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Memories
THE T4 PROJECT
Perhaps not everyone knows that Nazi genocide started with the disabled. They
were the first guinea pigs nominated for all annihilation, sterilisation and
euthanasia techniques, which were then performed during the Shoah. The first
evidence documented of the Nazi horrors concerns the persecution of the disabled
and the disabled murder camps, a waiting room for the concentration camp world.
The sterilisation, detention and deportation campaigns of disabled people would
lead the way in the months immediately after Hitler's ascent, finding fertile
soil in the eugenics theory and in the defence of the human race.
An intense sterilisation campaign was followed by the systematic killing of
disabled children, to which a large part of this research is dedicated, since
it is one of the most obscure aspects of the Holocaust.
The T4 project, the mass euthanasia of disabled adults, which condemned about
70,000 German citizens to death, started in 1939 and was then stopped, only
formally, in 1941 following pressure from public opinion and the church. As
the front line of the war broadened, the extermination of the disabled did
not save those of occupied countries, with Italy also having dramatic statistics,
since it witnessed the deportation of disabled Jews who were detained in psychiatric
hospitals in Venice and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Fifty-eight years have passed since the Liberation, but the Shoah is not so
far away. The last trial against Dr. Henrich Gross, a psychiatrist from Vienna,
took place in Austria just three years ago. He was accused of carrying out
more than 300 experiments using disabled children as human guinea pigs. In
Italy, a special commission is assessing the compensation due to the victims
of the Holocaust, which also includes the disabled who endured such persecution.
The compensation, in so far as it is a symbol, may give some dignity back to
all those "People", who the creators of the Shoah thought they could terminate
with a "Plus" or a "Minus".
The extermination of the disabled: a general
overview
The extermination of the disabled was not the only dark, unacknowledged side
of the Holocaust. The systematic extermination of more than seventy thousand
handicapped people by the Third Reich was the initial phase of the Shoah, a
sort of general gruesome test for what was to happen to the Jews and the gypsies.
When the Nazis took power on the 30th of January 1933, it set the conditions
for a policy of cleansing and suppression to defend the human race, but the
eugenics theories on which the project was based were certainly not new. The
defence of the human race was not only the concept of German philosophy, but
it went beyond the roots of controversy on theories of heredity and the evolution
of the species that enlivened the nineteenth century and the beginning of the
twentieth century, with important contributions coming from the American School
of Princeton and the realization of the Lombrosian theory. In Lombroso, in
fact, we have the first classification of inferior beings, which was then mutated
by nazism.
Hitler's Germany was therefore the breeding ground where these theories prospered
and were put into effect. The disabled were the first victims. The annihilation
techniques, through various routes such as ostracism, detention, deportation
and physical elimination, were the first tests on the physically and mentally
disabled, and went on to be carried out on a large scale.
On the 14th of July 1933, a few months after taking power, Hitler issued the
famous sterilisation law, which only came into force in the
Reich on the 1st of January 1934, due to particular political reasons.
In fact, the Reich had signed an economic treaty with the Vatican on the 14th
of July.
The enforcement of the sterilisation law could have therefore damaged relations
with the Holy See.
The realization of the campaign against the disabled benefited from a serious
of regulations issued on a regional basis, and were followed on the 18th of
October 1935 with the law on martial health, which inhibited marriage
and procreation between disabled people, favouring a series of abortions,
without the woman's consent, for people with the following illnesses:
- Congenital Frenastenia
- Schizophrenia
- Dementia
- Hereditary Epilepsy
- Choromania
- Hereditary Blindness
- Serious hereditary physical deformations
- Severe Alcoholism (on a discretional basis)
At the Fuhrer's request, Gherard Wagner headed the operation which was based
on hospital and nursing home reports, and he was later replaced at the end
of 1938 by his assistant, Leonardo Conti, a pathologist from Ticino who was
a convinced assertor of race superiority.
The sterilisation files were checked to ensure their validity in individual
hospitals by a specific regional commission composed of doctors and party members.
If statistics are examined, we note that the majority were women and the sterilisation
practices were imprinted with a certain social benefit criterion rather than
the true defence of the human race.
On the subject, a perfect example appears of diagnoses on Erwin Ammann, a twenty-eight
year old from Tirolo, included in the category of anti-social people, and recommended
for sterilisation. On tests carried out on Ammann, which were declared as having
negative results, the commission officer managed to prove him beneficial to
society, noting his effective working capacity and his capability to carry
out complex manual tasks. This is a confirmation of the effective discretion
of the examining commissions. Nonetheless, among those recommended for sterilisation,
taken from data relevant to the years 1933 to 1938, only 7.2% of requests were
rejected, except in cases of appeal by the applicant hospitals.
The year 1938 signalled a watershed in the Nazi eugenics policy. It brought
the first peak of sterilisation, due to the Hitler's expansionist campaign
following the annexation of Austria and Sudetenland, and it also saw the start
of collective euthanasia operations which were kept completely secret, coming
directly from the Fuhrer's private chancellery, climaxing in 1939 with the
start of the infamous T4 project.
The first phase: the killing of disabled children
The offensive against disabled patients in State hospitals and nursing homes
was inaugurated in 1933 with the introduction of sterilisation and the reduction
in the level of assistance. But this was only the beginning. In 1935, Adolf
Hitler declared to Gerhard Wagner, head of Reich doctors, that once the war
had started he could carry out euthanasia; and the Fuhrer kept his word. When
the war began, on the first of September 1939, the equipment to destroy disabled
people was ready, and the killing started. And just as the legislation on sterilisation
was issued against the handicapped, it was followed by legislation against
Jews and gypsies, therefore the assassination of the disabled was followed
by the assassination of the Jews and gypsies.
The first step was the assassination of disabled children. In 1938 Hitler took
the opportunity of using the case of a newborn child in the Knauer family to
launch his planned euthanasia program. It seems the son (or daughter: the sex
is not known) was born to the Knauer family with severe disabilities. We are
not completely sure of the exact nature of its disorder, but evidence seems
to agree on the child's blindness and on the fact that the doctors diagnosed
the child with "idiotism". Yet, not all observers noticed its blindness and
the diagnosis of idiotism is not sufficiently supported; the child also suffered
from convulsions.
The father of the child consulted Werner Catel, director of the pediatric clinic
in Leipzig University, and he asked him to admit his child. Catel admitted
the child, but later he confirmed that the father asked him to kill the child,
a request he refused since it was punishable by law.
These pleas reached Hitler through his private chancellery, where similar appeals
had already been rounded up. This chancellery of the Fuhrer, directed by Philipp
Bouhler, prepared information for the Fuhrer, and it decided to intervene in
the Knauer case. Hitler ordered Karl Brandt, his reserve doctor, to visit the
Knauer child, then to consult other doctors in Leipzip and to kill the child
if the diagnoses confirmed its physical and psychical conditions were in fact
as described in the appeal. In Leipzip, Brandt consulted the treatment doctors.
The diagnoses were confirmed and euthanasia was authorized: the child was killed.
Following the killing of the Knauer's newborn, Hitler authorized Brandt and
Bouhler to establish a program to wipe out children with physical and mental
defects. Therefore, Brandt and Bouhler were authorized to carry out this so-called
child euthanasia program. As with the majority of Nazi leaders, these two men
were quite young: Brandt was 35 and Bouhler 39 when they were entrusted with
the responsibility of taking a decision on the Knauer case. It was a foregone
decision for Brandt, but this cannot be said for Bouhler. There are no doubts
that Bouhler was chosen because Hitler wanted to entrust the KdF (Hitler's
private chancellery) with the responsibility of this deed. An office had to
organize and direct extermination operations and the KdF, which had already
been involved in the Knauer case, was a perfect choice. If the direction was
entrusted to a government department, such as the RMdl for example, the initiating
circle would have widened and the secret killings would have been disclosed.
The collaboration of too many government offices and public officials would
have been necessary for it. Other than giving the government the responsibility
of performing this task, official written orders would have been necessary,
and Hitler had no intention of issuing them. If the direction was distributed
to a Nazi party office, for example the Chancellery of the Nazi party or the
Schutzstaffell party (SS), a similar opening involving the leaders and local
offices would have made it difficult to realize this methodical, secret program.
Furthermore, Hitler did not want to risk causing a wave of disapproval of the
party before being sure his party were accepted by the public.
The KdF was the most suitable office to carry out the euthanasia program because
it had none of the inconveniences indicated above. It was not a State body.
Even though it was a party agency (its full name was the Chancellery of the
Fuhrer and Nazi party), it was totally independent from the general command
center of the party in Munich, the Chancellery of the Nazi party directed by
Martin Bormann.
