born 16 May 1898 in Fürstenwalde
died 10 June 1941 in Bernburg
historical former address Ackerstraße 8a
Stumbling stone Karl-Cheret-Straße 8a
Date of stone-laying 9 May 2006
Richard Soland was born in Fürstenwalde on 16 May 1898. He was an active member of the Alliance of Red Front-Fighters (RFB), the paramilitary organisation of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). After the National Socialists seized power in 1933, he was arrested and brutally tortured during questioning in the SA interrogation facilities at the Fürstenwalder Hof in Gartenstraße and the Salt Magazine at Niederlagertor. These severely traumatic experiences led to his incarceration in a mental institution.
In the course of “Aktion T4”, a mass-murder campaign involving the involuntary euthanasia of sick and disabled people, he was transferred to the State Sanatorium and Mental Hospital in Bernburg on the River Saale. He was murdered there in the euthanasia programme’s killing centre on 10 June 1941. Official documents also give the Hadamar State Sanatorium as his place of death – a clear indication of the attempt to conceal the cluster of deaths in Bernburg and also a testimony to the odyssey that many of the victims had been sent on.