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T-4 Euthanasia Program

Image:EnthanasiePropaganda.jpg T-4 Euthanasia Program (Tiergartenstraße 4 or Tiergartenstrasse 4) was the official name of the Nazi Germanyeugenicsprogram which forcefully conducted mass sterilizationsand euthanasiaon Germans who were institutionalized or suffering from birth defects. The use of the term euthanesia is a typical example of Nazi euphemismand bears little resemblance to the modern usage of this practice. In total, an estimated 200,000 people were killed as a result of the program.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1 Establishment and purpose
2 History of the program
3 Legacy
4 References
5 External links
6 See also
- 6.1 See also
- 6.2 Key figures
- 6.3 Key concepts

Establishment and purpose

The program was established by Adolf Hitler, operated under the authority of Chief of the State Chancellery Philip Bouhlerand Doctor Karl Brandt, and was headed by Werner Heydeand Paul Nitsche. The name T-4 derived from the address of the program's offices in Berlin.

The purpose of the program was to both lower expenses by systematically killing the institutionalised as well as preserving the genetic quality of the German population by sterilizing people with physical deformities, handicaps, or mental illnesses. Disabled children were removed from their families and taken to special hospitals. The program was later expanded to include adults, although most disabled adults were already subject to compulsory sterilizationas a result of the "Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring".

The Nazis characterized the killing of those deemed "useless eaters" to be "mercy killings", though the wide scope, lack of consent from either the targeted or their relatives, and the eugenic motives of the program led some contemporaries and later observers to label the deaths as simply a form of medicalized mass murder.

History of the program

Extermination was carried out at Grafeneck(beginning January 20, 1940), Hartheim(beginning May 6, 1940), Hadamar(beginning January 1941), Bernburg(beginning November 21, 1940), Brandenburg(beginning February 8, 1940) and Sonnenstein(beginning June 1940) using gas, suffocation, injection, poisoning, starvation, and overdose of medication. The first experiments with mobile gas vans were performed in March 1940in the hospital in Kochanowka near Lodz. The Nazis also experimented with piping carbon monoxide from truck engines into sealed chambers. Much of this extermination was supervised by the psychiatrists Carl "Hans Heinze" Sennhennand Werner Villinger. Sennhenn provided Nazi researchers with the brains of hundreds of victims, while Villinger conducted experiments upon victims before ordering their deaths. Gas chamberswere built at Hartheim to suffocate mostly adult victims with carbon monoxideeven before the widespread use of such methods during The Holocaust.

By the time Hitler ordered a temporary halt to the program on August 18, 1941due to protests from churches and relatives of the victims, 70,000 people had already been executed. However such public resistance merely slowed the program, and the killings continued under greater secrecy. Some of the personnel trained under the program later continued their trade in Nazi extermination camps.

Many of the key figures responsible for conducting the program, such as Christian Wirthand Franz Stangl, were also actively involved in developing gas chamber technology for the Holocaustand assisted in the construction of the camps at Belzec, Treblinkaand Sobibórin Operation Reinhard. Aside from the well-known camp at Auschwitz-Birkenauthese were the main centers of extermination by gas for millions of people.

By the end of 1941, every third inmate of psychiatric institutions in Germany had been killed under the program, whether by direct means or by starvation, resulting in about 93,000 additional deaths.

Legacy

Germany's practice of euthanasia did not end in 1941. Doctors and nurses continued the practice at hospitals around Germany and Austria. Killings and intentional neglect were conducted in such a way to minimize the suspicion of the German population. However, no such precautions were taken when exterminating people of the occupied territories. Acts of cruelty and violence were reported and recorded.

Doctors and nursing personnel involved in the euthanasia program were not always brought to justice. Long after the creation of the new German states in 1949, high-ranking officials involved in euthanasia had escaped prosecution and were still involved in the German health system.

References

"Nazi 'Euthanasia' Programs" in Dieter Kuntz, ed. Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race by Michael Burleigh. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum/University of North Carolina Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8078-2916-1
Dokumente zur Euthanasie. by Ernst Klee. ISBN 3-5962-4327-0, in German
Euthanasie im NS-Staat. Die Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens by Ernst Klee. Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 3-5962-4326-2, in German
The Origins of Nazi Genocide. From Euthanasia to the Final Solution by Henry Friedlander. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill & London, 1995, ISBN 0-8078-2208-6.
A Sign for Cain by Fredric Wertham. MacMillan Company, New York, 1967, ISBN 0-8488-1657-9
Was sie taten. Was sie wurden by Ernst Klee. ISBN 3596243645, in German

External links

Iatrocracy on a world wide scale - PF/SPK(H)
EuthaNAZIa, nowdays? - PF/SPK(H)
Information on the T4 program
Online inventory of archives dealing with euthanasia under the Nazi regime(in German)
Cardinal Galen's speech against Nazi euthanasia
Questionnaire for Euthanasia Program
Statistics of T4 victims in German-occupied Poland