The KdF acted as Hitler's private chancellery, along side, but separate from
Hitler's presidential Chancellery, directed by Otto Meissner, and the Reich
Chancellery, directed by Rans Reinrich Lammers.
Hidden from public view and of relatively modest dimensions, the KdF could
manage the killings without involving too many people and without gaining too
much visibility. The KdF, situated in Berlin on Lutzow Ufer and, successively,
at number 8 Voss Strabe, was divided into five central offices. The first took
care of Hitler's private affairs and was directed by Albert Bormann, Martin
Bormann's brother. The second tackled questions regarding the government and
the party, and was directed by Viktor Brack. This office also took care of
requests for clemency, therein including those who would ask for compassionate
death; the request of the Knauer family reached Hitler passing through this
office. The third central office managed clemency for its party members condemned
to the party tribunals. The fourth office took care of all economic and social
affairs and the fifth office tackled matters concerning internal administration
and personnel. Bouhler distributed the task of organising the killings by euthanasia
to the II central office and therefore entrusted the thirty-four year old Brack
with the daily management of the euthanasia program.
Viktor Brack created four offices within the II KdF central office. The IIa
office was managed by Werner Blankenburg, assistant to Brack; the IIc and IId
offices took care of armed forces, police, SS and Nazi party affairs.
Also office IIb, which took care of the Reich government, except for the armed
forces and the police, was responsible for clemency requests. Brack entrusted
this office with the responsibility of coordinating child euthanasia. Hans
Hefelmann directed it and Richard von Hegener developed the associated functions.
Hefelmann was born in Dresden in October in 1906 and was therefore only 32
years old when he assumed the central role in the first large scale extermination
operation of the Nazi regime. The son of a farmer, Hefelmann received a doctorate
in agriculture in 1932. He joined the Nazi party in February 1931 and, having
conducted a private commercial activity for a brief period, he became a member
of staff at the Department of Finance for the Nazi headquarters, and then moving
to the KdF in January 1936.He was placed as head of the IIb office in 1937,
directing this department until he was called to the army in 1943. In 1942
Bouhler recommended Hefelmann for a war decoration; as many others, responsible
for the extermination operations, Hefelmann was decorated for his service behind
the lines. Even though Bouhler availed of the terminology used to disguise
the massacres, his motivation awarded Hefelmann the second class War Merit
Cross including an evident reference to child euthanasia: as well as supplying
particularly important contributions in the management of public health problems
under the II central office, comrade Dr. Hefelmann supplied the intellectual
base for the realization of these special tasks which were important for the
war effort and distributed by the Fuhrer. He directed a separate department,
with independent responsibility, aimed at carrying out this special task.
Von Hegener, the son of an army officer, was born in September 1905 in eastern
Prussia and was therefore only a year older than Hefelmann. Having obtained
his high school diploma in 1923, he entered into the business world; he worked
for Dresdner Bank from 1923 to 1929, and for a transport company until 1931,
then becoming a statistician for the German Association of Iron and Steel Manufacturers.
In 1931 he became a member of the Nazi party and actively took part in local
branch activities. In 1937 he joined the staff of the KdF to take on the role
of Hefelmann's assistant in office IIb and work on the child euthanasia program.
Von Hegener's work was highly regarded: the same day and with the same reasoning,
Bouhler recommended him for the same decoration as he had recommended Hefelmann.
Between February and March 1939 the men holding responsibility for the direction
of child euthanasia held a meeting and perfected their methods. At first, Brack
and Hefelmann from the KdF held a private meeting with Herbert Linden from
the RMdl. Linden represented the IV department, whose collaboration was indispensable
to effectively carry out euthanasia extermination operations.
In the RMdl, the IV department took care of public health and therefore set
up racial and eugenic legislation, including the sterilisation law. The department
supervised the health authorities of the Federal States [L‡nder] and of the
Prussian regions, the State hospitals and nursing homes [Heil-und P.flegeanstalten]
and the local health officers [Amtsarzte]. Ministerial director Arthur Gutt
headed the department until 1939 when he was forced to retire due to inability.
Born in 1891, Gutt became a professional doctor in 1918. In September 1932
he joined the Nazi party and in July 1933 became an SS member, reaching the
level of brigadier general by 1938. He showed particular interest in racial
and eugenic themes, becoming the co-author of two semi-official commentaries
on the law of heredity and on the Nuremberg racial laws.
The information we have on Herbert Linden is quiet sparse. He became a member
of the Ministerialrat (Ministerial Council), a level below a Ministerialdirigent.
Linden was a section head [Referent] within Gutt's department and it seems
that he was responsible for the State hospitals and nursing homes, as well
as the enforcement of the sterilisation and martial laws. More importantly:
he was the author, along with Gutt and Mabfeller, of a commentary on the Nuremberg
racial laws and on the martial health laws. Linden was born in September 1899,
in Costance, Baden and in 1925 became a professional doctor. We don't know
when he entered State administration, but it seems he was a public official
for most of his carrier. From his registration certificate for practicing medicine,
it seems he never had a private practice or that he never specialised in any
field of medicine. He enlisted in the Nazi party on the 23rd of November 1925,
but it seems he never held any role within the party, nor was he a member of
the SA or SS. At the end of the war Linden escaped arrest and interrogation;
he committed suicide on the 27th of April 1945. Linden was therefore the most
unknown figure among those responsible for the euthanasia program.
After Brack, Hefelmann and Linden agreed on the methods of procedure, they
broadened their planning group to include some selected doctors: Karl Brandt,
Werner Catel, Hans Heinze, Hellmuth Unger and Ernst Wentzler. With the exception
of Brandt, who was born in January 1904, these doctors were all over forty
years of age. Brandt, who joined the Nazi party in 1932 and the SS in 1934
was a definite choice: he managed the Knauer case and was authorised by Hitler
to carry out euthanasia. Catel, who became a party member in May 1937, was
another definite choice because the Knauer baby was killed in his clinic. Heinze,
a specialist in psychiatry and neurology, directed the State hospital in Brandenburg-Gorden
and he took the party pledge in May 1933; he was added to the group on Linden's
indications. Unger was an ophthalmologist who was rejected for party enlistment.
Euthanasia was defended in the novel Sendung und Cewissen (Mission and Conscience);
this work was followed by an adaptation made for the big screen entitled Ich
klage an (I accuse), a propaganda film. Von Hegener's sister recommended Unger,
who joined the party in 1934: he was a successful pediatrician in Berlin and
was recommended to the KdF by Leonardo Conti, the leading Reich doctor.
From the beginning, the planning and execution of euthanasia were classified
as "top secret" [geheime Reichssache] and the KdF remained invisible. Hence,
the planners created a dummy operation to disguise the direction of child euthanasia
by the KdF. The chose the fictitious name of the Committee for the Registration
of Scientific Research on Severe Hereditary Disorders [Reichsausschufb zur
wissenschaftlichen von erb und anlagebedingten schweren Leiden]. There was
no committee, and was called the "Reich Committee" in short, with it existing
only on paper. its address was a post office box. Its exclusive purpose was
to disguise the activities of the KdF. Hefelmann and von Hegener directed it
using different names, signing documents with "Dr. Klein"; as we will see,
the KdF officials used coded names when they managed euthanasia operations.
For the non initiated, the Reich Committee was used to conceal extermination
operations; its contorted name adapted perfectly for its assumed role as a
scientific research institute.
This small group of doctors and directors developed a system of euthanasia
during their meetings held in the Spring of 1939. They decided that the selection
process should be based on declaration forms (Meldebogen). They also agreed
that the data obtained should be evaluated by experts who could decide the
child's destiny by conducting an examination. Around the summer of 1939, the
group concluded its planning phase and the project could enter into its execution
phase. The first killings took place around October 1939.
Neither the KdF nor the Reich Committee could have commenced and completed
the extermination project. For this reason, the planners needed the RMdl because
only a minister could guarantee the instructions for the euthanasia program
were complied with. Hence, on the 18th of August 1939, the RMdl issued a decree
entitled Meldepflicht fur mibgestaltete usw. Neugeborene (The obligation to
declare deformed newborn children etc.). It was stamped as "strictly confidential" and
was not published in official ministry papers; it was prepared by the IV department
and was initialled by the Secretary of State Wilhelm Stuckart on behalf of
the Reich minister Wilhelm Frick.
The decree ordered midwives and doctors to declare all infants born with specific
medical conditions:
- Idiotism and Down Syndrome (in particular cases with blindness or deafness);
- Microcephaly (abnormally small head);
- Severe or Progressive Hydrocephaly;
- All deformities, in particular missing limbs, serious head and spinal
column defects etc.;
- Paralysis, including Little's sickness (Spastic Diplegia).
