Hitlers Euthanasia Programme

[spidge]

Nazi Euthanasia

In October of 1939 amid the turmoil of the outbreak of war Hitler ordered widespread "mercy killing" of the sick and disabled.
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Code named "Aktion T 4," the Nazi euthanasia program to eliminate "life unworthy of life" at first focused on newborns and very young children. Midwives and doctors were required to register children up to age three who showed symptoms of mental retardation, physical deformity, or other symptoms included on a questionnaire from the Reich Health Ministry.

A decision on whether to allow the child to live was then made by three medical experts solely on the basis of the questionnaire, without any examination and without reading any medical records.

Each expert placed a + mark in red pencil or - mark in blue pencil under the term "treatment" on a special form. A red plus mark meant a decision to kill the child. A blue minus sign meant meant a decision against killing. Three plus symbols resulted in a euthanasia warrant being issued and the transfer of the child to a 'Children's Specialty Department' for death by injection or gradual starvation.

The decision had to be unanimous. In cases where the decision was not unanimous the child was kept under observation and another attempt would be made to get a unanimous decision.

The Nazi euthanasia program quickly expanded to include older disabled children and adults. Hitler's decree of October, 1939, typed on his personal stationery and back dated to Sept. 1, enlarged "the authority of certain physicians to be designated by name in such manner that persons who, according to human judgment, are incurable can, upon a most careful diagnosis of their condition of sickness, be accorded a mercy death."

Questionnaires were then distributed to mental institutions, hospitals and other institutions caring for the chronically ill.

Patients had to be reported if they suffered from schizophrenia, epilepsy, senile disorders, therapy resistant paralysis and syphilitic diseases, retardation, encephalitis, Huntington's chorea and other neurological conditions, also those who had been continuously in institutions for at least 5 years, or were criminally insane, or did not posses German citizenship or were not of German or related blood, including Jews, Negroes, and Gypsies.

A total of six killing centers were established including the well known psychiatric clinic at Hadamar. The euthanasia program was eventually headed by an SS man named Christian Wirth, a notorious brute with the nickname 'the savage Christian.'

At Brandenburg, a former prison was converted into a killing center where the first Nazi experimental gassings took place. The gas chambers were disguised as shower rooms, but were actually hermetically sealed chambers connected by pipes to cylinders of carbon monoxide. Patients were generally drugged before being led naked into the gas chamber. Each killing center included a crematorium where the bodies were taken for disposal. Families were then falsely told the cause of death was medical such as heart failure or pneumonia.

But the huge increase in the death rate for the disabled combined with the very obvious plumes of odorous smoke over the killing centers aroused suspicion and fear. At Hadamar, for example, local children even taunted arriving busloads of patients by saying "here comes some more to be gassed."

On August 3, 1941, a Catholic Bishop, Clemens von Galen, delivered a sermon in Münster Cathedral attacking the Nazi euthanasia program calling it "plain murder." The sermon sent a shockwave through the Nazi leadership by publicly condemning the program and urged German Catholics to "withdraw ourselves and our faithful from their (Nazi) influence so that we may not be contaminated by their thinking and their ungodly behavior."

As a result, on August 23, Hitler suspended Aktion T4, which had accounted for nearly a hundred thousand deaths by this time.

The Nazis retaliated against the Bishop by beheading three parish priests who had distributed his sermon, but left the Bishop unharmed to avoid making him into a martyr.

However, the Nazi euthanasia program quietly continued, but without the widespread gassings. Drugs and starvation were used instead and doctors were encouraged to decide in favor of death whenever euthanasia was being considered.

The use of gas chambers at the euthanasia killing centers ultimately served as training centers for the SS. They used the technical knowledge and experience gained during the euthanasia program to construct huge killing centers at Auschwitz, Treblinka and other concentration camps in an attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe. SS personnel from the euthanasia killing centers, notably Wirth, Franz Reichleitner and Franz Stangl later commanded extermination camps.

[Gnomey]

Interesting post spidge, enjoyed reading that although I don't enjoy the subject.

[angie999]

Excellent post Spidge. Have you considered copying it over to the Holocaust forum?

[spidge]

(angie999 @ Nov 8 2005, 07:41 PM) [post=41273]Excellent post Spidge. Have you considered copying it over to the Holocaust forum?
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That is where I intended to place it however it would not open???????????

[spidge]

(Gnomey @ Nov 8 2005, 08:14 AM) [post=41248]Interesting post spidge, enjoyed reading that although I don't enjoy the subject.
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Neither do I my friend.

Within Hitlers list of those marked for Euthanasia were those with Encephalitis which I contracted as a 10 year old.

I would have been making smoke signals in Hitlers Germany.

Encephalitis, is an infectious disease of the human central nervous system characterized by inflammation of the brain. The typical symptoms are headache, fever, and extreme lethargy, which lead eventually to coma; double vision, delirium, deafness, and facial palsy often occur in the acute stage of the disease. After effects of encephalitis may include deafness, epilepsy, and dementia.

Probably why I am so thankful to those who made penicillin a reality as without it I may not have seen my eleventh birthday.

So please when you do not understand some of my posts, please read the above.

[angie999]

(spidge @ Nov 8 2005, 08:47 AM) [post=41276]

That is where I intended to place it however it would not open???????????
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This link works for me:

http://www.theholocaust.co.uk/

[laufer]

Outside of Germany and Austria, thousands of mental patients in the occupied territories of Poland and Russia, were also killed by the Einsatzgruppen squads (SS and special police units) that followed in the wake of the invading German army. Between September 29 and November 1, 1939, these units shot about 3,700 mental patients in asylums in the region of Bromberg, Poland. In December 1939 and January 1940, SS units gassed 1,558 patients from Polish asylums in specially adapted gas vans, in order to make room for military and SS barracks. Although regular army units did not officially participate in such "cleansing" actions as general policy, some instances of their involvement have been documented.

[spidge]

(laufer @ Nov 8 2005, 09:24 PM) [post=41288]Outside of Germany and Austria, thousands of mental patients in the occupied territories of Poland and Russia, were also killed by the Einsatzgruppen squads (SS and special police units) that followed in the wake of the invading German army. Between September 29 and November 1, 1939, these units shot about 3,700 mental patients in asylums in the region of Bromberg, Poland. In December 1939 and January 1940, SS units gassed 1,558 patients from Polish asylums in specially adapted gas vans, in order to make room for military and SS barracks. Although regular army units did not officially participate in such "cleansing" actions as general policy, some instances of their involvement have been documented.
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Seeing that he Euthanised 100,000 of his own wards I could not imagine how many and to what extent other countries were cleansed.

[smc66]

There is an excellent couple of chapters on this in Michael Burleigh's 'Ethics and Extermination' that details the Third Reich policy towards psychiatry in general. Basically from about 1934 onwards they turned asylums into freak shows you could visit and put control of boards of guardians into the hands of lower level non educated Nazis who naturally decided that money could be better spent elsewhere and that medical knowledge was not de rigeur for working in a German asylum.

The other thing that Burleigh flagged up was that not all professional workers in asylums were actually aware of the existance of the euthanasia programme and initially believed the movement of patients was to other asylums. As usual when some twigged what was actually happening they did what they could to halt it, Burleigh gives the example of Karsten Jasperson (an NSDAP member since 1931). The whole programme is indicative of how the Nazis operated and used their twisted form of Social Darwinism to overide any form of conscience.

[adamcotton]

Just as a matter of academic interest, has anyone here read "Mein Kampf"? If so, thoughts welcome...