Figure 1.--

German Jews were such a small part of the German population that once the protectiion of the law was removed by the NAZIs, they were defensless. They were not the only defenseless group the NAZIs targeted. The most defenseless of all were handicapped children, both the phyically and mentally handicapped children. Germany at the time that the NAZIs seized power had the world's most advanced system to care for the handuicapped. Societies have cimmonly ignored the handicapped. The NAZIs in contrast launched a major effort targetting the handicapped. Resources were diverted from programs to assist the handicapped. School children were given math problems calculating how much money was being 'wasted' on the handicapped. Various methods were adopted to reduce the hndicapped population such as sterilization and abortions. NAZI Racial Hygene Courts was an important part of the process. Family dictors were required to report handicpped individuals to the Court. This effort culminated in euthenesia, a clinical term for murder. The T-4 killing proigram was launched at the beginning of the War. The NAZIs attempted to keep the oprigrm secret, but brave churchmen spoke out. The killing was not dione by the SS, but by resopected members of the German medical establishmnt. Hitler gave the job of killing Jews to the SS who took measures to keep the killings secret. The T-4 Program would priove to be a dry run for the Holocaust. The techniques and facilities used in killing Jews were developed as part of the T-4 program.

The Handicapped

German Jews were such a small part of the German population that once the protectiion of the law was removed by the NAZIs, they were defensless. They were not the only defenseless group the NAZIs targeted. The most defenseless of all were handicapped children, both the phyically and mentally handicapped children.

German Handicapped Care System

Germany at the time that the NAZIs seized power had the world's most advanced system to care for the handicapped. That it would be Germany that would perdecute and eventually murder the handicapped is something no one would have guessed before Adolf Hitler and the NAZIs seized power. Germany had for the most part arguably the finest and most comprehensive system of care and rehabilitative education for the handicapped in the world. Advanced countruies like the United States and Britain lagged behind what had been developed in Germany. The syustem began early (19th centyry). Ststems were developed to teach blind and deaf children. The programs fir handicapped children were expnded during the Weimar era. Educators were beginning to integrate children with a range of learning and developmental issues into community schools. At the time this was not a common practice in American or European public schools. At the time, the common practice was isolated children in closed institutions. This inckluded children with even reltivly mild disorders. German educators were pioneering the idea that these children were better off when kept with their families, And that there were benenits to exposing handicapped children to the world where they could study, live and wiork in the communirty. [Safford and Safford]. By the time the NAZIs came to power. only the children with severe, debilitating conditions were bing instituionlized. There were costs associated with the system developed in Germany. The NAZIs picked up on theses costs and believed that available resorces should be allocated to people more likely to contrinute to sociey. Hitler took a personal issue in this.

NAZI Program

Societies have commonly ignored the handicapped. For the most part care was a parental family responsibility. The NAZIs in contrast launched a major effort targetting the handicapped. This is what made the NAZI policy toward the handicapped. They did not just want to return to the old system of negkect, but wanbted to activly opersecute the handicapped. They began by diverting resoureces from the various programs to assist the handicapped. They wanted to chnge public attitudes. School children were given math problems calculating how much money was being 'wasted' on the handicapped. Various mehods were adopted to reduce the handicapped population such as sterilization and abrtions. Finally the NAZIs turned to murder, actually eliminating handicapped people. The merhods adopted would be quickly picked up by the SS in the Holocaust killing programs.

Racial Hygiene Courts: Sterilization

The NAZIs only a few months after seizing power promulgated the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring (PGDO) (July 14, 1933) which came into force in January 1934. This law established the basis for racial ygiene health courts. The PGDO sterilization law granted authority to forcibly sterilize any citizen, who was found by court officials to have genetic disorders. This of course was before the dicovery of DNA and at a time that an understanding of genetics was very basic at best. In fact many of the disorders the courts addressed were not genetic at all. The primary focus was on mental retardation, schizophrenia, maniac-depression, insanity, hereditary epilepsy, hereditary blindness, deafness, malformation, and Huntington's chorea. [Kühl] When the court ordered sterilization. the individual ordered to be steralized could appeal to the Higher Hereditary Health Court (sometimes called the Hereditary Health Supreme Court). Dr. Karl Astel oversaw the Hereditary Health Supreme Court (1934-37). The Courts were an integral part of NAZI eugenics. The German term was Erbgesundheitsgericht meaning Hereditary Health Court or the Genetic Health Court. These courts determined who could not reproduce in NAZI Germany. They had the authority to order forced sterilizarion. The purpose was to implement the Nazi race policy which they described as racial hygiene. Doctors were required by law to report handicapped individuals to the these Courts. Trusted family dioctors for the most part complied. The Courts ordered the sterilization of some 400,000 Germans during a decade of operation. [Reilly] The courts had a male bias. Women for the most part were not involved in the cecusions taken. The sterilizations were were more often performed on women. And of course abortionsweee all performed on women. Male castrations were very rare. [Maretzki] Historians believe this was primarily because it was me making the devisions. As a result of the work of these courts, NAZI health officiald has a list of virtually all the handicapped people in Germany, includung children being vcared for at home.

