation
Between 6 and 8 September 1939, a Wehrmacht unit was quartered on the premises of the hospital. Upon departing, the soldiers took with them valuable items, including typewriters, sanitary supplies, and medicines. In the initial period of the war, after the conclusion of the September Campaign, the hospital continued to function normally and housed more than 1,000 patients. Thanks to stockpiles accumulated before the war, patients' rations remained at pre-war levels..
November 1939 – May 1942
On 20 November 1939, the German occupation authorities took control of the facility.. On that day the hospital was visited by Dr. Giller, the German director of St. Lazarus Hospital in Kraków, who announced the establishment of German administration and conducted a verification of staff for "Aryan" origin, resulting in the dismissal of one physician. On 21 November 1939, Dr. Fritz Arlt was appointed managing commissioner and directed the hospital until May 1940, when he was replaced by merchant Arnold Zweck. Under Zweck's administration food reserves began to dwindle. In October 1940 he was succeeded by Nazi Party member , a former official in the Warsaw District health department who had no medical qualifications.
The directorship in Kobierzyn was offered to Kroll by his superior, , head of the Health Department. Kroll had previously been Walbaum's patient. According to Kroll's later testimony, Walbaum informed him about Aktion T4 and explained that German authorities regarded the patients in Kobierzyn as "life unworthy of life".
Shortly after taking office, Kroll ordered a reduction in patients' daily food rations. Dr. Władysław Issajewicz, who served as chief physician throughout the occupation, recorded in a 1945 article that working patients received approximately 1,200 kcal per day and non-working patients 1,000 kcal. Patients of Jewish origin were given only 50% or one-third of the rations allocated to Polish patients. Food withheld from patients was stockpiled. The quality of meals deteriorated sharply; the diet consisted primarily of unpeeled boiled potatoes, potato soup, and cabbage, with 5–6 kg of fat per day for roughly 1,000 patients. By spring 1941 potatoes ran out and were replaced in soup by goosefoot and nettles. Bread rations were limited to 75–150 g per day for non-Jewish patients and 50 g for Jewish patients.
The starvation policy produced a sharp rise in mortality. In 1940 alone, 501 patients died, including 109 of Jewish origin. In September 1941, Jewish patients were transferred to the Jewish psychiatric institution Zofiówka in Otwock; only three or four terminally ill Jewish patients remained in Kobierzyn. The transport to Otwock was conducted under humane conditions: the patients received provisions, were accompanied by a physician, and were escorted by auxiliary staff. On 19 August 1942, during the liquidation of the Otwock Ghetto, all Zofiówka patients, including those transferred from Kobierzyn, were murdered, and the Jewish medical staff was sent to the Treblinka extermination camp.
In September 1941 Reichsjugendführer Artur Axmann visited Kobierzyn with the intention of converting the hospital complex for Hitler Youth purposes. Following this visit, Kroll received instructions to liquidate the institution as quickly as possible. By this time, patients' food rations had fallen to less than half the minimum physiological requirement, forcing their bodies to consume their own tissue. Rations were personally set by Kroll himself, and the reductions were not caused by any actual shortage of supplies: until the liquidation in June 1942, the hospital continued to receive its allocated quotas of flour, sugar, pasta and fat from the German authorities. As a result of starvation, patients' body weight dropped dramatically; cases were recorded in which individuals lost up to 15 kg in a single month, accompanied by rapid physical deterioration. At the turn of 1941 and 1942, monthly mortality reached 45–50 deaths. The systematic starvation clearly constituted a deliberate policy of biological extermination.
Mortality of patients under German administration Catholic death registers maintained by the hospital chaplain, which recorded only Christian patients, show that 75 patients died between 1 September and 31 December 1939, 392 died in 1940, 355 in 1941, and 135 between 1 January and 17 June 1942. Surviving administrative records of the institution additionally confirm that 109 Jewish patients died in 1940.
Spring 1942 Preparations for the liquidation of the hospital began in the spring of 1942. In the month preceding the action, the Kobierzyn facility was visited by numerous high-ranking SS officers. Kroll received them either in his official office or in his residence located on the hospital grounds. The visitors included SS-Oberführer Julian Scherner (SS and Police Leader in Kraków), SS-Standartenführer Max Hammer (believed to have directed the operation of 23 June 1942), SS-Sturmbannführer Karl Meyer, SS-Hauptsturmführer Krüger, SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger (Higher SS and Police Leader for the General Government), and Dr. Werner Beck, SS-Hauptscharführer and head of the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Kraków.
