Holocaust History

Lesson 3: Legalizing Murder

Life Unworthy of Life

The Euthanasia program is the first example of mass murder perpetrated by the Nazis. The techniques and the personnel were later transferred to the death camps of Poland and used in the destruction of Jews, Sinti and Roma. The Holocaust raises questions beyond those of racism and extends to how human life should be regarded and valued.

On September 1, 1939, war broke out when Germany attacked Poland. Under the cover of the war the Nazis first began their systematic killing process. In October 1939 a secret directive from Hitler's office, deliberately backdated to the first day of the war, ordered the killing of thousands of people with mental and physical disabilities. This was the first of the Nazis' killing programs, and was codenamed "T4" after the address of its central office at Tiergartenstrasse 4, Berlin.

Staffs in all German hospitals and asylums were asked to select patients who they judged to be "unworthy of life" (lebensunwert). The most minor "affliction" could mean a death sentence. One sixty-three year old patient's "symptoms" included, "sentimentality,...weakness of judgment...tendency to drink." They were sent to six main killing centers where specially trained physicians and nurses put them to death. Few doctors refused to take part in the killings.

The methods used included systematic starvation, lethal injections, and bottled carbon monoxide gas. When gas was used, it was pumped into sealed rooms often disguised as shower installations. The bodies were burned at crematoria in the grounds of the killing centers. Many of the personnel involved in the T4 program were later transferred to run the death camps of Poland.

Secrecy was vital to the organizers of the euthanasia program, who feared the reactions both or relatives and of the churches. Relatives were sent official condolence letters that lied about the cause of death. The doctors often adopted fictitious names to sign the letters, and told relatives that their patients had been transferred to other clinics. Blacked-out windows hid the fact that while buses arrived at the T4 asylums full of patients, they left empty.

Even so, relatives and people living near the killing centers did begin to suspect the truth. After protests by churchmen in 1941, Hitler officially halted the program; however, it had already reached its target of killing 70,000 Germans and killing continued unofficially. In 1941 the euthanasia program spread to concentration camps and victims were selected prisoners according to racial and political criteria. Further victims included Jews, Poles, Sinti and Roma. After 1941 it also included Soviet prisoners of war.

All told, these programs murdered between 200,000 and 300,000 people.

The following quotation is from the speech made by the Catholic Archbishop Clemens August von Galen at the cathedral in Munster in 1941. The sermon was copied and widely distributed.

Once human beings have the right to kill other "unproductive" human beings, then the murder of everyone as they reach old age, frailty, and "unproductiveness" starts to be acceptable. Rulings can be made that the treatment now applied to the mentally ill should also be applied to other "unproductive" individuals, to the incurably tubercular, to the old and senile, to crippled soldiers. Then none of us is safe.

Assignment: Reflect in your journal why there was a public outcry against the euthanasia program, but no such outcry in support of Jews, Sinti and Roma. What is our responsibility for protesting about persecution that does not pose a potential threat to us?

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