As well as newborns, the doctors had to declare all children below the age
of three who were affected by these conditions. The decree attached a sample
declaration form. This form requested the following information, other than
the name, age and sex of the child: a detailed description of the sickness;
an explanation of how the child is affected by the sickness; details related
to the child's hospitalization and the name of that hospital; an estimate of
life expectancy and the chances of improvement. The form was only on one side
of a page; the space for detailed description was very little. The midwives
and doctors had to send there declarations to the local public health offices,
who had to verify the information and then send the declaration to the Reich
Committee at the 101, Berlin W 9 post office box.
The initial phase of the decree was set up to give the impression that the
minister's objective was to realize a scientific survey which was to help children
suffering from serious disorders: "The timely registration of suitable cases
with deformations and hereditary mental disorders was essential for the clarification
of scientific problems". Even if the RMdl failing to publish the decree and
the use of the private research institute with a post office box would have
caused suspicion, it seems the majority of cases were accepted as a simple
request for information for a statistical survey. The decree does not state
the real reasons behind this compulsory declaration of disabled children. The
original form used to declare the children was considered insufficient. Therefore,
on the 7th of June 1940, the RMdl issued a leaflet announcing the introduction
of a new form. This requested greater attention to detail. While the old form
just requested the name, age and sex of the child, the new form also requested
his address and religion. The questions related to the child's health were
given in greater detail, but there were no substantial differences. More importantly,
the new form requested information about the birth of the child and the medical
history of its parents, sisters, brothers and other relatives.
The RMdl started the program which would manage the killing of disabled children.
Yet, the minister was merely "responsible for the transport of post"; the Reich
Committee managed the program. This accomplished two functions, one considered
managerial and the other medical. Management was based at the KdF IIb office,
with Hefelmann and von Hegener directing operations. The medical direction
of the Committee was left to expert evaluators.
The child declaration form was compiled by midwives and doctors and sent to
the local health office; to avoid confusion, the regional and State offices
registered and controlled which forms were given to the Reich Committee. Hefelmann
and von Hegener received the forms through the post office box and the KdF
registered and classified them. These two officials, with no medical training,
decided which of the cases, among those declared, required particular attention
from the medical experts and they sent these declarations to the experts to
make a decision.
The experts were Werner Catel, Hans Heinze and Ernst Wentzler, all members
of the planning committee and active supporters of euthanasia. They made all
decisions solely based on the declaration forms. They never checked the children
for such deformities, nor did they consult existing medical casuistry. The
experts gave a mark along side the names on a piece of paper headed "Reich
Committee", but it was prepared by the KdF for each child taken into consideration.
There was not enough space for long remarks. A simple plus (+) indicated inclusion
in the program, which meant the killing of the child; a simple minus (-) indicated
exclusion, which meant the child lived. If the expert was undecided, he wrote "observation",
meaning the decision was deferred. Since the KdF did not have a photocopying
machine, it was impossible to send the evaluators extra copies of the declaration
forms. Hence, Catel, Heinze and Wentzler did not give separate marks; the same
page registered the marks, and the same declaration form was passed on from
one to another, and so, each one of the experts was aware of the marks given
by the other two.
To kill the children, who, once taken into the operation network, became known
as "children of the Reich Committee", the Committee created so-called wards
of expert assistance for children in State hospitals and clinics. The first
of these wards was quickly established under the direction of Hans Heinze at
the Brandenburg-Gorden institute; time was needed to create others because
the KdF had to recruit directors for these institutes designed to host wards
for euthanasia, and doctors who were willing to do it.
On the 1st of July 1940, the RMdl issued a leaflet which announced the creation
(which in reality took place some time previously) of the first pediatric ward
of the Reich Committee in Brandenburg-Gorden, near Berlin. This measure, continuing
to disguise the real reason for the program, informed health offices that "under
expert medical supervision, the pediatric psychiatric ward in Gorden, near
Brandenburg on the Haven, would supply all possible therapeutic operations
for the children, and was made possible thanks to recent scientific discoveries".
The same disinformation characterised all successive acts of the RMdl leaflets.
On the 18th of June 1940, for example, the minister asked for the support system
to cover the expenses of hospitalized children belonging to poor families.
The minister advised the support bodies that the money would be well spent
since, if only some children show improvements, the future savings on assistance
would compensate for their expenditure.
Yet, it was not possible to make parents or the support bodies aware of the
actual cost of this so-called treatment because it would have meant revealing
too much; parents expected treatment to last for years or decades and so, it
would cost a lot, and the authorities, who knew the treatment would be short
term, could not clarify the situation.
From the beginning, even the doctors compiling the declaration forms did not
know the truth. A health official, interested in organising the transfer of
some children to the new Gorden institute, complained that the institute did
not reply to his questions on costs. The Reich Committee possessed the resources
to cover all expenses when there were no alternatives, but they tried, when
possible, to persuade parents or support bodies to pay for the secret killings.
The extermination program was established on the collaboration between bureaucrats,
doctors and parents:
the RMdl facilitated collaboration with public administration, including the
health service, the KdF recruited doctors, nurses and the personnel for the
killings and the bureaucrats and doctors worked so that parents gave their
consent.
When the declaration and evaluation system for disabled children was activated,
their was an urgent need to establish other euthanasia wards and to recruit
the staff for them because the child ward in Gorden could not manage all the
waiting victims. The KdF recruited the doctors necessary to perform the killings,
and in turn they became Reich Committee members. Hefelmann, von Hegener and
Linden came directly or through the Federal State and Prussian region health
authorities. The majority of doctors chose to collaborate with extermination
operations; a minority refused and were exempt from participation.
As we will see, the killing of disabled adults would soon exceed the killings
of children, involving a much higher number of assassins and victims. Many
doctors (for example the Gorden State hospital directors, Eichberg and Eglfing-Haar)
would have held a role in the killing of both children and adults, and it was
often not possible to precisely reconstruct the way in which the implication
of these doctors in the child euthanasia program transformed into participation
in adult euthanasia. In the end, the Reich Committee established at least 22
child euthanasia wards. Some of these wards provide little information, other
than there existence; others were covered up by the public shame following
the revelations that emerged during the trials which were held after the war.
It is not difficult to understand why Gorden was chosen as the location for
the first pediatric euthanasia ward. It was a large hospital complex which
held the role of public institute for the Prussian province of Brandeburg.
It was near the city of Brandeburg and its adult patient killing center, as
we will see, was established before Gorden inaugurated its pediatric ward.
The latter was not far from Berlin and therefore there were no swift communication
problems with the KdF. Furthermore, Gorden was directed by Hans Heinze, who
was one of the three child euthanasia experts.
The Gorden ward, and its methods introduced by Heinze, made up the model for
other pediatric wards; Gorden became the training center for other doctors
responsible for the killing of children. Hermann Wesse, for example, formed
Gorden in May 1941 before becoming head of the pediatric ward of the Waldniel
Renano institute near Andernach; he became involved in new training at Gorden
in January and February 1942 before being transferred to the euthanasia ward
in Uchtspringe and Kalmenhof, near Idstein. Furthermore, making it different
from all other pediatric wards, Gorden had ample research equipment where Heinze
and his interns carried out experiments on children before and after death.
Gorden also used the nearby killing center in Brandeburg to guarantee the swift
killing of groups of children.
In 1940 at least three other pediatric euthanasia wards were established. One
of these was the large Am Steinhof institute in Vienna. In July 1940, the Am
Spiegelgrund pedagogic sanitarium for children was inaugurated, with 640 beds
in buildings situated within the confines of the Amo Steinhof. its function
was a pediatric euthanasia ward for Austria. Erwin Jekelius was the first medical
director and the second director, who took on the responsibility in July 1942
after Jekelius was called to battle, was Ernst Illingo.
These men worked at Gorden as assistants to Heinze; these men learned their
work and carried out the first killings. The transfer was the yield of dealings
between Heinze and the Viennese health service, and together the parties knew
that Illingo's responsibility in Vienna included carrying out child euthanasia "without
attracting attention from the public".
In 1940, another pediatric euthanasia ward was established in the Federal State
of Bavaria, in the large Eglfing-Haar public institute near Munich. This hospital
complex hospitalized both adults and children; the child euthanasia ward was
located far from the wards where normal patients were hospitalized.
