Sources and Research on the Mass Killings of Patients in Psychiatric Hospitals and Homes for Sick Children and for the Disabled in Nazi-Occupied Ukraine

УКРАЇНА МОДЕРНА

Сталінська ? ? ? (Донецька) психіятрична лікарня Сватівська ? ? 212 психіятрична лікарня Харківська міська грудень 1941 рр. ? 470 психіятрична лікарня Харківська обласна листопад айнзатцгрупа С 435 лікарня, 1941року с. Стрілеча Херсонська вересень — ? 1 000 психіятрична жовтень лікарня 1941 рр. Чернігівська жовтень 1941– підкоманда за різними психіятрична літо 1942 рр. зондеркоманди 4а підрахунками лікарня айнзатцгрупи С до 400 айнзатцкоманда 7б айнзатцгрупи Б

Гелінада Грінченко

Олена Петренко

Useless people, concealed crime: Sources and research on the mass killings of patients in psychiatric hospitals and homes for sick children and for the disabled in Nazi-occupied Ukraine

Commenced in Nazi-ruled Germany during the 1930s, mass killings of patients in psychiatric facilities and homes for the disabled (including children)—who were considered “useless to society,” “superfluous eaters,” or a “threat to racial purity”— continued also in German-occupied Soviet territories during the Second World War. The “Aktion T4” involuntary euthanasia program, under whose parameters

19 УКРАЇНА МОДЕРНА Число 28. “Непотрібні люди....” these killings had been initiated and carried out in Germany itself, officially ended in the summer of 1941;27 meanwhile, mass killings of civilians registered as patients commenced in Soviet Ukrainian psychiatric medical institutions, homes for the disabled, occupational therapy facilities (“labour colonies”), and other similar places. According to the data that are currently available, almost all researchers agree that nearly twenty thousand people were killed at Soviet psychiatric facilities. In Nazi-occupied Ukraine, mass killings were carried out at psychiatric hospitals and occupational therapy facilities in Vinnytsia, Ihren, Kyiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, and a number of other places. The Nazi crime of involuntary euthanasia of psychiatric patients in Soviet clinics was different from that committed on German territory. The research and motivations surrounding the specific differences are the subject of this special issue ofUkraina Moderna.28 In contrast to the Nazi program of euthanizing psychiatric and mentally disabled persons —whose historiography totals hundreds of academic articles and dozens of monographs, as well as a large number of online projects with accessible materials preserving the memory of the victims with psychological disturbanc- es29—the problem of destroying the same kinds of patients at Soviet hospitals during the Nazi occupation is still not well researched. One of the first publications shedding light on the killings of psychiatric patients in occupied Soviet territories was a selection of articles published in 2006–07 in three special themed issues of the International Journal of Mental Health.30 The articles in these issues focused on violence committed against patients with mental breakdowns in Nazi-occupied Europe, revealing issues like forced sterilization, eugenics, torture by starvation, and other violent and destructive practices implemented at psychiatric facilities,

27 The official end of the program was a sham: following numerous public protests on the part of both the Catholic and еvangelical churches, it was primarily intended to subdue the public. Meanwhile, the euthanasia of children and other patients continued in the T 4 centers. Moreover, the killing of unemployable, ill, or ideologically or “racially hostile” concentration camp prisoners continued until the autumn of 1944 (Aktion 14f13). For an overview of the Aktion T4, see, e.g., Götz Aly, ed., Aktion T4: 1939–1945; Die “Euthanasie”-Zentrale in der Tiergartenstraße 4. (Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1989); Ernst Klee, “Euthanasie” im NS-Staat. Die “Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens” (Frankfurt am Main: S.Fischer Verlag 2010); Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press 1995). 28 The first such difference noticed by German researchers was the named list of those who committed the crime. In contrast to Germany, where the selection and murder of psychiatric patients was carried out by medical personnel, on the territory of the Soviet Union those actively involved in the killing of patients included Einsatzgruppen (in Ukraine it was Einsatzgruppe C) and also the Wehrmacht and the civilian administration. See: Ulrike Winkler, Gerrit Hohendorf, “The Murder of Psychiatric Patients by the SS and the Wehrmacht in Poland and the Soviet Union, especially in Mogilev, 1939–1945”, in Kay, Alex J; Stahel, David, eds.: Mass Violence in Occupied-Europe, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018), 147–70. 29 Among the most recent publications providing an historiography, see: Götz Aly, Die Belasteten. ‚Euthanasie‘ 1939–1945. Eine Gesellschaftsgeschichte (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag 2013). 30 International Journal of Mental Health, 2006, vol. 35, issues 3–4; 2007, vol. 36, issue 1.

