​​During the Nazi regime, the city health department of Aachen was housed alongside the city administration in the Haus Grenzwacht. It was responsible for implementing the Nazi's law for the prevention of genetically diseased offspring, which aimed to promote Nazi racial hygiene and included compulsory sterilisations of people with disabilities.

The government doctors in Aachen requested hundreds of such sterilisations for those they deemed "inferior". From 1941 to 1945, with the help of the health department, people with disabilities and sick individuals from Aachen were deported and then systematically murdered in operations such as Action T4. Many were also abused in cruel human experiments, disregarding ethical principles. The Wege gegen das Vergessen (Ways Against Forgetting) project remembers the participation of Aachen government doctors in these crimes with a memorial plaque attached to the western tower facade of Haus Grenzwacht.​