Eglfing-Haar was under the direction of Hermann Pfannmuller, one of the first
operators of child and adult euthanasia. Pfannmuller, who became a professional
doctor in 1913 and obtained a specialisation diploma in psychiatry in 1918,
worked in various State institutes (often concentrating on treating alcoholics)
before being nominated as the director of Eglfing-Haar. He was a member of
the Nazi party for years; he enlisted in 1922, but a short while later he was
forced, as a public official, to leave the party and could not re-enlist until
May 1933. He contributed to the realization of racial and eugenic laws, directing
the racial hereditary office in August 1935; he was also one of the first euthanasia
activists. At Eglfing-Haar, he quickly introduced a system which subjected
patients to a rigorous regime; he also managed visits to the institute with
the purpose of educating the public on biological defects in patients entrusted
into his care.
We have an unusually vivid testimony of the visits conducted by Pfannmuller
and the treatment his patients were subject to at Eglfing-Haar before the official
commencement of euthanasia practices. Lugwig Lehner, a Bavarian teacher, gave
his testimony in 1946 in London, where he was then considered to be a German
POW, based on his experience of a visit conducted by Pfannmuller. Lehner, an
opponent of the Nazi regime, made this visit in the autumn of 1939, a little
after his liberation from Dachau. Even though it occurred in 1940 and he spent
his time as a German soldier during the years of the conflict, he remembered
his life at Elglfing-Haar and described his memories to the English who took
him prisoner: He gave the following eyewitness account of his visit: having
visited some wards, the director who, if I remember correctly was called Pfannmuller,
led us to the pediatric ward. There were between 15 and 25 cots with as many
children. I remember the frankness and the cynicism of his conversation:" these
creatures are only a burden on our national health system. We don't kill them
with poison, injections or methods that would allow the foreign press to stage
a new smear campaign. Our method is much simpler and natural". I can still
see this fat man in front of me who smiled smugly, surrounded by children that
were dying of starvation. The assassin further highlighted that the children
did not stop eating suddenly, but that their rations were slowly reduced.
During his statement at the US military Tribunal, Pfanmuller rejected this
accusation:" If Lehner confirmed that I took a poor child from his bed with
my fat hands, I would have to say that I never had fat hands. And I certainly
never widely smiled at such things". In reality Pfannmuller referred to the
child killings at Eglfing-Haar with pride, declaring in front of a postwar
court in Germany that "putting children to sleep was the most cleanest form
of euthanasia".
The majority of the pediatric wards were established by the Reich Committee
after 1940. One of the most important was Eichberg, near Eltville, a State
institute in the Wiesbaden district, in the Prussian province of Hessen-Nassau.
The director, Friedrich Mennecke, had already been recruited to take part in
euthanasia on adults when, in 1941, Hefelmann Evon Hegener visited Eichberg,
ordering Mennecke to open a pediatric euthanasia ward. The two have already
obtained permission from Fritz Bernotat, a bureaucrat who had a supervisory
role over all the institutes in the district, a Nazi activist and supporter
of killing by euthanasia. After the war, Mennecke could not remember exactly
when the Eichberg pediatric ward was inaugurated, but he presumed it was April
1941.
Even though Mennecke was the director of Eichberg and supervisor of the pediatric
ward, daily management of the euthanasia ward was given to his assistant, Walter
Eugen Schmidt, Mennecke complied the Reich Committee forms and ordered the
killings; Schmidt took on the role of supervisor and, at times, carried out
the killings.
When Mennecke was called to war in 1942, Schmidt became the temporary director
of the institute and sole manager of the pediatric euthanasia ward. Furthermore,
even in Mennecke's absence, Schmidt kept him informed on Eichberg through letters
full of local gossip, which included details of each killing.
A second pediatric ward was established in Hessen-Nassau, providing this relatively
small province with an unusually high number of euthanasia wards: it was established
at the end of 1941 or at the start of 1942 in Kalmenhof, near Idstein, in Taunus.
Kalmenhof-Idstein was a pedagogic sanitarium founded in the XIX century as
a private establishment. After the Nazi rise to power, it was not able to maintain
its independence and, in the end, Fritz Bernotat became president of the establishment
which owned the Kalmenhof institute. After the beginning of the conflict and
the call to war for many doctors, Mathilde Weber, who arrived in Idstein after
becoming a professional doctor in 1938, became the head medical official in
Kalmenhof and she therefore managed the pediatric ward. In 1944, Weber resigned
to undergo treatment for tuberculosis and was replaced by the expert, Hermann
Wesse, who studied in Gorden and who had already offered his services in the
euthanasia wards of Waldniel and Uchtspringe.
A new pediatric euthanasia ward was opened in Bavaria, which already availed
of Eglfing-Haar, at the Kaufbeuren institute in Svevia. This public institute
and its branch in Irsee were directed from 1929 by Dr. Valentin Falthauser.
Even if he only enlisted with the Nazi party at the end of 1935, Falthauser
was a supporter of child and adult euthanasia. As the director of Kaufbeuren-Irsee,
he also directed the pediatric euthanasia ward; here he continued to kill children
until after the end of the war. American soldiers who arrested Falthauser discovered
the last victim was killed on the 29th of March 1945, 21 days after Germany's
unconditional surrender.
In short, the Reich Committee established pediatric euthanasia wards all over
Germany, even if many of them were modestly sized. The majority of cases at
their institutes were undisputably the fruit of collaboration between the Reich
Committee and local officials. In the Federal State of Wurttemberg, for example,
Hefelmann and von Hegener worked with two doctors who directed the health assistance
system in the internal ministry in Wurttemberg. Eugen Stahle and his assistant
Otto Mauthe were responsible for the mental hygiene institutes and psychiatric
services [Irrenwesen]. Stahle and Mauthe collaborated with the Reich Committee
from the start and accepted straightaway to transfer the children in the Wurttenberg
institute to the pediatric euthanasia ward outside their State. When the Reich
Committee wanted to establish a pediatric euthanasia ward in Wurttemberg, it
was only natural to consult Stahle and Mauthe. The two officials advised the
Stuttgart Municipal Children's Home and, during the last months of 1942, discussions
between the Reich Committee and the municipal health authority reached an agreement
that included a pediatric euthanasia ward for the institute. The same collaboration
took place in other Federal States. In Baden, for example, Ludwig Sprauer,
who directed the health department for the internal ministry, set up a pediatric
euthanasia ward in Wiesloch. Yet, while in Wurttemberg, Hefelmann and von Hegener
carried everything out without interference, the RMdl were forced to ask for
Spraer's collaboration in Baden Linden. The pediatric euthanasia ward in Wiesloch,
established at the beginning of 1941, was supervised by Josef Arthur Schreck,
vice director of the institute. Having killed three children, Schreck refused
to continue, confirming that "a hospital is not the appropriate place" for
such killings; yet he continued to supervise the euthanasia ward while Dr.
Kuhnke, a young doctor from Eglfing- Haar, carried out killings during occasional
visits to Wiesloch.
This collaboration between the Reich Committee and the local authority also
offered benefits in the Prussian regions. When the committee wanted to establish
a pediatric ward in a Rhenish region, Hefelmann and von Hegener managed to
convince the director of the State hospital in Andernach to open a pediatric
ward in his institute; thus he was referred to the regional administration
official who was responsible for State hospitals, the professor and psychiatrist,
Walter Creutz. In May 1941, Hefelmann and von Hegener visited Creutz in Dusseldorf
and together they planned a pediatric euthanasia ward with a 200 bed capacity,
situated in an independent building located on a plot of land originating in
the Waldniel public institute, in the Andernach district. Recruiting personnel
seemed to be a more arduous task. Creutz was unable to provide a doctor for
the Rhenish province who would take on the role of directing the ward, and
the Reich Committee were forced to summon Georg Renno, a thirty-four year old
doctor who enlisted in the Nazi party in 1930 and in the SS in 1931. As we
will see, Renno had already participated in the extermination of disabled adults
before going to Waldniel, an activity which he would take on again, having
left the institute. When, at the start of 1942, Renno left the institute, the
Reich Committee found themselves once again taking on a local official, replacing
Renno with Hermann Wesse. He was five years younger than Renno and he was not
enlisted with the Nazi party until April 1933/34. In December 1941 Wesse met
Hefelmann, von Hegener and Renno in the waiting room of the Dusseldorf railway
station and he agreed to accept the Waldniel nomination, becoming the head
of the euthanasia ward. Creutz had no objection, but expressed worry over the
lack of medical experience on Wesse's part, almost as if medical knowledge
was a prerequisite for killing children. As a result, Wesse was sent for a
training period at Gorden, and in the psychiatric clinic in Bonn, before taking
command at Waldniel.
At times, the choice of the institute and the doctor were of an informal nature.
