I was born in the village of Plagwitz, close to Löwenberg, in Germany, now Lwówek Śląski in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship in Poland. Members of my family were evacuated in February of 1945 to escape the onslaught of Russian troops, ending up and finding refuge with in-laws at the Dutch/German border. The Löwenberg area became Polish according to the WWI Versailles Treaty, after Hitler; and until the lowering of the Iron Curtain and German Unification and Poland joining the European Union, my family was not allowed to return there. I consider it home.
Płakowice Castle, is located in Plagwitz (Płakowice), Lower Silesia, which was German before 1945, and is now Polish. Plagwitz (Płakowice) is one of the oldest settlements, having been mentioned in the Register of Municipalities of Lower Silesia from 1217 onwards.
In the history between competing and feudal families, the village changed ownership several times and according to local chronicles was in the hands of the Raussendorfs, Talkenbergs, Schaffgotschs, Hohberg-Nostizts and also under the supervision of the nobility of Löwenberg (Lwowek Slaski) between 1520 and 1812. Previously inhabited by West Slavs, the vicinity of Löwenberg was gradually populated by German peasants in the first half of the 13th century during the Ostsiedlung, a German mission of eastward expansion. By 1217 the settlement, founded by the Dukes of Breslau (Wrocław), had important privileges, such as rights to brew, mill, fish, and hunt within a mile from the settlement. German colonists expanded upon the preexisting settlement and in 1217 Löwenberg received town rights. Its style of governance was duplicated by other local towns, such as Bunzlau (Bolesławiec), as “Löwenberg Rights”. The dukes then constructed a castle, documented for the first time in 1248. In the second half of the 13th century Löwenberg became the capital of a Silesian Piast principality, whose duke took the title of Duke of Silesia and Lord of Löwenberg .
From the 15th through the 16th century, Plagwitz with its lands, came into the possession of Christopher von Talkenberg, who began the construction of an elaborate family residence, which was completed in 1550 by his son Christopher–Rampold von Talkenberg.
The palace was heavily damaged during the Thirty-year War (1618-48), the Seven-year War (1757-63) and the Napoleonic wars, especially during the second battle of Plagwitz in August, 1813, in which the large palace was devastated, plundered, while troops absconded with valuable collections of musical instruments and books.
The last owner of Plagwitz Castle was August, Herr von Nostitz-Ryhneck from Sobota, an adjutant to Field Marshal Blücher. He later was appointed also a Prussian general.
After 1813, during the Napoleonic Wars, the Prussians who under Blücher had defeated the French forces in the Battle of Katzbach, nearby, began an administrative reorganization of the Prussian state following the Congress of Vienna. Liegnitz and the surrounding territory were incorporated into the Regierungsbezirk (administrative district) Liegnitz, within the Province of Silesia on May 1, 1816. Along with the rest of Prussia, Liegnitz and also PLagwitz became part of the German Empire in 1871 during the unification of Germany. On January 1, 1874, Liegnitz became the third city in Lower Silesia, after Breslau and Görlitz, to be raised to an urban district.
In 1824, the property of Plagwitz Castle was sold to the government of the Liegnitz district. The layout and size of the castle lent itself to the development of a hospital installation, which over years until 1945 was designated for the cure for psychotic patients, especially children and juveniles.
To develop a complete list of children-wards in mental hospitals within the health and hygiene system of the German Reich is not without its serious problems. Aggressive former staff members of the Reich Committee have contradicted and subverted the research data. In some up-coming publications about Nazi crimes and atrocities, the information about children wards between 1939 and 1945, including Bremen, Poznan, Plagwitz, and Klagenfurt, will be added and sharpened.
In August 1939 a meeting of mental hospital officials was held, and the first directives were discussed. Senior staff of Adolf Hitler’s Chancellery and the Department of Health, and Interior Ministry, participated in planning the first systemic “children’s euthanasia,” with a secret decree drafted by the Interior Ministry.
Euthanasia of mentally sick of deformed children began on August 18, 1939. Consequently, all children with certain serious congenital disease and birth defects had be reported to a committee for collecting information on perceived genetic defects to stem against transmission of hereditary factors into the Arian race. This committee was part of a Nazi stealth-organization that later launched itself or formed organizations to carry out further “euthanasia actions.”
Gradually, over thirty children-wards were established in departments, hospitals, and asylums or mental institutions of the Third Reich, in which up to 1945, especially children and adolescents were murdered. Documents relating to the children-wards can only be found to a very limited extent. The exact scope of the sick child murders is not clear and further research is still needed. The number vacillating between five and eight thousand murdered children and young people is only a rough estimate.
A former administrative assistant of the “euthanasia action”, as witness, gave the following account in 1965: “My work was simply to shred and destruct documents destruction. A squad of office workers for weeks tried to succeed in hiding the traces of Nazi “euthanasia crimes”.
The destruction of documents succeeded, but not totally. Everywhere in hospitals, killing stations, intermediate and secondary processing stations, as well as in headquarters of the killing actions and in offices of hospital administrators and staff in the various provinces there are still documents that need to find their way into public archives and hands of researchers.
My father worked at the Plagwitz Castle as psychiatrist. He died forty years ago, leaving me with very little information on the most difficult question: “Did he participate or not, and if he did, why?” Between 1945 and 1948 all professionals had to submit to President Harry S. Truman’s “denazification” process. He was either exonerated or considered not an incriminated person. Not like some of his colleagues, he was not indicted, and therefore able to continue his appointment as psychiatrist at several mental health institutions in the province of Westphalia in Germany.
Until February 15, 1945, Plagwitz Castle continued to house a branch of a hospital for nervous and mental patients in Boleslawiec. Then in the fifties groups of young people from Greece and Macedonia, and from August 1953 to July 1959 young people from Korea. The castle was also used by Polish military units. The army remained stationed there for a long time without a host, which was reflected in its state of disrepair.
In December 1992 the Plagwitz Castle was turned over to the Elim Fellowship, formed in 1933 as an informal fellowship of churches, ministers, and missionaries originating from a nucleus of people who had attended Elim Bible Institute. The Fellowship continues to support Pentecostal and Charismatic churches, ministers, and missions, providing credentials and counsel for ministers, encouraging fellowship among churches, sponsoring leadership seminars, and also serving as a trans-denominational agency sending missionaries and other personnel to other countries.