20 УКРАЇНА МОДЕРНА including those in Ukraine.31 An important output of the research on crimes carried out by the Nazis in occupied territories was a collection edited by Alexan- der Friedman and Reiner Hudemann.32 Working with documents in Belarusian and German archives, the various authors clearly noted a historiographic vacuum concerning the fate of medical patients during the German occupation. Thus, the collection became a milestone not only in its attempt to introduce the analysis of little-known sources into the academic discourse (in particular, documents from medical facilities and materials of the Central Office of the State Justice Admin- istrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg) but also in bringing to light rarely considered aspects of cooperation between West German prosecution bodies and the Soviet side. One of the articles focused on medical supply and treatment conditions in Soviet Ukraine during the wartime occupation.33 In the absence to date of any monographs specially dedicated to research on the mass killing of patients in psychiatric clinics and homes for the disabled in Ukraine during the occupation, certain aspects of this topic are also examined in the works of Gerrit Hohendorf (numbers of victims in the Soviet Union and spe- cifically in Ukraine),34 Oleh Melnychuk,35 Janna Keberlein (events in the Vinnytsia Psychiatric Hospital),36 and Gelinada Grinchenko and Albert Venger (number of victims and fate of the employees of the psychiatric hospital in Ihren).37 Sources relevant to this topic that have been published include, firstly, German documents from the Second World War—mainly the “Reports on Events in the USSR” from the Einsatzgruppen, published in the original and in Russian transla-

31 Vasyl Doguzov, Svitlana Rusalovs’ka “The Massacre of Mental Patients in Ukraine, 1941–1943”, International Journal of Mental Health 36/1 (2007): 105–11. 32 Alexander Friedman, Rainer Hudemann, eds. Diskriminiert — vernichtet — vergessen: Behinderte in der Sowjetunion, unter nationalsozialistischer Besatzung und im Ostblock 1917–1991, (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag 2016). 33 Dmytro Tytarenko, “Medizinische Betreuung und nationalsozialistische Krankenmorde in der Ukraine unter der deutschen Okkupation”, Friedman; Hudemann, Diskriminiert — vernichtet — vergessen, 355–73. 34 Gerrit Hohendorf: Krieg und Krankenmord 1939–1945. Die Tötung von Psychiatriepatienten durch SS und Wehrmacht in Polen und in der Sowjetunion, PSYCH 9(2015): 49–64; Winkler, Hohendorf “The Murder of Psychiatric Patients”; see ex. remark 3. 35 Oleh Mel‘nychuk, “Znyshchennia dushevnokhvorykh 4-ї radians‘koї psykhiatrychnoї likarni m. Vinnytsi v roky natsysts‘koї okupatsiї (1941–1944 rr.)“ Naukovi zapysky [Vinnyts‘koho derzhavnoho pedahohichnoho universytetu imeni Mykhaila Kotsiubyns‘koho], Vinnytsia. Istoriia 26 (2018): 179–91. 36 Janna Keberlein, Der Zweite Weltkrieg im kulturellen Gedächtnis der Ukraine. Vergessene NS- Opfer im ukrainischen Winnyzja. URN: hbz:061-20190805-083136-7 37 Grinchenko, Gelinada, Al’bert Venher, А.H.Venger, “Masove znyshchennia patsiientiv Ihrens‘koї psykhiatrychnoї likarni vprodovzh 1941–43 rr.: tsyfry, liudy, dolі”, Vіsnyk KhNU imenі V.N. Karazina. Istoriia Ukraїny, Ukraїnoznavstvo: іstorychnі ta fіlosofs‘kі nauky 23 (2016): 60–70.

