Disabled and Diseased

On July 14, 1933, the Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases was passed. This law called for any per with a “mental illness, learning disability, physical deformity, epilepsy, blindness, deafness, or severe alcoholism (1),” be sterilized to prevent the reproduction of such ‘birth defects’. These people were considered a burden on society, called ‘useless eaters’, and were a threat to the genetically pure Hitler sought to establish in Germany. They were considered ‘biological enemies’, along with Jews and Roma (2)(3).

“…in 1939, a Berlin garrison psychologist named Deegener was called on to define an imbecile. He dutifully went to work and came up with a classic definition. ‘The term covers morons, simpletons, semi-Aryans, habitual criminals, intellectual pacifists and conscientious objectors, former Communists, atheists, and egotists incapable of understanding the Nazi ideal. It is doubtful if education, friendly advice or punishment could cure any of these men.’(4)”

The first to fall victim to this new directive were infants and toddlers. On August 18, 1939, there was a decree that medical personas report all newborn infants and children under three showing signs of severe mental or physical disability. Eventually, the number included all juveniles aged to seventeen years (5).

5,000 small children in institutions were murdered and 110,000 institutionalized adults were also killed. These initial killings took place at the institutions where the patients were housed. 70,000 more adults were taken to killing centers and killed, along with thousands of prisoners unable to work any longer in the concentration camps (6). About 5,000 victims were killed through starvation or lethal overdoses of medicine. Others were gassed, left without needed medical treatment, given poison, or received lethal injections (7)(8). Some patients were shot in the back of the head or received injections of phenol directly into the heart (9).

“Having actively and decisively taken part in selections in the prisoners' sick blocks, of such prisoners who through hunger, deprivations, exhaustion, sickness, disease, abuse or other reasons were unfit for work in the camp and whose speedy recovery was not envisaged... Those selected were killed either through injections or firing squads or by painful suffocation to death through prussic acid in the gas chambers in order to make room in the camp for the "fit" prisoners, selected by him [Dr. Josef Mengele] or other SS doctors... The injections that killed were made with phenol, petrol, Evipal, chloroform, or air into the circulation, especially into the heart chamber, either with his own hands or he ordered the SS sanitary worker to do it while he watched (10).”

There were some people who were taken into the concentration camp ‘hospitals’ for medical experiments; these patients weren’t always noticeably diseased or handicapped while others were. “Like a demonic impresario casting the ultimate freak show, SS doctor Josef Mengele plucked out from the masses that passed before him, twins, and unusual mutations: hunchbacks, pinheads, hermaphrodites, giants, dwarfs, obese men and corpulent women (11).”

As for the families of the murdered patients, in order to keep them from raising a protest or getting suspicious, the Nazi doctors had a method of ‘explaining’ these unexpected deaths. “Ashes from cremated victims were taken from a common pile and placed in urns without regard for accurate labeling. One urn was sent to each victim’s family, along with a death certificate listing a fictive cause and date of death. The sudden death of thousands of institutionalized people, whose death certificates listed strangely similar causes and places of death, raise suspicions. Eventually the Euthanasia Program became an open secret (12).”

Sources:

(1) United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/disabilities/ (accessed April 13, 2011).

(2) Terese Pencak Schwartz. Holocaust: Non-Jewish Victims. http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/NewsDisabled.htm (accessed April 15, 2011).

(3) United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/disabilities/ (accessed April 13, 2011).

(4) Laffin, John. "1939-9-the Nazi War Cult." In Jackboot: a History of the German Soldier 1713-1945, 160-68. New York City: Barnes & Noble Books, 1995, page 168.

(5) United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/disabilities/ (accessed April 13, 2011).

(6) United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007329 (accessed April 13, 2011).

(7) United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007329 (accessed April 13, 2011).

(8) United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/disabilities/ (accessed April 13, 2011).

(9) Hoss, Rudolph, and Primo Levi. Death Dealer: the Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz. Edited by Steven Paskuly. Translated by Andrew Pollinger. New York City: Da Capo Press, 1992, page 129.

 (10) Lynott, Douglas. "Josef Mengele." Tru.TV. Time/Warner. http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/history/mengele/index_1.html (accessed April 13, 2011).

(11) Yehuda, Koren. "Mengele and the Family of Dwarfs." History Today 55, no. 2 (February 2005): 32-33. http://web.ebscohost.com.jsc-proxy.libraries.vsc.edu/ehost/detail?vid=3&hid=18&sid=9e5c25c8-0c1a-4b41-91ad-48b63bf73365%40sessionmgr15&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWlwLHVybCx1aWQmc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZl#db=aph&AN= (accessed April 27, 2011).

(12) United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/disabilities/ (accessed April 13, 2011).