The Treatment of the Mentally and

Physically Disabled in Nazi Germany

Presented by Michael Heng

Forced Sterilizations
The Sterilization Law explains how important
it is to weed out so-called genetic defects from
the German gene pool
- hereditarily healthy families: one or two children
- inferiors reproduce unrestrainedly while their
sick and asocial offspring burden the community

Forced Sterilizations
The first country participate in forced sterilization
programs is
The United States
Between 1907 and 1938, more than 30,000 people in
29 states were sterilized
Sterilization policies in Nazi Germany and U.S. were
influenced by eugenics

Sterilization in Nazi Germany

Forced sterilizations begin in Jan. 1934
An estimated 300,000 to 400,000 people were
sterilized
Many of the sterilization cases included
feebemindedness meaning mildly retarded,
schizophrenia and epilepsy

Sterilization is Nazi Germany

More than 200
Hereditary
Health Courts
were set up
across Germany
"We do not stand alone": Nazi poster from 1936
with flags of other countries with compulsory
sterilization legislation

The Euthanasia Killings

In October 1939, Hitler initiated a decree
which allowed physicians to grant a mercy
death to patients considered incurable
Fearing public reaction, the Nazi regime
never proposed a formal euthanasia law

Euthanasia Killings
T-4 targeted adult patients in government or
church-run sanatoria and nursing homes
Review commissions
Meaning Death

"" Meaning Life

Or a ? for additional assessment

Euthanasia Killings
The mentally and handicapped were transported
to killing centers, former: psychiatric hospitals,
castles, and former prisons
In the beginning, patients were killed by lethal
injection
By 1940 carbon monoxide gas was suggested

Secrecy Broke
Church leaders, local judges and parents
protested the killings
Some gas chambers were dismantled and shipped
to extermination camps in occupied Poland
There they were rebuilt and used for the final
solution to the Jewish question

The Killings Continued

The euthanasia killings continued under a different
decentralized form
Nazi regime continued to spread the message that the
mental patients were useless eaters and life
unworthy of life
Doctors were encouraged to decide on their own on
who to kill, killing became part of hospital routine

Concentration Camps
Program under code 14f13
- Experienced psychiatrists from the T-4 operation
were sent to concentration camps
- Inmates including Jews, Gypsies, Russians,
Poles, Germans and many others were sent to
euthanasia centers

Outside Germany
Thousands of mental patients were killed by the
SS
- Between Sept. 29 and Nov. 1 1939, the SS shot
about 3,700 mental patients in asylums
- Dec. 1939 and Jan. 1940, SS units gassed 1,558
patients from Polish asylums in gas vans

- Gas Van

- Hartheim Castle

Aftermath of the Euthanasia Killings

Between 200,000 and 250,000 mentally and
physically handicapped people were
murdered from 1939 to 1945

- Cemetery at Hadamar
where victims of the
Hadamar euthanasia
killing center were buried

- Beginning in fall 1939 gas

chambers were installed,
patients were selected,
transferred and killed

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/disabled.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_for_the_Prevention_of_Hereditarily_Diseased_Offspring
http://www.ushmm.org/learn/students/learning-materials-and-resources/mentally-and-physically-handicapped-vi
ctims-of-the-nazi-era/forced-sterilization
http://www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/Camps/ChelmnoEng.html

Sources