21 УКРАЇНА МОДЕРНА Число 28. “Непотрібні люди....” tion38—and post-war materials of the Central Office of the State Justice Administra- tions for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg39 and court trial documents from East and West Germany.40 Secondly, they are represented in prewar and post-war Soviet documents—namely, in the statements of the Extraor- dinary State Commission for identifying and investigating the crimes of the “Ger- man-fascist invaders” and in the stenographic record of the court trials concerning their crimes.41 In an interesting separate instance, archival materials from the history

38 The Chief Administration of Imperial Security, headed by Reinhard Heidrich, registered all the evidence of the Einsatzgruppen from the Soviet territories. This evidence should be considered as three types of documents: (1) “ “Reports of Events in the USSR”.” namely, 195 items from June 1941 through April 1942; (2) “Reports” on the activity and situation of Einsatzgruppen of the security police and SS in the USSR, which were of a summary nature and were written at the same time as the “Evidence”; and (3) “Reports from the Occupied Eastern Territories,” consisting of 55 documents in the 1941 new evidence format, mainly documenting anti- partisan initiatives. The collection uses mostly the “Reports” from 1941. These documents were published in: Klaus-Michael Mallmann; Andrej Angrick; Jürgen Matthäus; Matrin Cüppers eds., Die “Ereignismeldungen UdSSR” 1941. Dokumente der Einsatzgruppen in der Sowjetunion, (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2011). Also see Aleksandr Kruglov: Bez zhalosti I somneniia: Dokumenty o prestupleniiakh operativnykh grupp i komand politsii bezopasnosti i SD na vremenno okkupirovannoi territorii SSSR v 1941–1944 gg. Part 3 (Dnipropetrovsk, Tkuma 2009). About the “Reports,” see Ronald Headland, Messages of Murder: A Study of the Reports of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the Security Service, 1941–1943 (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 1992). 39 Founded in 1958 immediately after the Ulm trials, the Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes was mandated to collect materials that would subsequently be submitted to the regional courts. In the 1960s nearly 120 courts, prosecutors, and criminalists operated there, and in its years of activity the Office handled queries concerning approximately 106,000 persons—of whom, in the end, only 6,700 were convicted. For a history of the Office’s establishment and its work, see Annette Weinke, Eine Gesellschaft ermittelt gegen sich selbst. Die Geschichte der Zentralen Stelle in Ludwigsburg 1958–2008, (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2008). 40 Тhe verdicts of German courts concerning cases of Nazi crimes of killing were published in two series of documents: Christiaan F. Rüter; Dick W. de Mildt (comp.) Justiz und NS-Verbrechen. Sammlung (west-)deutscher Strafurteile wegen nationalsozialistischer Tötungsverbrechen, 1945–2012, 49 vols. (Amsterdam, München: Amsterdam University Press|Saur 1968–2012); and Christiaan F. Rüter; Dick W. de Mildt (comp.) DDR-Justiz und NS-Verbrechen. Sammlung (ost-)deutscher Strafurteile wegen nationalsozialistischer Tötungsverbrechen, 1945–1998. 14 vols. (Amsterdam, München: Amsterdam University Press|Saur Amsterdam, München 2002–2009). See, in particular, the court decision in the case of the killing of patients at the Poltava Psychiatric Hospital: LG Düsseldorf dated 12.01.1973, 8 Ks 3/70, Ruter / de Mildt, Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 38, case 784, 5‒165; 80–95. 41 As an example: Sbornik soobshchenii chrezvychainoi gosudarstvennoi komissii o zlodeianiiakh nemetsko-fashistskikh zakhvatchikov. OGIZ: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1946; Sudebnyi protsess po delu o zlodeianiiakh, sovershennykh nemetsko-fashistskimi zakhvatchikami v Belorusskoi SSR (16–29 ianvaria 1946 goda). (Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo BSSR, Minsk, 1947). Concerning Soviet historiography, see the article by G. Grinchenko in this special issue.