For example, the nomination of Alfred Leu as director of the Sachsenberg pediatric
ward, near Schwerin, in the Prussian province of Mecklenburg, was as a result
of an informal selection process. He was one of many elderly doctors at Sachsenberg
Leu; it seems that his nomination as the head of the ward was due to his close
contacts with the leaders of the provincial Nazi parties. By passing local
authorities, Hefelmann and von Hegener invited Leu to go to their offices at
the KdF, asking and getting him to accept the job. Later, Leu would confirm
that he never killed a single child, but that he was limited to the supervision
of the ward, while his nursing personnel carried out the killings.
Sachsenberg was not the first pediatric ward established in virtue of personal
contacts. Two expert evaluators (Catel and Wentzler) opened two euthanasia
wards in their institutes: Catel in the Pediatric Clinic in Liepzip University,
and Wentzler in his private clinic in Berlin. Furthermore, as we have seen,
the first euthanasia ward was inaugurated in Gorden under the direction of
Heinze, the third evaluator. The evaluators further advised the KdF of suitably
known doctors to carry out child euthanasia. Wentzler recommended Wilhelm Bayer,
a doctor from Hamburg, who starting in 1934, directed the Hamburg-Rothenburgsort
pediatric hospital with 450 beds; Wentzler and Bayer were colleagues at the
Charite in Berlin. Bayer accepted, and Hamburg-Rothenburgsort hosted another
pediatric euthanasia ward.
The child euthanasia policy was initiated and directed by KdF bureaucrats,
but carrying it out was left to the specialists: the doctors in the pediatric
wards. The KdF bureaucrats were not worried about the methods of eliminating
children; they trusted the expertise of the chosen doctors. The doctors had
to find the best methods. Therefore, during a meeting at the KdF offices, the
choice of extermination technique was left to the discretion of the doctors
in Bayer.
One method of killing was death by starvation. We know for sure that this method
was at times applied: when the war came to an end, the rations of food were
reduced to a point of going below the basic level of survival and "the death
by starvation wards" were found in many institutes. Despite this, death by
starvation was not the most used method of child euthanasia.
The preferred method was using drugs. Although the decision on the type of
drug used was up to each specialist, the doctors shared information in relation
to the drugs, exchanging visits or meeting in Berlin. Pfannmuller, for example,
visited Am Steinhof in Vienna and noted that those who practiced euthanasia
used Morphine-Scopolamine; however he preferred Luminal (sedative) and Veronal
(sleeping pill) barbiturates. In Berlin, Bayer was informed of the effectiveness
of Bromide, Morphine, Veronal and Luminal. Among these Luminal became the favoured
method by the majority of doctors, with Morphine-Scopolamine a second choice,
usually kept for those who resisted Luminal or Veronal.
The doctors could also choose how to administer the drug. Usually lethal drugs
were administered in tablet form, other times in liquid form; on rare occasions,
when the patient could not or would not swallow, an injection was given. Usually
the tablets were dissolved in liquid such as tea so the child would ingest
the drug with normal foods.
There is an evident advantage of such a method for a secret extermination operation.
These drugs were regularly administered in every health structure; they only
became lethal when the dosage was increased. Therefore, the children were not
killed due to the ingestion of poisonous substances, but due to an overdose
of a common drug. Furthermore, the overdose of barbiturates and analogous drugs
did not achieve immediate death; they caused medical complications, in particular
pneumonia, which, in the end (usually within two or three days) led to death.
At this point, doctors could observe a "natural death". Even Pfannmuller, who
after the war rejected all proof of being responsible for his patients' deaths
by starvation, confirming this pretence in front of the US military tribunal: " I
must underline that we are not dealing with poisoning. The child died due to
pulmonary congestion, and not poisoning".
However, one problem remains: how could the hospitals manage to obtain such
large quantities of drugs necessary for the continuous killings, while maintaining
such an activity secret? The doctors could not resolve the problem; it was
up to the KdF bureaucrats to find a solution. Yet, neither the KdF nor the
Reich Committee, created as disguises, could legitimately buy large quantities
of drugs. The KdF had to find another organization who would as an intermediary
for them.
The KdF officials then asked the head of the police and the SS, Heinrich Himmler.
They would receive the requested collaboration from the judiciary police (Krimanalpolizei
or Kripo) who, along with the secret State police (Geheime Staatspolizei or
Gestapo), composed the secret police (Sicherheitspolizei or Sipo ). In 1939
the Sipo joined up with the SS secret service (Sicherheitsdienst or SD) to
establish the central security office for the Reich (Reichssicherheitshauptamt
or RSHA). Therefore this office, directed by Reinhard Heydrich, combined two
government organisations, the Kripo and Gestapo, into one unique structure
with the secret service (SD) becoming a political organization. The central
office of the Reich judiciary police (RKPA), called Office V of the RSHA, was
directed by Arthur Nebe, which, together with his assistant Paul Werner, reached
an agreement with the KdF concerning the role of the Kripo in the euthanasia
program. From then on, the Kripo would supply drugs, which were used by doctors
in euthanasia wards to kill disabled children and, later, also kill disabled
adults. Nebe assigned the responsibility of acquiring poison to the Criminal
Technical Institute of the RKPA (Kriminaltechnisches Institut or KTI).
Even if it was located within the RKPA, the KTI, directed by Engineer Walter
Heess, acted as a technical support group for the entire Sipo. Its tasks included
the investigation of forgeries, the incendiary destruction of documents, the
examination of fire arms and other evidence that requires analysis in a police
laboratory. The task of obtaining poison was the responsibility of the internal
KTI chemical analysis department; its head was Albert Widmann, an SS official
who had obtained a doctorate in chemistry.
Widmann, it seems, received the order to collaborate with the KdF directly
from Nebe, and permanent collaboration between the chemical department of the
KTI was established. Widmann's office was a cover for the KdF, and von Hegener
was the contact. The chemical department of the KTI started preparing chemical
substances requested by the KdF in 1940(in particular, suppositories with Morphine-Scopoamine
overdoses), and they sent these to the KdF for distribution; sometimes they
were stored in the safe in the KdF offices and at times even stored in cruets.
During the latter phase of the war, the SS battle units were increased and
the KTI, the division under Himmler, increased the resources made available
to them. As a result, Widmann's office obtained various toxic substances (among
them Luminal and Morphine) from the Waffen SS medical service; therefore, the
KTI sent drugs to the KdF (often to von Hegener); he would lastly send the
drugs to the euthanasia wards through the Reich Committee; it often happened,
however, that the KTI would deliver the medicine directly to the institutes.
The Reich Committee would transfer them to the euthanasia wards to kill the
children. Therefore a broad operation including many offices was involved.
The process started when a doctor or midwife compiled a report on the child,
and this report was transferred through the local health authorities. The experts
took their decisions based on this report. They decided if the child should
be included in the operation, then the Reich Committee - that is, Hefelmann
or von Hegener at the KdF - carried out the next step.
The Reich Committee never came in contact with the parents or doctors of the
children. It did not have an official status nor duress capabilities. Furthermore,
it had to avoid direct contact so as to avert the involvement of the KdF coming
from the public domain. Hence, the Committee referred to the Federal State
health authorities and those of the Prussian regions, and it was these authorities
who organised the transfer of children. In Wurttemberg, Stahle, from the Wurttemberg
internal ministry, and the local health officials availed of the transfer of
at least 93 children in euthanasia wards situated outside the State. Likewise,
on the 18th of August 1943 the Hamburg authorities transferred 24 children
from the Langenhorn institute in Hamburg to the Hessen-Nassau euthanasia ward
in Eichberg. All 24 children died in Eichberg within two months: on the 4th
of August, the 13th of September and the 7th of October 1943.
If a child was already in an institute, in particular in an institute with
a pediatric euthanasia ward, the transfer passed without problems. However,
the majority of newborns and small children declared to the Reich Committee
were at home or in local hospitals; in these cases parents had to be convinced
to give their consent for the transfer. Usually the health authorities for
the Federal States or the Prussian regions entrusted this task to the local
health officials.
Once a child was transferred, the Reich Committee experts had two methods of
alternative procedure. The first option was to order the death of the child
as soon as it arrived in the euthanasia ward. The second option, and the most
used, was to request a doctor to observe the child and report on the child's
progress; the order to kill the child was given only after the doctor drafts
a negative report. This so-called period of observation must presumably have
prevented errors. However, the doctors in the euthanasia wards normally didn't
give positive reports; neither the Committee nor the doctors in the euthanasia
wards were inclined to discharge a child once they were hospitalized. The order
to kill a child came from the Reich Committee.
