Holocaust History
Lesson 3: Legalizing Murder
The Case of Hans Frank
Hans Frank was a German boy born in 1925. An accident that occurred when Hans was a baby left him with a mental disability. In 1941 his parents admitted Hans-then 16-to a hospital where he was to be given professional care. They promised that Hans would be trained to become a gardener, and hoped that this would help him earn a living in the future.
In June 1941 Hans was transferred to another hospital.
In July his parents received a letter saying that he had been moved again, but it didn't tell them where to. Anxious to know where their son was being treated, the Franks wrote a letter demanding to know the name and location of the hospital.
On one day in August 1941 Hans Frank's parents received two letters from the Hadamar asylum in Hesse. The first was dated August 5th, and included the following:
We inform you that your son, Hans Frank, was transferred to our hospital...and has arrived here save and well.When they opened the second letter, dated one day later, on August 6th, they read:
Dear Mr. Frank,
We regret to inform you that following our letter of 5 August, your son Hans Frank, who had been transferred to our hospital...died unexpectedly on 6 August from epilepsy.
The letter continued to explain that Hans' body had already been cremated, in order to avoid the spread of contagious diseases, but that his ashes and his disinfected clothes would be returned to his family if they requested them.
Hans Frank had never suffered from epilepsy.
Hans Frank's mother decided to go to Hadamar to try and discover what had really happened to her son. On the train journey, she shared a carriage with a woman dressed all in black. This woman told Frau Frank that she had also received a letter from Hadamar; the letter said that her daughter had died in the hospital from appendicitis. The woman claimed that this was impossible, as her daughter had had her appendix removed some time before.
An Early Call for Euthanasia
In 1920 a book was published in Germany that called for the "mercy killing" of people with mental and physical disabilities. It said:
Their lives are absolutely purposeless, but they do not find life to be unbearable. For their relatives as well as for society, they constitute a terribly heavy burden. Their death does not leave any void, except perhaps for a sense of loss by the mother or a faithful carer. Since they require very much care, they necessitate the occupation of many persons who are devoted to prolonging life which is absolutely not worth living. It cannot be denied that this is a terrible absurdity, a misuse of human resources for unworthy purposes...
Did the Nazis' incorporate these views of Binding and Hoche?
Our starting point is not the individual, and we do not subscribe to the view that one should feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, or clothe the naked-those are not our objectives. Our objectives are entirely different. They can be put most crisply in the sentence: we must have a healthy people in order to prevail in the world.
Lunatic asylums cost the State DM 6,000,000 per year to maintain. How many working-class cottages costing DM 15,000 each could be built with this money?
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