22 УКРАЇНА МОДЕРНА of the mass killing of psychiatric hospital patients were published in 1965 by the Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Psychiatry in Moscow. Compiled by Dmitrii Fedotov, the account includes documents of the then USSR Central State Archive of the October Revolution (today the State Archive of the Russian Federation), as well as witness testimony from the attending psychiatrists.42 With the opening of the archives of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in the 2010s, it became rather popular to publish materials from the investigations and trials of the employees of hospitals and other closed facilities involved in the crime of killing mentally ill persons and inmates of care homes for the disabled.43 These publications allow us to piece together the events that took place in two psychiatric hospitals—the Kyiv and Vinnytsia Psychiatric Clinics.44 Finally, the websites, exhibitions, and other initiatives to memorialize and pop- ularize knowledge about this heretofore little-researched topic also deserve a special mention. The virtual informational and memorial site www.gedenkort-t4.eu has existed since 2011, hallowing the memory of victims of the Nazi euthanasia program (includes the biographies of 150 victims) and providing information support to further research on this topic. As for exhibitions, “From Dehumanization to Murder: The Fate of Psychiatric Patients in Belarus (1941–44)”45 and “‘Remem-

42 Dmitrii Fedotov, “О gibeli dushevnobol’nykh na territorii SSSR, vremenno okkupirovannoi fashistskimi zakhvatchikami, v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny”, v L.L. Rokhlin: Voprosy sotsial’noi i klinicheskoi psikhonevrologii, vol. 44, (Moscow: Moscow [Scientific Research Institute of Forensic] Psychiatry of the Ministry of Healthcare of the RSFSR, 1965), 443–59. The published document excerpts were translated into German and compared chronologically and contextually with the “Reports of events in the USSR”; see Angelika Ebbinghaus, Gerd Preissler “Die Ermordung psychisch kranker Menschen in der Sowjetunion. Dokumentation” in, Aussonderung und Tod: die klinische Hinrichtung der Unbrauchbaren Götz Aly ed. (Berlin: Rotbuch Verlag, 1987), 75–107. At the time of publication of the collection, access to the Soviet documents was impossible. Thus, the Fedotov publication provided an alternative albeit fragmentary look at the Extraordinary State Commission. In addition, it was only from the mid- 1990s that it became possible to study the NKVD cases concerning rehabilitated doctors from the psychiatric hospitals, and unrehabilitated ones only after 2005. 43 See Valerii Vasyliev; Natalia Kashevarova; Olena Lysenko; Mariia Panova, and Roman Podkur, eds.: Nasyl’stvo nad tsyvil’nym naselenniam Ukraїny: Dokumenty spetssluzhb, 1941–1944 (Kyiv: V.O. Zakharenko, 2018); Valerii Vasyliev; Roman Podkur: Nasyl’stvo nad tsyvil’nym naselenniam: Chernihivs’ka oblast’; Dokumenty orhaniv derzhbezpeky, 1941–1943 (Kyiv: V.O. Zakharenko, 2019). These volumes were results of a larger research cooperation on “Violence against civilian victims on the Eastern front of WWII”. (https://www.uni-heidelberg.de/fakultaeten/philosophie/ zegk/sog/forschung/aktuelle_forschung.html). 44 On Vinnytsia city and Vinnytsia oblast alone a series of sources were published; see V.Iu. Vasil’ev, R.Iu. Podkur, S.D. Gal’chak, D. Bairau, and A. Vainer, Zhizn’ v okkupatsii: Vinnitskaia oblast’, 1941–1944 gg. (Moscow; Russian Political Encyclopedia (ROSSPEN), 2010); S.D. Hal’chak, V.M. Chekhivs’kyi (comp.), U leshchatakh “novoho poriadku”: naselennia Vinnychchyny pid natsysts’kym okupatsiinym rezhymom (Vinnytsia: Merkiuri-Podillia, 2013); P. Kravchenko, O. Mel’nychuk, T. Pastushenko (comp.) Zabuti zhertvy: Vinnychchyna v roky natsysts’koї оkupatsiї 1941–1944 rr. (Vinnytsia: Nilan, 2017). 45 Among many others, see, e.g., the Deutsche Welle with information about the project: https:// www.dw.com/ru/безымянная-память-белорусские-жертвы-нацистской-программы-эвта- назии/a-36785843.