This killing order was called "authorization" and "subjecting treatment" on
a child. The term "authorization" was used because euthanasia, as it was ordered
by Hitler, played on the illusion which, with the realization of the program,
the State would have only facilitated and authorised an action that a doctor
wanted perform for humanitarian reasons, even if it was prohibited by ancient
penal code. The term "treatment" was simply used because the word "kill" was
judged to be too compromising on secret documents. After the war Schmidt, from
the pediatric euthanasia ward in Eichberg, stated that " Berlin sent us the
so-called ˙authorization documents' and, after a while, these children would
arrive"; he adds: "the children were helped to die".
Even if the majority of Reich Committee children did not suffer painful or
terminal illnesses, the assassins defended their actions by maintaining that
these disorders that afflicted their patients were uncurable and disabilitating.
The disabilities to be declared were effectively serious disorders; including
neurological disorders and physical deformities which were judged to be incurable
and hereditary according to medical knowledge at the time. Even this killing
criteria, that an illness is incurable even if it is not necessarily terminal,
remains a theory. Having commenced the child euthanasia program, the Reich
Committee and its doctors didn't follow correct rules nor did the observe sufficient
restrictions on taking decisions relevant to the possibility of including or
excluding a child from the program.
Firstly, the diagnoses that caused the children to be included were often inaccurate
and too brief. The doctors didn't agree on the possibilities for improvement
and often the expert evaluators, who were entrusted with the description described
by the doctors, accepted a less favourable prognosis. The doctors of the euthanasia
wards often judged the patients conditions to be uncurable even if the family
doctors, who knew the child better, said the conditions weren't serious.
Secondly, the doctors involved in the program assumed that the disability,
which justified inclusion, would always inhibit the child's independence in
the adult world. Yet, even if the adult primary euthanasia doctor judged procedures
to be imperfect to reach such a decision, stating the case of Helen Keller,
a blind-deaf child, he sustains that it was impossible to reach a definitive
conclusion about her future capacity based on the diagnosis given during childhood.
In the same manner, for the first time, Wentzler, the expert, opposed the inclusion
of spastic children in the program, sustaining that these children had a particular
talent for music and the love of life.
Thirdly, the category "idiotism and Down Syndrome" was sufficient to allow
inclusion of retarded children on the basis of their intelligence and their
behaviour. As a result, these children were judged based on a simple, fallible
evaluation of their intelligence and their education. These social values,
among which those concerning the child's behaviour, influenced the decision
to kill, just as they had influenced the decision to sterilise.
The doctors in the euthanasia wards contributed to decisional procedures in
the same way as the three expert evaluators, visiting the children and referring
their account. They were often young and inexperienced, certainly not qualified
enough to make similar judgements. Even if they had received specific training,
many of them still didn't even have a specialisation diploma.
If we take the doctors from the euthanasia wards who are referred to most (Heinze,
Jekelius, Mennecke, Pfannmuller, Renno, Schmidt and Wesse) we learn that four
had followed a specialisation diploma course (psychiatry, neurology, or both):
Pfannmuller in 1918, Heinze in 1928, Illing in 1937 and Jekelius in 1938; but
the other four had never specialised. They tried to continue during the war
(for example, in 1940 Mennecke made a request to the medical committee and
at the same asked for help from the KdF and the RMdl), but their efforts were
wasted. Many of these doctors simply didn't have the training or experience
to take decisions which included the responsibility of the euthanasia wards.
Even professor Carl Schneider from Heidelberg, who was very much involved in
the program, observed that their "training was limited and their diagnoses
were at times inaccurate".
Nevertheless, these doctors were ambitious, anxious to do their bit and they
complained if they were not sent a sufficient number of children. The Reich
Committee rewarded their work: the personnel of a productive euthanasia ward
received a financial reward.
The Reich Committee children were killed because there was no space for them
in the German society project of the future. Besides this, the doctors wanted
to take advantage of their deaths to make scientific progress and improve their
capabilities; as we will see, euthanasia also involved laboratory work for "the
advance of science". Since the euthanasia wards were not equipped, and the
doctors didn't have the necessary preparation to conduct scientific research,
this research was carried out elsewhere. Numerous scientific institutes benefited
from the killings, but two were closely associated with the child euthanasia
program: the psychiatric and neurology clinic at the University of Heidelberg,
directed by Carl Schneider, and the research observatory at the Gorden institute,
directed by Heinze. These and other research centers studied groups of children
selected by the Reich Committee before they were killed with postmortem examinations
following the killings; furthermore, the dead children had organs removed for
scientific research, in particular the brain. Even the young doctors from the
euthanasia wards took advantage of the frequency of the courses in the research
centers, using the proceeds of their handiwork to advance their academic carriers.
Starting from the moment in which the declaration form was compiled, through
the multitude of unavoidable steps (observation, evaluation, killing, dissection),
the children were placed under the protection of the Reich Committee. With
the purpose of obtaining control over children, the committee and its doctors
used lies and threats to ensure the collaboration of the parents. Unless a
child was already in an institute, the program could function only if parents
consented to hospitalize their children in the euthanasia wards. Usually there
were no problems: the authorities just had to deceive the parents, telling
them that their children could receive the necessary care in the hospitals.
As we have seen, the leaflet issued by the RMdl in the health offices promised
scientifically advanced therapy and usually this trick convinced parents to
hospitalize their children. However some parents opposed. They didn't want
to be separated from their sons, or because they suspected a false diagnosis
since the family doctors gave a more positive diagnosis, or because they dreaded
the worst since they heard rumours of euthanasia killings. These parents were
pressurised by the Reich Committee.
On the 20th of 1941, the RMdl issued a leaflet addressed to managers of the
Federal States and the Prussian regions, as well as the public health offices,
who attempted to disprove the objections raised on the entrusting of children.
Confirming the huge therapeutic benefits offered by the Reich Committee, the
decree explained in a detailed manner that the institutionalisation of disabled
children would free their families, and therefore allow parents to take care
of healthy brothers and sisters. It accused both parents and family doctors
of not appropriately evaluating the seriousness of these handicaps, in particular
in the case of spastic children, whose "happy moods and lover of music" was
undoubtedly interpreted as a reason for optimism. It then rejected the objection
raised by some parents stating that the Reich Committee wards were situated
in State hospitals, declaring that in reality they were dealing with "open
wards for the expert care of children and young people".
The leaflet urged health offices and doctors to convince parents using arguments
provided by the ministry; but it also indicated the possibility of resorting
to force. Lastly, the ministry leaflet highlighted that the refusal to hospitalize
a child, once parents had been explained the facts, would be damaging for the
family and for their children who were in good health. In this case, the health
authority "would have to investigate to establish if this refusal constituted
a violation of custodial rights".
Usually the threat of depriving parents of custodial rights worked. Even greater
pressure was exercised on the mothers when fathers were absent due to commitments
in the war. In similar cases the Reich Committee, reinstating an agreement
between the minister for employment and the interior, requested the local employment
office to assign the opposing mother to temporary labour; at this point, the
mother had no choice but to hand over her child. Obviously, these forceful
measures were effective only if mothers belonged to the working classes, unable
to finance child assistance, in particular after child welfare was refused
to those who were declared "useful compatriots".
Similar tactics were used against parents who attempted to snatch their children
from the euthanasia wards. In theory, taking a child back was a possibility,
as hospitalization was voluntary; in reality it was practically impossible.
The doctors on the euthanasia wards did everything in their power to prevent
parents taking their children back. Some parents presented a petition to the
institute, others denounced them to the courts and some used subterfuge to
get their children back. Few achieved their intentions.
After the war the directors and doctors involved in child euthanasia did not
want to admit to killing children without their parent's consent, but they
couldn't completely disguise the reality. They referred to parents and relatives
who were happy to allow the authority to free them from the burden of raising
a disabled child; these parents often came from ranks of the Nazi party.
In the majority of cases, few parents agreed to the killings of their children.
Furthermore, the doctors would have always had a fairly bizarre concept of
consent. Even if parents never said their child could be killed, it was often
the custom to prepare them for the event by telling them a false story about
a high risk operation, maybe even lethal, which would however cure their child.
If parents authorised the operation, doctors interpreted this authorization
as consent to carry out euthanasia.
The killing of children was the first act in the euthanasia extermination program.
The children were judged as particularly important because they represented
future generations; the extermination of these children who were considered
sick and deformed was essential to the success of the racial and eugenic purification
program. However the project for killing disabled children was quickly overshadowed
by that of killing disabled adults. When, in August 1941, Hitler ordered the
interruption of the first phase of euthanasia on adults, children were not
covered in this so-called "suspension order" and child euthanasia continued
until the end of the war.