May and June 1942 At the beginning of June 1942, Kroll prohibited physicians from discharging patients from the institution, citing an order from the SS command in Kraków. New admissions continued, however, with the last patient admitted on 23 June, the day of the hospital's liquidation. One week after the discharge ban was imposed (and two weeks before the liquidation), Ordnungspolizei took over guard duties at the main entrance gate. A formal inspection of the hospital cemetery was also conducted. After the war, the gravedigger Władysław Bargieł testified that Kroll visited the cemetery accompanied by a high-ranking German officer and an interpreter named Pawłyk. Bargieł was instructed to indicate an unused area for burials; he pointed to a clearing several metres east of the morgue, which also served as his residence. The German officer reportedly approved the location.
On 18 June, the Polish physicians employed at the hospital – Dr. Władysław Issajewicz, Dr. Meissner, Dr. , and medical graduates Hołda and Zicha – were ordered by Kroll to leave the facility within three days and transfer to the Drewnica institution near Warsaw. Kroll announced that German physicians would assume care of the patients and that the existing staff were to hand over patient records and ward keys. The doctors were barred from entering the wards and departed on 21 June.
22 June On 22 June, between 8:00 and 9:00 AM, a hospital driver working on the adjacent farm observed a vehicle full of SS men arrive at the cemetery. The SS personnel began digging a large pit in the southern part of the cemetery, in the area previously indicated to Kroll. That same day, gravedigger Bargieł was ordered to immediately vacate his residence at the morgue and relocate with his family to the main hospital grounds. Also on 22 June, Kroll dismissed the nursing nuns and the chaplain.
Between 12:00 and 2:00 PM on 22 June, eight cattle wagons were shunted from Swoszowice railway station onto the hospital's private siding. After uncoupling, the locomotive returned to Swoszowice.
23 June 1942
In the morning of 23 June, the hospital driver received an order to immediately collect lime from the Liban quarry. He returned before 1:00 PM and around 3:00 PM observed a wagon loaded with lime, driven by German policemen, heading towards the hospital cemetery.
Kroll ordered a staff briefing at 10:00 AM in the hospital theatre building. During the briefing, he announced that the patients would be transferred to Drewnica. Sanitary personnel were ordered to leave the wards by 12:00 PM, with only designated duty staff remaining. At 1:00 PM, a curfew imposed by Kroll began: staff were forbidden from moving around the hospital grounds under threat of shooting and were not allowed to leave their residences until 7:00 AM the next day.
At 11:30 AM, five overseers, led by German head nurse Leo Zipper, were sent to the Brothers Hospitallers monastery and hospital in Zebrzydowice to collect 30 patients who were being treated there under an agreement with Kobierzyn.
Around 1:00 PM, the first SS detachment arrived at the Kobierzyn facility, along with SS-Standartenführer Max Hammer, probably SS-Sturmbannführer Karl Meyer directing the action, and Dr. Werner Beck. The institution was surrounded by a cordon of posts. The vehicle with patients from Zebrzydowice (29 were brought, as one had died) returned around 4:30 PM and stopped near the administrative building before being directed to the railway siding near the boiler house. The patients were loaded by SS men onto the train waiting on the Kobierzyn siding.
The systematic transportation of patients from individual wards began using vehicles. Kroll personally opened the ward doors with his own key, entering the rooms accompanied by German orderlies and doctors who appeared at Kobierzyn that day. Each evacuated pavilion was surrounded by a cordon of armed SS men, and a narrow corridor was formed leading to the waiting vehicles. Patients were counted twice. Duty staff who had remained with the patients were escorted under guard to the hospital theatre building. According to one source, some patients – sensing their fate – prayed aloud, others cursed the Germans, offered active resistance, or even began singing the Polish anthem.
Only those patients too weak for transport were left in the wards. The exact number left behind is unknown, but postwar witness testimonies established that three individuals remained in Ward VI (women's), eight men in Ward VIIIa (male infirmary, including one patient in agony), three intellectually disabled girls on Ward VIIIb (female infirmary), and at least two on Ward IXb.