Monika Lauth

Monika Lauth (1913–1941) worked as a domestic servant at Schloss Siebeneichen in Meissen. She subsequently developed a mental illness in circumstances that remain unclear and was admitted to the Landesheilanstalt Eichberg psychiatric hospital in Hesse in late August 1939.

On 20 May 1941, Lauth was transferred from Eichberg to Hadamar together with 87 other patients. The institution was used by the Nazis to systematically murder patients as part of the programme known as “Aktion T4”. She was almost certainly murdered on the day of her arrival, as patients brought to Hadamar were generally killed in the gas chamber that same day. Her body was subsequently cremated. 

Her family was deliberately misled about the date and cause of her death. The false date of death and the supposed cause, “septische Angina” (“septic tonsillitis”), were also recorded in the registers of her family’s parish in Dresden and the cemetery. On 15 July 1941, her relatives arranged for an urn to be buried in their family grave at the Neuer Katholischer Friedhof. The ashes in the urn, however, could not be identified as hers. The family grave no longer exists.