At which point the scope of child euthanasia was extended. At first, it only
included newborns and small children below three years of age. Then it even
covered older children; in the end even adolescents were killed in the pediatric
wards. It was Hitler, who reserved the authority to resolve problems, to take
the decision to include the older children. It is important to remember that
not all the children were affected by incurable illnesses or permanent invalidity;
many were institutionalised for less serious disabilities or simply because
they were slow in learning or had behavioural problems.
Since many documents confirming the killings have not arrived to us, it is
impossible to calculate the number of children killed in the pediatric wards
during the Second World War. The best estimate is a total of at least 5,000
assassinated children.
The T4 project:the killing of disabled adults
As anticipated by Gherard Wagner in a previous private conversation, euthanasia
on disabled adults would have started with the beginning of the war. In October
1939 Hitler summoned an informal meeting with Hans Henrich Lammers, minister
for the chancellery, Leonardo Conti, who took Wagner's place as general doctor
to the Reich, and Martin Bormann, the particular secretary and true "black
soul" of the Fuhrer, to show the aims and methods of the project.
After the sterilisation campaign, the elimination of disabled adults, who were
institutionalised and inappropriate in Nazi ideology, helped to cancel the
past. "The disabled - as Hitler would have said in the preparative meeting
- were lives that were not worth living.
The project was based on order criteria which were predominantly economical
and utilitarian: according to accurate calculations of a Reich statistician,
the euthanasia of handicapped adults, if calculated over a ten-year period,
would have saved the German exchequer something like 885,439,980 Marks, without
counting the loss of expenditure for food or maintenance.
The start of disabled adult extermination coincided however with the strengthening
of Nazi power. Hitler put it into effect, with absolutely secret techniques
and cover-ups, because since he was convinced of the absolute impunity and
the proven capacity to maneuver consent to every level. When this situation
changed, in the first half of 1941, the Fuhrer was forced to suddenly change,
but not in substance, the methods of carrying out what became universally known
as "T4 action project", or more simply: "T4".
On the 15th of October 1939, Hitler's private chancellery, which was already
responsible for physical and mentally handicapped children, issued a service
order, signed by the Fuhrer, which forced all Reich institutes and nursing
homes to supply, on a regional basis, detailed lists of all patients who were
defined incurable or terminal. This document was adopted as evidence of the
responsibility of the various doctors and hierarchy who, with different posts,
participated in T4 and was even used in the Nuremberg trials. Even if this
instruction was never institutionalised, T4 remained surrounded by absolute
secrecy, and was driven by absolutely scientific methods.
The supervision of the project was entrusted firstly to Leonardo Conti, following
a series of internal party contentions with Himmler and Flick involved, where
Conti was victimised and the direction employed Philiph Bouler and Karl Brandt,
who were extremely loyal to Himmler, who was already involved in the euthanasia
of disabled children. From an operative point of view however, this competency
passed quite quickly to the II office of Hitler's private chancellery, directed
by Viktor Brack.
The elimination of disabled children was a limited operation, this was large
scale extermination: everything was rationalised and above all - according
to Brack's beloved technique - planned and sly. The Fuhrer's chancellery was
not, and could not be directly involved.
The II office of the chancellery and all medical offices relating to the project,
directed until 1940 by the psychiatrist Werner Hayde, were immediately transferred
to a big villa confiscated from rich Jews in Berlin. It was at the address
of this villa, situated at 4 Tiergarten straće in Berlin, that gave the coded
name for the first Nazi project of mass extermination.
Viktor Brack provided T4 with a series of offices which caused the medical
and managerial offices to excel, covered by a close network of Reich medical
cooperatives, including the notorious Rag (Union of Reich Hospitals and Nursing
Homes) which acted as a screen for the medical offices. The transport office
took care of the transfer of patients from regional institutes to those defined
as "killing centers".
This task, the first part of a disguise campaign organised by Brack, was assigned
to the operative branch of the "Gekart", with the supervision of the SS who
took patients away in the famous grey buses.
Many disabled people, defined as so, on the basis of a diagnostic summary based
solely on chemical-biological elements, since the psycho-analysis was banned
by the Nazis as a having of Jewish influence, realising what they expected,
and the oppressors were forced to fill them with sedatives during and after
transportation.
Having set the organisational plan, they had to pass to the execution phase
and organize the killing centers. Firstly, there was a gruesome quarrel over
the use of lethal injections or gas, then, as mentioned by Brack, they opted
for the second hypothesis, defined as abrupt and less painful.
The first killing center was prepared between December 1939 and January 1940
in an ex-prison close to Brandeburg on the Haven. The site, an isolated castle,
was chosen for its closeness to Berlin and because it was easily disguised
in the event of possible public protests. At the run through of the cassation,
carried out after the appropriate room was arranged, which could contain 70
people, all T4 management were present including Brack, Boulher, Conti and
Linden. After the Brandeburg camp was established, another 5 killing camps
followed which covered all the regions of the German Reich: Grafeneck, Hartheim,
Sonnenstein, Bernburg and Hadamar.
For reasons of secrecy, the names of the camps never appeared on documents
in transit but were designated with random letters of the alphabet. Those responsible
assumed various pseudonyms and Brack was known as "Jenninger".
With reference to internal organization, each camp was structured with medical
personnel, who often had no knowledge of the anatomy and were recruited even
from universities, nursing staff and so-called "firemen", responsible for gassing
and cremation.
It was like an assembly line. The patients were taken from regional institutes,
where personnel would transfer them, leaving regular receipts with the exact
number of patients taken. Once they arrived at the killing camps, the disabled
were sorted in the acceptance halls which was often overhead the gas chamber:
if the acceptance halls were situated on the ground floor, the gas chamber
had to be underground. After the stripping of clothes and personal effects,
which were carefully gathered by nursing personnel and put towards increasing
a black T4 fund, the individuals were first subjected to a quick medical visit
which checked for gold teeth or gold platings, then, after being marked with
tape, they were invited to have a shower and brought to the gas chamber which
was then sealed up and the four-vent mechanism situated in an adjacent room
started. Death occurred within 10 minutes, after which service personnel gathered
the corpses, brought them to the crematorium and, in a brief manner, arranged
the piles of ash in a pauper's grave.
When the killing program was at its most plentiful, instead of places for the
70 initial bodies, there was stacks of 300 or 400 people at a time. When, on
the 24th of August 1941, Hitler, who was forced by public opinion, ordered
the temporary suspension of the executions, it is calculated that the T4 project
had taken more than 70,000 victims. But the Nuremburg historians are sure that
this figure is much less than the real figure since, by looking at documented
evidence, the calculation refers to the deaths that occurred in the killing
camps without counting the countless deaths caused by lethal injection, before
and after the mass killings.
The disabled and war: the silent extermination
With the wide reaching war frontiers and the formal closure of the main killing
centers, the extermination of the disabled in the Reich continued under various
forms, while the annihilation campaign of disabled people in occupied territories
became part of the concentration camps, mostly sending them to the extermination
camps in Eastern Europe.
Of the six million certain Shoah victims, it is even difficult today to establish
how many of them were disabled. According to evidence given in Nuremberg files,
some German killing camps continued to carry out extermination after the temporary
interruption of executions in 1941 until the arrival of the allies. In any
case, research is difficult, and at this point, in fact, the campaign to disguise
the killings reached it climax.
While Eastern Europe continued the mass gassing of Jews, gypsies and political
opponents, the disabled belonging to the German Reich were eliminated in hospitals
with great secrecy, often, as Victor Brack confessed at the Nuremberg process,
resorting to barbiturates or lethal injections, forcing the unwilling nurses
to carry out the killings under the threat of death.
Those of the occupied countries had a different fate, often due to political
or racial reasons, after a brief detention period, they were deported to extermination
camps and, those incapable or too weak to work were the first to be killed,
as soon as they got off the train. Nonetheless, there is fragmentary information
on the disabled who survived Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The most difficult thing appears to be giving a face to the victims, because
during the years of war, for merely utilitarian purposes, the Nazi's broadened
the articulation of the disabled, confining perfectly normal people as stupid
people with mental problems, among them political opponents, people with slight
addictions to drugs and homosexuals.
There is no doubt, however, that the process to disguise the truth, carried
out above all in the T4 managerial office reached a peak at the end of T4,
before the final resolution (the deportation of disabled Jews), despite repeated
pressure which had originated in the mid '30s from the judiciary, the church
and the majority of noble Germans.
