Hitlers Euthanasia Programme, Showing his true colours

[spidge]

Please change if in the wrong forum

Nazi Euthanasia

Whilst not specifically aimed at the Jewish population, we must ask where this type of cleansing within Hitlers Germany would end.

In October of 1939 amid the turmoil of the outbreak of war Hitler ordered widespread "mercy killing" of the sick and disabled.

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.

[Marina]

The programme, 'Nazis: A Warning From History' had a good episode on this subject. They interviewed surviving family of the murdered - shocking to see how much grief they still felt.
Marina

[Kiwiwriter]

Interestingly, euthanasia and racial hygiene was a popular idea in the 1930s, even in democracies. The war put an end to that.

Oddly enough, I find in reading about neo-Nazis, that numbers of them and their children are people who would be whacked under those laws, which is an interesting irony.

David Irving's daughter, for example, was mentally ill, and killed herself. Some tasteless person sent a wreath that read, "A truly deserved death. Philip Bouhler." As we know, Bouhler wrote the euthanasia laws. Irving claimed the wreath was sent by Deborah Lipstadt's defense team to "destabilize" him, which they denied, of course. (It may not have happened at all, but I could see some tasteless fool doing it)

So today Nazism's loudest defenders include some of those it would first kill. Figure that one out.

[spidge]

In my post on this subject it mentioned Hadamar and a converted prison in Brandenburg.

I could not see any reference to this euthanasia extermination site.

From http://www.compunews.com/gus/massacres.htm

HARTHEIM SCHLOSS
In 1942, a total of 3,166 civilian prisoners were transported to this place, situated near Linz in Austria, just over the German border,and there put to death by gassing. They were classified as 'unfit to work'. Hartheim was the only prison from which there were no survivors. Used in the SS Euthanasia Programme, around 10,000 mentally retarded and crippled children were murdered here. Five such establishments were set up in Germany, including the infamous Hadamar Psychiatric Clinic. Since the Programme began in 1939, a total of 70,273 mentally retarded people were murdered in these centers. Today, the Schloss has been converted into flats housing 22 families.The only reminder of the terrible events that took place here is a large plaque on the wall of the entrance hall.



Map shows location of Hartheim Castle gas chamber



In the upper left-hand corner, there is a rectangular extension built onto the northwest tower. This is where the victims were delivered by buses into a wooden shed; they entered the castle through the door on the northwest side where there is a small red dot on the map. The victims were then taken through the arcade on the north side of the open courtyard to the Admissions room in the northeast tower. The gas chamber is located in the brown area between the two corner towers on the east side. The original door into the gas chamber opened from the east side of the courtyard, shown in the center of the drawing.

"Crying still"

[spidge]

Some additional information and corrections from my initial post.

5 camps are mentioned in one instance and 6 in another?

This info is from: http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan...cres_axis.html

In 1942, a total of 3,166 civilian prisoners from Dachau and Mauthausen were transported to this place, situated just over the German border near Linz in Austria and there put to death by gassing. They were classified as 'unfit to work'. Hartheim, under the administration of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp, was the only prison from which there were no survivors. Used in the SS Euthanasia Programme, 18,269 mentally retarded and crippled children were murdered here. Their bodies were then cremated and the ashes spread over the waters of the Danube and Traun rivers. Five such establishments were set up in Germany, including the infamous Hadamar Psychiatric Clinic in Hessen-Nassau where between 40 and 70 patients arrived daily and where 476 Polish and Russian nationals were put to death within days of their arrival. Since the program began in 1939, a total of 72,424 mentally retarded people were murdered in these centers. A total of 772 children from Vienna were put to death and their brains preserved in glass jars. Around 80 persons were employed at Hartheim encouraged by extra pay and a good alcohol allowance. The director of the program was psychiatrist, Dr. Rudolf Lonauer, of Linz, who committed suicide by poison in May, 1945.
After the war, the Schloss (Castle) was converted into flats housing 22 families. In 1999, the families were moved and the Schloss refurbished and opened as a Memorial Site and Holocaust Learning Center for students and the public.
In the spring of 1939, the "Reich Committee for Scientific Research of Hereditary and Severe Constitutional Diseases" was set up. Headed by SS-Obergruppenführer Philipp Bouhler, it operated out of his headquarters at Tiergartenstrasse 4, in Berlin, hence its code name T-4. From all over Germany, deformed children, incurably sick and mentally retarded patients were transported from their hospitals and institutions to the euthanasia killing centres of which there were six, (Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Hadamar, Hartheim, Sonnenstein and Bernberg). At these centres the patients were put to death individually, usually by injection. Later, to speed up the process, cyanide gas, known as Zyklon B, was used. At Hartheim, carbon-monoxide gas was the method used. In November, 1942, 1,200 German political prisoners were taken from Mauthausen and transported to Bernberg and put to death by gassing. Documents discovered after the war listed 70,273 deaths at these six centers. The first centre to be so equipped was Brandenburg in late 1939. The procedure was for groups of twenty or thirty to be ushered into a room camouflaged as a shower room into which gas piping had been laid. The equipment to operate the gas was located outside and operated by the doctor on duty. When the euthanasia program wound down in late 1941, the gassing equipment in these centres was dismantled and transferred to the concentration camps of Belize, Majdenek and Treblinka in Poland in preparation for the forthcoming 'Final Solution' of the Jewish question. It is estimated that between 200 and 250 thousand persons were murdered under the T-4 program.