23 УКРАЇНА МОДЕРНА Число 28. “Непотрібні люди....” ber Us’: The Killing of Patients in Psychiatric Clinics, Disabled Children, and Jew- ish Doctors during the Nazi Occupation of the Northern Caucasus” highlight the tragic fate of patients in hospitals for the mentally ill and homes for the disabled, including those for children, who were murdered during the Nazi occupation of Soviet territories.46 An interesting and unusual initiative in Ukraine since 1998 has been the Association of Psychiatrists of Ukraine—whose motto is “Honourable behaviour in dishonourable situations”—granting of two awards annually, one for a psychiatrist and one for an intermediate-level medical staffperson. They are named in memory of Moisei Tantsiura and Ananii Mazur, chief medical officer and medical attendant, respectively, at the Kyiv Psychiatric Hospital, to honour their roles in saving patients during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine.47 То study various aspects of the issue of mass killings that took place in the medical facilities of a psychiatric profile in the territory of occupied Ukraine, research work was carried out as part of the international project “Useless people: Mass killings of the patients of psychiatric hospitals on the territory of Ukraine during the German occupation,” with the support of the German Foundation “Re- membrance, Responsibility and Future,” whose results lay the foundation for this issue. The project team set themselves the basic objectives of discovering, analyz- ing, and evaluating the source base for investigations of mass killings of patients in Soviet Ukrainian psychiatric hospitals, studying and reconstructing the overall events, identifying the organizers and perpetrators of the crime, and researching the fate of the condemned doctors and medical staff, as well as the biographies of the victims, etc. In order to expand the contexts of the research topic and include the mass killing of patients in other occupied regions into the general scope of the scholarly discussion, the issue editors invited leading specialists in this area from other countries to participate in the publication, arranged for the translation of three articles and other tasks. The issue opens with its regular segment, a Forum, whose invited participants responded to five editorial questions that touched on the main discussion points in the study of the given topic and covered the overall composition of the issue. The Forum questions encompassed the research contexts of Nazi policy concerning the mentally ill and persons with disabilities in the occupied countries (whether it can be considered in the framework of the T4 program or the Holocaust); the role of medical staff in the mass killings that were carried out in the hospitals and other facilities, along with similar research areas that warrant further study; chal- lenges that were faced by researchers in investigating mass killings of patients and the medical staff who participated in them, including the lacunae still remaining in the research; particular features of the court proceedings against the organizers and perpetrators of the crime, etc. The editors of the special issue also focused

46 See the private website of the project: https://nsvictims.ru. 47 Asotsiatsiia psykhiatriv Ukrainy. Premii Asotsiatsii psykhiatriv Ukrainy: http://ukrpsychiatry. org/index.php/home-uk-ua/premii-apu.

24 УКРАЇНА МОДЕРНА their attention on commemorative initiatives to hallow the memory of the victims of this crime as people about whom practically nothing was known for a long time. The main part of the collection consists of scientific research, classified into four thematic blocks. The first is introductory in nature, represented by an article by Gerrit Hohendorf of Munich, a well-known German medical doctor and specialist on the research subject who has written many texts devoted to the Nazi euthanasia program. Titled “National-Socialist euthanasia: Origins, dynamics, and aftermath,” the article presents the author’s introduction to the topic of Nazi euthanasia and describes the implementation of an “easy death” for disposing of people who, according to the race ideology, were not worthy of the right to life. Continuing the discussion begun in the Forum, this text pays significant attention to highlighting the interplay between the Nazi implementation of the euthanasia program and the Holocaust practices in occupied European countries. The second block considers the mass killings of patients at psychiatric hospitals in German-occupied Eastern Europe, seeking the contexts in which this category of Nazi crimes can be studied. The first article in this block is an investigation by Olena Petrenko (Bochum, Germany) titled “Mass killings of Jewish patients at psychiatric clinics in Nazi-occupied Ukraine” For the first time, the problem of mass killings of Jewish patients is examined as a prelude to the destruction of other mentally ill persons, and the other analyzes its specificity in the context of a comparison of killing psychiatric patients in Ukrainian hospitals with the implementation of the Aktion T4 in Germany. Next, Dmytro Myeshkov (Lüneburg, Germany) reconstructs a single specific crime of mass killing of patients and shelter clients in Orlovo village—a place with a high concentration of ethnic Germans (today in Zaporizhia oblast). As a context to this case study, the author analyzed Nazi policy concerning ethnic Germans who were Soviet citizens. His main research source, introduced into scholarly circulation for the first time, was the case archive of the 1946 investigation into Ivan Klassen, a doctor and ethnic German who was accused, among other things, of participating in stipulating the diagnosis of “unemployable” for residents and patients at the home for disabled persons, leading subsequently to the execution by shooting of nearly half the patients in the facility. Through the prism of two biographies, the events in one hospital are studied in the research of Maike Rotzoll and Robert Parzer (Heidelberg, Germany). In order to analyze the features and dynamics of the mass killings, the authors selected the largest psychiatric clinic, which was at Kocborowo/Konradstein in Poland, and two waves of euthanasia that rolled through this institution before 1941: from the mass shooting of patients in 1939 and the start of 1940 to the numerous killings of children from the pediatric ward, which was specially established in 1940. In their study they also raise the difficulty of researchers from various countries examining the history of mass killings of psychiatric hospital patients and of seeking common international forms of hallowing the memory of this category of victims of Nazi