Dr Leonado Conti

Leonardo Conti was born (1900). His father was Swiss, Silvio Conti. His mother was German, Nanna Pauli, She would become an ardent NAZI and the NAZI Reich Midwifery Leader. Conti studied medicine at the Friedrich Humboldt Universität in Berlin and the Friedrich Alexander Universität. He became obsessed with the völkisch movement as a young man and became actuive in politics. He co-founded an anti-semitic paper named the Kampfbund (Struggle League). He was active in the Freikorps and participated in the Kapp Putsch (1920). He joined the Sturmabteilung (SA) (1923). At thectime the SA was a rather disreptuable group. Few respectavle people joined. He was their first physician. One of patients was Horst Wessel, a youthbwho become a major NAZI martyr. He began organizing the Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Ärztebund (National Socialist German Doctors' League -- NSDÄB). He transferred to the more prestiogious Schutzstaffel (SS) with developing racial puity programs. Wiyh the NAZI seizure of power (1933), Hermann Göring appointed him to the Prussian State Council. He had the Party status of an 'old fighter'. He acquired prestigious appointments: Head of the Reichsärztekammer (Reich Physicians' Chamber), Leader of the NSDÄB, and Leader of the Main Office for the People's Health. With such prestigious positions he acquired an international reputation. A year after the Berlin Olympics the presigious International Federation of Sports (FIMS) elected him to its presidency (1937). It was not just politicans attempting to appease the NAZIs. SS Chief Himmler appointed him Reichsgesundheitsführer and State Secretary in the Interior Ministry (1939). This was a post in the SS police structure an accoded him unprecedented authority for a German doctor which he used to deadly effect in the T-4 Program. Conti was an adviocate of eugenics. He strongly believed in aggressuive state state action to promote public health. His control of the German medical establishmnt allowed him to expand local health offices including Racial Hygene Courts.

German Health Care Facilities

The NAZIs turned world-respected facilities dedidicated to the care of hndicaped children into work houses and murder facilities for the children unable to work.

Medical Experiments

NAZI experimnts on Jew, esopecially Jewish children, in concentrarion camps are fairly well known. Less well known are the exoeriments on handicapped German children. Children with cerebral palsy and other neurological conditions or Downs syndrome ere commonly selcted for experiments. Rspected physicians and their medical students from prestigious universities were involved. Doctoral dissertation werte written and accepted based on the experiments performed on living, conscious handicapped children. We are not aware of anby disertatin rejected or critivised because of the use of these children. Consent of the oarents was never obtained, becase once in ghese institutions they were beyond any parental control. The studies often focused on thechildren's brains. Often blood and spinal fluids were drawn and replaced with air so that especially clear xrays could be obtain of brain tissue. Researchers injected the children with drugs, sugar, and chemicals to test reactions. German health authoriries supersvised by Public Helth Director Leonardo Conti apprived research grants to fund this research. Dr Hans Heinze (Euthanasia Heinze), a Nazi psychiatrist and eugenicist was among the most notoruous of thesec researchers, earing the sobriquet 'Euthanasia Heinze'. He performed experiments on live children and then killing them. [Friedlander] After the experiments were completed, the children were killed. Often the term 'disinfected' was used. [Burleigh] Brains and body organs were removed and shipped to university research laboratories throughout Germany. Dr. Julius Hallervorden was a noted German physician and neuroscientist. He became the head of the Neuropathology Department of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research. This was the most respected Germjan medical institute. He belonged to the NAZI Party and openly admitted to knowingly performing much of his research on the brains of executed prisoners and children murdred in the T4 euthanasia program. [Kondziella] He even boasted of the wonderful material he had obtained from 'defectives'. [Aly] Leo Alexander, a Jewish Austrian neurologist and Holocaust refugee who managed to reach America reports that Dr. Hallervorden told him when discussing the T4 program, "Look here now, boys. If you are going to kill all those people, at least take the brains out so that the material can be utilized. They asked me, 'How many can you examine?' and so I told them ... the more the better". [Kondziella] Dr. Hallervorden's collection of children's brains was used until 1990 at which time the morality of the collection finally dawned on German scientists anbd the collction was quietly buried in a Munich cemetery.

T-4 Killing Program

This effort culminated in euthenesia, a clinical term for murder. The T-4 killing proigram was launched at the beginning of the War. Unlike the sterilization program, the T4 euthanasia program was conducted in secrecy from the public by the German medical establishment. NAZI planners were concerned that a sterilization program would take not only generations, but centuries to eradicate hereditary disease and build a new Nordic Germanic race. Thus they adopted euthanasia, doctor-ordered killings, to support the sterilization program. The Euthanasia program was designed to eliminate any German assessed to be "incurably ill". Hitler signed secret orders authorizing the program on September 20, 1939 while staying in a resort hotel at Zoppot. It was called the T4 program because the headquarters was located at No. 4 Tiergartenstrasse in Berlin. This was not a NAZI program carried out behind barbed wire by the SS in secret. German doctors in large numbers participated in the program. [Aly, Chroust, and Pross] The NAZIs attempted to keep the porgram secret, but brave churchmen spoke out. The killing was not dione by the SS, but by resopected members of the German medical establishmnt. Hitler gave the job of killing Jews to the SS who took measures to keep the killings secret. The T-4 Program would priove to be a dry run for the Holocaust. The techniques and facilities used in killing Jews were developed as part of the T-4 program.

Sources

Aly, G. (1994) "Medicine against the useless" in G. Aly, P. Chroust, and C. Pross (Eds.) Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), Ch.2, pp. 22-98.

Burleigh, M. Death and Deliverance: Euthanasia in Germany 1900-1945 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

Friedlander, H. (1994) The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 1994).

Kondziella, D (2009). "Thirty neurological eponyms associated with the nazi era," European Neurology (Review). Vol. 62, No. 1 (2009), pp. 56–64.

Kühl, Stefan. The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism ( Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

Maretzki, Thomas W. (1989). "The documentation of Nazi medicine By German medical sociologists: A review article," Social Science and Medicine Vol. 29, No. 12, pp. 1319–32.

Reilly, Philip R. (August 2015). "Eugenics and Involuntary Sterilization: 1907–2015," Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics Vol. 16, pp. 351–68. Safford, P.L. and E.J. Safford. A History of Childhood Disability (New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1996).

Created: 7:04 PM 9/17/2018
Last updated: 7:04 PM 9/17/2018