1942 Other Victims of Nazi Crimes Scenario
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OTHER VICTIMS subject OF NAZI CRIMES Context8. According to the Nazi ideology, Jews into two categories: ‘worthy’ individuals constituted the greatest threat to Ger- (enjoying full civic rights) and those man society and racial purity. For this rea- ‘useless’ not only denied equal rights, but son, their rights were gradually limited with primarily the right to live. isolation in designated areas after the war broke out. Then, they were murdered in death Several months after the Nazis gained power, camps and other murder sites. a law was enacted on 14 July 1933 ‘to prevent the birth of offspring with hereditary diseases’. However, Jews were not the only group persecuted Over time, that regulation was used to forcibly by the Nazis. Even before the Second World War sterilise people with mental illnesses and those had begun, they sought to ‘purify’ German society suffering from epilepsy, deafness, blindness and from all ‘racially different’ groups (to which Sinti physical deformities. That group also included and Roma belonged, alongside Jews), as well as alcohol addicts, who were subject forced persons with physical disabilities, mental-health sterilisation. According to estimates, between difficulties and ones considered to be anti-social. 200,000 and 380,000 persons underwent the The last-mentioned group included homosexuals treatment pursuant to that law by 1938. However, and prostitutes and, given their nomadic lifestyle, no attempts were made to murder them before Sinti and Roma. Political opponents (mainly the Second World War. A certain type of exception socialists and communists as well as various and impulse toward adopting such a decision later union and social activists opposed to the Nazis) in the autumn of 1939 was a certain Kretschmar constituted a separate category. They were child case. Most likely in early 1939, Hitler’s office incarcerated and placed in concentration camps received a letter from the father of an infant born that were under construction as of 1933. with a physical deformation (a missing foot and a forearm) and a mental illness. The child was also The Nazis justified the policy of exterminating blind. The father requested the ‘grace of death’. physically and mentally challenged persons by the The Führer personally instructed Dr Karl Brandt to need to eliminate ‘inferior’ and ‘flawed’ individuals verify that the child was actually ill and, if so, to kill from society in order to improve its fabric. They him. This was a precedent subsequently exploited did so with reference to the views of 19th-century to deal with terminally ill children. advocates of the negative eugenics theory. By recognising theories on inherited intelligence, After the outbreak of the Second World War, they postulated the purging of people with mental the Germans proceeded to implement their conditions to halt the process of passing on their programme of systematic killing of persons with ‘handicap’ features. People were therefore divided mental and physical disabilities. The scheme was 1 codenamed T4 from the address of its headquarters Michael von Faulhaber and Clemens August von in Berlin (Tiergarten Strasse 4). The first victims Galen as well as evangelical bishop Teofil Wurm in of those actions, euphemistically referred to as which they protested against euthanasia was read the euthanasia (Greek: good death) programme, out in all Catholic churches in Germany. Under were children. Various state institutions and many pressure from the protests, Hitler issued an order doctors were engaged to efficiently conduct to suspend the campaign in late August 1941. them. With time, adults were also covered by Nevertheless, it continued discreetly until the end the programme. Injections with a fatal dose of of the war. Moreover, Operation 14f13 was carried barbiturates or morphine were used to kill them. out starting from the spring of 1941 with the The gassing of people with carbon monoxide was aim of murdering concentration camp prisoners also swiftly adopted for the purpose. The creation incapable of work or deemed anti-social. They of euthanasia centres commenced in early 1940. were brought to euthanasia centres in Bernburg, Usually, hospitals and psychiatric clinics were Hartheim and Sonnenstein (now Kalenica). It is used to that end. There were six such centres in estimated that by 1943 approximately 20,000 the Third Reich: Grafeneck, Brandenburg on the concentration camp prisoners perished as a Hevel, Bernburg, Hartheim, Sonnenstein and result. In turn, the total number of Operation T4 Hadamar. The subjects were selected from among victims gassed, poisoned or shot in 1939–1945 is hospital and psychiatric clinic patients. They were estimated at approximately 200,000. taken to those centres and, after an examination, killed. Information on a patient’s demise sent to After the Second World War began, one group families together with their ashes included a false subjected to complete extermination was