The Nazi »Euthanasia« in in 1941

BOJAN HIMMELREICH

Research on »euthanasia« in Slovenia was done by Dr. Tone Ferenc (1927-2003). The bulk of the facts were compiled by him and are here presented in a shortened version of his article.1 Six weeks after the German occupation of the Slovene part of (in April 1941) the »Marburger Zeitung« printed a report that began as follows: »Accom• panied by the Gauleiter and Statthalter Dr. Uiberreiter, the chief state medical officer Dr. Conti came yesterday from to .« The day before Dr. Conti had arrived in Graz from Berlin and had talks with political and administrative officials of Styria. It is not known what was the sub• ject of discussions in Graz and Maribor but it might have been »euthanasia«, since the visit and its beginning in the Slovene part of Styria occurred in the same time period. The Nazi »euthanasia« programme in Slovenia caused the death of mentally ill and physically disabled patients in six institutions (the mental hospital at Novo , the asylums for the aged at near Celje, Vojnik, , and Muretinci near Ptuj). In other institutions in the occupied Slovene regi• ons, for reasons unknown, »euthanasia« was not carried out. Before the Nazi occupation of Slovene Styria there were around 450 patients in the mental hospital Novo Celje. Its director was Dr. Alfred Fischer, a doctor from Zalec, a nearby town. There were also two other doctors, Dr. Danilo Tomazic and Dr. Peter Drzaj. Dr. Fischer, who remained the director of the hospital after the German occupation, discharged about 50 patients, so there were around 400 left in the hospital. More than 50 were to be sent home - mostly those sufferring by minor diseases - but their relatives refused to accept them. In the first half of May a request from Berlin was sent to the director of the mental hospital in Novo Celje. Lists of the patients were to be made and each patients' illness was to be described in German. Around May 25, a medical commission was sent from Berlin to the mental hospital in Novo Celje. It was composed of doctors, headed by Dr. Renno, who started to examine patients. After a few days several people came to help the commission - among them Dr. Begusch and Dr. Sorger and the nurse Helene Linhardt. All three were from the mental hospital Feldhof near Graz. The com• mission examined the mentally ill patients at Novo Celje and the physically disabled persons at the old peoples' homes at Medlog and Vojnik. In the latter two they paid special attention to examining those who were mentally retarded or suffered from minor mental diseases.

1 Ferenc (1975/1976), »Evtanazija«; Himmelreich (1991), Seznam !eta 1941. Thanks to Prof. Zvi Lothane, New York, for the copy-editing of this text. The Nazi »Euthanasia« in Slovenia in 1941 185

Eyewitnesses of that examination testified after the war that Dr. Sorger and an unidentified doctor examined patients (in the presence of the director of the hos• pital, Dr. Fischer) on May 25. Dr. Sorger and the unidentified doctor decided where the patients should be deported; occasionally Dr. Fisher was consulted about the patients' state of health. The members of the commission made different notations in the lists of patients; those who were destined to be deported to an institution for »euthanasia« got a cross; those in whom the progress of illness could not be determined, got a question or an exclamation mark. It was also stated that the majority of the names was marked with a cross within a circle and some of them only with a circle. It seems that the commission divided the patients into three groups: in the first, there were patients destined for transport to the »eutha• nasia« institution Hartheim near Linz to be put to death; in the second, there were those who were destined for transport to mental hospital Feldhof near Graz; the patients in the third group were to undergo an additional check before the final selection. According to a number of eyewitness testimonies, Dr. Fischer, an adherent of Nazi ideology, tried to save some of the patients. The majority of the patients - including those who were marked with crosses by the commission and thus sentenced to death - were physically in good health and among them the majority was not incurably ill. After that inspection, during which 357 patients were condemned to die and 30 were destined for further treatment at Feldhof near Graz, no patient was released from the hospital. At the end of May or at the beginning of June 1941 the same commission exa• mined the physically disabled in the asylums for the aged. After the war a former nurse described the examination which took place in the towns' old peoples' home at Medlog near Celje. At the end of May a German military doctor came to the home and demanded to inspect all the patients. He declared that he needed no assistance and that he would examine them alone. In the first days of June a special medical commission came; among others, there was the doctor who carried out the first examination. That commission examined only those patients that had been chosen for deportation. Since two of them had escaped and one was removed from the list by the German doctor, 17 were included in the transport. At the old peoples' home at Vojnik near Celje there were 92 patients at the time of German occupation of Slovene Styria. Different medical commissions of Ger• man doctors came to examine the patients and to make notes. They were particu• lary interested in those who were mentally retarded irrespective of age. At the old peoples' homes at Ptuj and Muretinci there were about 140 persons. After the occupation the institutions were supervised by Karl Martl who had come from Graz. On April 9 a German general with his staff stopped in Muretinci. When he was told what kind of an institution that was, a member of his staff said that it would be closed because no new patients would be admitted and the exis• ting ones would soon be dead. German civil administration strove with all its might to close down the institutions as soon as possible. In the beginning of June the director of the mental hospital at Feldhof near Graz Dr. Begusch came to the old peoples' home at Ptuj and set up a commission con-