25 УКРАЇНА МОДЕРНА Число 28. “Непотрібні люди....” persecution—for even today it is still lacking its own commemorative practices, whether they be at the regional or national level. The two research studies in the next thematic block consider specific instances of the mass killing of disabled children: the charges at the Yeysk (Eisk) Orphanage (today in Krasnodar Krai, Russian Federation) and inmates of a dormitory-home “for defective children” in the village of Preslav (today in Zaporizhia oblast, Ukraine). The author of the first article, Irina Rebrova (Berlin, Germany) expands her analysis of this crime to include commemoration initiatives during Soviet and post-Soviet times, drawing interesting conclusions regarding the influence of So- viet memory culture on today’s public perceptions in Russia of the tragedy of the Yeysk children. In turn, the article by Tanja Penter (Heidelberg, Germany), “Child victims and female perpetrators: Dealing with Nazi-murder of disabled children in the postwar Soviet Union,” studies the issue in a gender dimension and examines the collaboration of female employees with the Nazi regime, analyzes the situa- tional aspect of violence, and identified alternative behavioural variations for the actors in this instance. For the great majority of the authors in this special issue, their main research sources were new, until recently inaccessible sources in the archives of the SBU— namely, case archives concerning the mass killing of psychiatric hospital patients in occupied Ukraine; in their articles, these materials are being introduced into academic circulation for the first time (whereas beforehand only selected publications were available of a limited number of documents from the cases of mass killing of patients at the hospitals in Kyiv and Vinnytsia, and initial analyses of these instances).48 Тhese sources are critically evaluated in an article by Gelinada Grinchenko (Kharkiv, Ukraine) that inaugurates the fourth thematic block of the special issue, “Court trials in the Soviet Union and in Germany.” In addition to identifying the specificity and source-critical value of this group of documents, in this article the author focuses in detail on how the subject of killing psychiatric patients is presented in Soviet historiography and memory culture. Next, an investigation by Dmytro Tytarenko (Kryvyi Rih, Ukrainе), relying not only on the above-men- tioned documents but also on court materials from trials that took place in Ger- many, reveals that the Nazis were not punished for the shooting of patients at the Poltava Psychiatric Hospital. This specific case study demonstrates the mechanism of cooperation that existed between the Soviet and German judicial bodies, and confirms its effectiveness. Lastly, the complex issue of falsified charges is presented in an investigation by Albert Venger (Dnipro city, Ukraine) in the final article of the block, titled A“ crime that never was? How the medical staff of psychiatric hospitals became victims of fabricated charges.” The author shows how, and using which means and resources, Soviet prosecutors fabricated charges and indicted hospital personnel for deeds that were subsequently proven to be invented and faked.