The deportation of disabled Jews, the Do Cholm
II fraud
During the Nuremberg trials, Victor Brack confirmed under oath that no disabled
Jews were confined to killing camps throughout the euthanasia plan for disabled
people; Karl Brandt and doctors who worked on T4 also said the same. To go
even further, they said that the disabled Jews did not suffer a "compassionate
death (gassing)", which was reserved for the disabled Germans. Opposing testimonies
were not needed to confirm that this was an absolute lie. As confirmed by the
others, Herbert Kaslich, was called "the T4 electrician". The disabled Jews
were included in the euthanasia program from the very beginning: first on a
individual basis, and then taking the disabled from ethnic groups who were
ostracised and persecuted. According to updated statistics, the euthanasia
program assassinated between 4,000 and 5,000 disabled Jews during 1940. The
persecution was similar to that of the disabled Germans. Examining the Jewish
patients confined to German hospitals before 1933, we recognize that the sterilisation
campaign spared nobody. The main documented proof in 1939 speaks of at least
one Jewish patient who was sterilised at Hamburg hospital. The first step was
certainly the ostracism of these disabled Jews who, whether hospitalized or
not, maintained a certain social status which allowed then to have appropriate
medical care and to conduct a social life.
In 1938, a Reich decree excluded Jews from public assistance: the assistant
services were assigned to Jewish organisations only if these organisations
demonstrated that they could not take charge, with the State taking over. The
measures were notably resented in 1939: a decree forced the "Jewish representation
of the Reich", an independent organization for the German Jewish community,
change its name to the "Reich Jewish Association" and with it the loss of many
of its powers, making it much more controllable. From now on, male Jews had
to use the name Israel before their forename, while Jewish women were obliged
to place Sarah before their forename. Ostracism and the progressive exclusion
from public office professions did nothing more than impoverish the German
Jewish community, with obvious setbacks for the disabled. Many Jewish families
choose to emigrate while leaving their disabled relatives behind. Many parents
continued to pay the keep for their confined disabled relatives, but many more,
already hospitalized in Germany, finished up under State control. German nursing
homes started to have wards only for Jewish patients.
The mass persecutions of the disabled Jews and their integration into the euthanasia
program as an ethnic group, no longer included just disabled people, with it
starting on the 15th of April 1940.
Herbert Linden, one of the main people responsible for T4, issued a leaflet
on that date which forced all hospitals to declare the presence of Jewish patients
with the purpose of uniting them in appropriate centers. These were nothing
more than waiting rooms for the killing camps.
The Jewish patients from the North and the province of Berlin were gathered
in the Buck camp, from which the infamous grey Gekrat buses, the operative
branch of the T4 transport office, would load up about two hundred people at
a time and leave them at the Brandeburg killing camp. The fate awaiting them
is well known.
In the case of Jewish patients, the pressure from parents, the magistrate,
hospitals and association to have news of their fate, was much stronger than
that exercised in relation to disabled Germans, even because the hospitals
of origin, with the transfer of disabled Jews to other locations or with their
departure, saw a block on the assistance due to them.
The management of T4 were the architects who can be defined as "the Cholm or
Chelm maxi-fraudsters who wanted to direct it, since in documented evidence
this imaginary structure was called in both ways.
When the parents or relatives of Jewish patients asked about them after their
transferal, the direction of the origin hospital was limited to say that the
people were transferred to Chelm, near Lublin, in Poland, which had many addresses
and post office boxes. Therefore, the income due had to be lodged in the name
of this structure.
It goes without saying that Chelm was nothing more than a fictitious post office
box. A courier was responsible for the operation, arranging to mail the reply
letters in Lublin, delivering the income to the T4 account which was already
enriched by personal effects and gold teeth taken from corpses. Two or three
months from the transferal, the death of a family member was communicated to
relatives by the direction at Cholm. In case of objection, relatives were asked
to contact the central government.
The trick, which was very lucrative, but also fairly awkward, lasted for more
than a year. When, in August 1941, the Reich decided to deport mass amounts
of Jewish Germans and Austrians, even disabled Jews followed the same fate
as their coreligionists in the extermination camps.
On the 22nd of June 1941, the German Wermacht penetrated the Soviet territory
and the Nazi regime embarked on its second and most important extermination
operation. The first objective was the elimination of Soviet Jews, gypsies,
and, when possible, the disabled. The commander of the operation, General Edward
Wagner wrote in his diary in September 1941: "The Russians considered people
with frenasthenia as sacred. Therefore, their elimination is necessary".
The final solution is therefore closely related, in its methods and means of
extermination of the disabled. Documented evidence testifies in fact that after
the first period of mass shootings, directed by Adolf Eickman, a building was
planned as a concentration camp, this being Auschwitz, which was to provide
a most dramatic and painful symbol of this period.
The concentration camps were thought out and structured on pre-existing models
of killing camps for the disabled. The majority of T4 personnel were unemployed
after the closure of the killing centers and a large amount of them were employed
by this final solution.
We have concrete evidence that in 1943, Dr. Dietrich Allers, already a director
of the T4 managerial office during the second phase, was the architect and
manager of the Italian transfer camp in Risiera di San Sabba, where a few Jews
and partisans died from gassing or lethal injection.
Italy also paid the price and had its own disabled victims. However an exact
calculation remains difficult. The Italian victims were mostly Jews, destined
for deportation to Auschwitz, who did not even make it to getting off the trains.
In the majority of cases, in fact, they were killed as soon as they arrived
at the camp.
St. Servolo and St. Clemente: an Italian story
The deportation story of Jews hospitalized in St. Servolo and St. Clemente's
in Venice takes on an exemplary role in the deportation of Jewish Italians,
within the dynamics of personal fortunes.
On the 11th of October 1944, based on the order of the German command which
was coordinated by Captain Strangl with the active participation of the Italian
police, the five Jewish patients at St. Clemente's psychiatric hospital and
the six hospitalized patients at the Venetian St. Sevolo hospital were taken
away and brought to the public hospital, which became a real leper hospital
for sick Jews, and then they were led on to the Birkenau concentration camp.
If we look at the personal fortune of each individual, whose historical-documentary
reconstruction is due to the difficult task of the scholars Angelo Lallo and
Lorenzo Torresini, we realize after the racial laws, even in Italy, that the
mentally ill, especially if they were Jewish, were subjected to real social
euthanasia, and what is more, not lacking in attempts to save these lives by
the doctors and health staff.
An example of this subject appears in the case of patient M.I. whose Jewish
identity was seriously doubted at the beginning. The patient in question, evacuated
from Palermo, did not show clear symptoms of mental illness, but only disorientation
caused by the after effects of the bombing.
He was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward, presumably with false documentation,
in an attempt to avoid possible rounding up. We suspect that the director of
the nursing home was aware of this subterfuge.
The capture of Jewish patients, as with the entire population of Venetian Jews,
was possible due to intense informing on the part of the Jew, Mauro Grini ,known
to the police and the German command under the name Signor Manzoni, who had
no problem denouncing his own people.
The president of the Venetian Jewish community, Guiseppe Jona, following the
racial laws, took his own life rather than be forced into providing a list
of those in the Jewish community.
From 1938 to 1944, when possible, the sick Venetian Jews were in some way saved
from acceptance and the Jewish support nursing home, that could do nothing,
when deportation time came.
The letter of documented evidence shows how very few Jewish patients at the
St. Servolo and St. Clemente hospital showed real mental illnesses. In some
cases we are dealing with perfectly normal people within the social fabric
and, as in the case of G.R., who was born in Turkey, also a member of the Fascist
combat group, where racial laws inflicted a psychical trauma on him which was
hardly curable.
Loaded on the cursed carriages going to Birkenau, we know nothing of the 11
Jews from Venice. Some realised what awaited them, others got on happily, unaware
of the significance of the trains.
The directors of the asylums got cards reporting the health of the camps, we
don't know if this was to prove an execution or otherwise. These cards were
in reality part of the concealment of the truth which we have seen was a characteristic
of the Nazi regime. It is very probable that the eleven psychiatric patients
were massacred on arrival. Their documents, their traces, burnt. Their lives
cancelled. As for all the disabled, they were never seen, that is according
to the Nazis.
Bibliography
- Friedlaner Henry: "The Origins of Nazi Genocide", Rome, Editori
Riuniti, 1997.
- Lallo Angelo, Torresini Lorenzo: "Psychiatry and Nazism", Venezia
Ediciclo publishers, 2001
- Picciotto-Fargion Liliana: "Il libro della memoria, gli ebrei
deportati d'Italia (1943/1945)", Milan, Mursia, 1991
- Zuccotti Susan: "L'olocausto in Italia", introduction by Furio
Colombo, Milan, TEA, 1995
- Brunner Helen: "Come un pescatore di perle", Empoli, Hibiscos
publishers, 2001
- Consoli Massimo: "Omocausto", Milan, Kaos editions, 1971
On line:
http://www.deportazione.too.it
http://www.olokaustos.org
http://www.assospringer.org
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