Sinti cause of death. It is estimated that by August and Roma. Before the war, more than 20,000 of 1941 approximately 70,000 persons were killed in them had lived in the Third Reich. Already in 1926, euthanasia centres. legal regulations pertaining to ‘Gypsies, peddlers and people shirking work’ were introduced in After the outbreak of the Second World War, Bavaria. On that basis, unemployed Roma people Operation T4 was already expanded in 1939 to were sent to resocialisation centres. The nomadic include patients in psychiatric hospitals and care style of some Sinti and Roma was one of the centres in territories occupied and incorporated arguments used to label them anti-social and to into the Reich. There were fewer constraints there oppose mixed marriages in Germany. Ingrained with regard to secrecy and killings were carried out stereotypes associated with, for example, by SS and police units. Psychiatric hospital patients criminality influenced their negative perception. were murdered as part of Operation T4 in, for From 1933 on, such legislation extended to the instance, the GG in Tworki, Otwock, Kobierzyn near entire Third Reich. Krakow as well as Chełm Lubelski. Patients were also killed in similar facilities in territories known The Sinti and Roma, as direct descendants of Aryans as incorporated into the Third Reich: Międzyrzecz originating from India, constituted a problem for (Meseritz-Obrawalde), Owiński near Poznan, the ideologues of racism. One such theoretician, Poznan (Fort VII), Kościan or Kochanówka near Hans F. K. Günther, argued nevertheless that they Łódź. Persons with physical and mental disabilities descended from a ‘lower-class’ of Aryans. According were also murdered in Bialystok and Vilnius. The to him, that occurred as a result of ‘mixing’ with number of those killed in Operation T4 in occupied ‘inferior’ people (like Semites and Turks). In this Poland is estimated at approximately 30,000. way, it was demonstrated that their blood was not ‘purely Aryan’ and thereby constituted a greater One assumption underlying Operation T4 was threat. According to propaganda, their departure discrete action so as not to draw public attention to from India was tantamount to being cursed by the the issue of ‘elimination’ of persons with disabilities Aryans themselves. According to the racial theory or trigger discussion on this subject. Despite efforts prevailing in the Reich, Sinti and Roma were not to isolate facilities where persons with disabilities Aryans and their nomadic lifestyle did not fit were murdered and other actions aimed at the vision of an ideal German society. They were covering up that crime, information on the subject therefore considered criminality-prone factors. became public and aroused opposition. On 6 July Just as in the case of the Jewish population, the 1941, a pastoral letter from Catholic cardinals Germans treated persons deemed ‘pure’ Sinti Subject 8. 2 CONTEXT and Roma differently than those of mixed origin. They were murdered in death camps intended Further legal actions and decisions associated with to kill Jews. Roma groups from the Lodz ghetto their forced sterilisation, destruction through work were deported and killed at the Kulmhof camp or physical extermination at a later stage were in Chełmno on the Ner. Those from the Warsaw not coherent or consistent. In 1935, in accordance ghetto were taken to the death camp in Treblinka with executive acts to the Nuremberg laws, Sinti together with Jews during the ‘Great Action’. Many and Roma were also deprived of citizen rights and of them were also shot at their places of residence. deemed a threat to the purity of the German blood. Such executions were conducted in such localities This was equivalent to their exclusion from society. as Lokachi or Kostopil in Ukraine. Some died as a In order to classify and confirm who to include in result of tipoffs from the local populace. That took this group, a Racial Hygiene and Demographic place in occupied Polish territories as well as in Biology Research Unit was created in Berlin in countries of Western Europe, the Balkans, Ukraine 1937, headed by Robert Ritter. Together with his and the Baltic states. The largest group of Roma team, he visited Roma camps and conducted racial was murdered at the death camp KL Auschwitz II- studies. For that purpose, genealogical charts were Birkenau, where they were sent on Himmler decree used, as were fingerprints and anthropomorphic issued in December 1943. A separate section measurements. On their basis, an assessment called Familien Zigeunerlager (Gypsy family camp) was made of, inter alia, ‘purity of blood’ and any was opened there for them. As inmates, they were foreign mixtures. As a result of measurements marked with a black triangle (anti-social prisoners) conducted by the Ritter team, Heinrich Himmler and the letter Z (abbreviation for Zigeuner – Gypsy) issued a decree in 1939 on the ‘Struggle against next to the camp number. Approximately 20,000 the Gypsy plague’. It stated, for instance, that people were brought there.