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 Kobierzyn, (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 Alex Kroll, evaded punishment.
Kobierzyn hospital before the war
From February 1929 until the outbreak of World War II, the institution was directed by Dr. Władysław Stryjeński – 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 Alex Kroll, 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, Jost Walbaum, 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.
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