T-4 Euthanasia Program
From Academic Kids
T-4 Euthanasia Program was the official name of Nazi Germany's Eugenic euthanasia program. It was established by Adolf Hitler and operated under authority of Chief of the State Chancellery Philip Bouhler and Dr. Karl Brandt. The name T-4 comes from the address of the office, Tiergartenstrae 4 in Berlin.
The purpose of the program was to maintain genetic purity of the German population by systematically killing citizens who were physically deformed, disabled, handicapped, or suffering from mental illness. Disabled children were removed from their families and taken to special hospitals. The program was later expanded to include adults, though most disabled adults fell under the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring which allowed for compulsory sterilization.
Extermination was carried out at Grafeneck (since January 20, 1940), Hartheim (since May 6, 1940) , Hadamar (since January 1941), Bernburg (since November 21, 1940), Brandenburg (since February 8, 1940) and Sonnenstein (since Juni 1940) by way of gassing, suffocation, injection, poisoning, starvation, and overdose of medication. First experiments with mobile gas vans were performed in March 1940 in the hospital in Kochanowka near Lodz. Soon, the Nazis performed further experimentation that involved piping carbon monoxide from a truck's engine into a sealed chamber. Much of this extermination was supervised by the psychiatrists Carl Hans Heinze Sennhenn and Werner Villinger. Sennhenn supplied hundreds of brains of the exterminated to Nazi researchers. Werner Villinger conducted experiments with humans before ordering them to their deaths. Even before the Holocaust, the first gas chambers were built at Hartheim where mostly adult victims were suffocated with carbon monoxide.
On August 18, 1941, Hitler ordered a temporary halt to the program, due to resistance from churches and relatives of the victims. 70,000 people had already been exterminated. The German public resistance led to a slowdown but did not stop the program. In fact, it was conducted with greater secrecy. Trained crews continued in their trade. Some graduates of the Aktion T4 program were then transferred to military concentration camps.
Most of the persons such as Josef Mengele responsible for carrying out the T-4 Euthanasia Program became active in the Holocaust as well, developing gas chamber technology and even helping to build death camps at Belzec, Treblinka or Sobibr in Operation Reinhard. Aside from the well-known Auschwitz-Birkenau these were the main centers of extermination by gas for millions of people.
By the end of 1941, every third inmate of a psychiatric institution in Germany had already died, either by being directly killed or by starvation, leading to about 93,000 "free beds." An estimated 200,000 people died under the T-4 program. 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 was 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 with the euthanasia were not always brought to justice. Long after the creation of the new German states in 1949 high-ranking officials involved with the euthanasia had escaped prosecution and were still involved with 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 Fredrick Wertheim. 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) (http://www.spkpfh.de/Iatrocracy_on_a_worldwide_scale.htm#iatropolitical_big_event)
- EuthaNAZIa, nowdays? - PF/SPK(H) (http://www.spkpfh.de/Euthanazia.htm)
- Information on the T4 program (http://www.deathcamps.org/euthanasia/)
- Online inventory of archives dealing with euthanasia under the Nazi regime (http://www.bundesarchiv.de/findbuecher/stab/euth/einfueh.php) (in German)
- Cardinal Galen's speech against Nazi euthanasia (http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/galen.htm)
See also
- Helmuth Ehrhardt
- Werner Heyde
- Ernst Kretschmer
- Friedrich Mauz
- Friedrich Panse
- Ernst Rudin
- Carl Hans Heinze Sennhenn
- Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer
- Werner Villinger
eo:Aranĝo T4 fr:Programme Aktion T4 he:תכנית T4 - אותנסיה ja:T4作戦