48 See cross-reference Nos. 9–10, 17–18.

26 УКРАЇНА МОДЕРНА

The thematic section of the special issue is rounded out with two additional blocks—“Documents” and “Translations.” The first is represented by two publications that document the mass killings of victims at homes for the disabled in Bakaivka and Kryvchyk, in the German-ruled Reichskommissariat Ukraine, and also the interrogation of the medical director of the Kyiv Psychiatric Hos- pital, providing details on how Soviet investigators produced evidence for the postwar trials of medical personnel alleged to have committed Nazi crimes. The second, in turn, includes the editors’ selection of excerpts from Karl Jaspers’ seminal work The question of German guilt, where he conceptualizes the problem of Germans’ culpability for the actions of the Nazis and the necessity of purifying the nation’s consciousness through a profound admission of its guilt. These excerpts have been translated for the first time into Ukrainian especially for this special issue of Ukraina Moderna. Two other articles by contemporary German scholars continue, to a certain extent, the reflections regarding admission of guilt and penance, raising the question of attitudes in German society towards the victims of euthanasia, including through the prism of criminal prosecution. Regarding the study of mass killings of patients in psychiatric hospitals, facilities for sick children, and homes for the disabled in German-occupied Ukraine during WWII, many questions remain that should be researched further. To con- clude this introduction we will describe one more topic that deserves special attention—namely, the adjustment and confirmation of numbers of murdered patients, in this case, at Soviet Ukrainian psychiatric treatment facilities. Most publications today cite numbers from 17,000 to 20,000 patients killed at psychiatric hospitals in the entire Soviet Union.49 Hohendorf lists eight sites of mass killings of patients in the territory of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine,50 and according to his calculations the Einsatzkommando victims in Ukraine numbered nearly five thousand male and female patients.51 However, the sites do not include the psychiatric hospitals in Kherson or Zhytomyr, nor are the numbers of victims provided for two of the psychiatric hospitals in Kharkiv, while for Chernihiv only partial data are given.

49 The best-known calculations for the hospitals, made by Нohendorf using mostly German sources (Ereignismeldungen UdSSR), produced the result of 17,000 victims; see note 9. 50 The author mistakenly marked the hospital in Ihren as being a medical institution on Russian territory. 51 Hohendorf, “Krieg und Krankenmord 1939–1945”.

27 УКРАЇНА МОДЕРНА Число 28. “Непотрібні люди....”

Supplemented data for 13 psychiatric hospitals: Directors and, in Timeframe of mass most cases, those Number of Name of Hospital killings who directly carried victims out the killing Sub-team of Based on various October 1941– Sonderkommando 4а Chernihiv Psychiatric calculations, up summer 1942 Einsatzgruppe C; Hospital to 400 Einsatzkommando 7b, Einsatzgruppe B Kharkiv Municipal December 1941 ? 470 Psychiatric Hospital Kharkiv Oblast November 1941 Einsatzgruppe С 435 Hospital at Strilecha village September–October Kherson Psychiatric 1941 ? 1,000 Hospital

Based on various October 1941– Einsatzkommando 5, Kyiv Psychiatric documents, up March 1942 Einsatzgruppe С Hospital to 1,000 victims

October 1941– Sonderkommando Poltava Psychiatric November 1941; 4b, Einsatzgruppe С 599 Hospital summer 1942

Based on various Psychiatric Hospital October 1941– Einsatzkommando 6, documents, at Ihren (suburb of March 1942 Einsatzgruppe С from 750 to Dnipropetrovsk) 1,500

Stalino Psychiatric ? ? ? Hospital

Svatovo Psychiatric ? ? 212 Hospital

Symferopоl Psychiatric November 1941– Einsatzgruppe D 485 Hospital March 1942

28 УКРАЇНА МОДЕРНА

350 Vasylkiv Oblast January–April 1942 Einsatzkommando 6, Some of the Psychiatric Hospital at Einsatzgruppe С patients were Dubovyky village killed at Ihren Vinnytsia Psychiatric September 1941– Einsatzkommando 6, 1,500 Hospital Spring 1942 Einsatzgruppe С Zhytomyr Psychiatric September 1941 ? 90 Hospital

Based on our calculations, nearly 8,000 patients were killed from the fall of 1941 to the spring of 1942. In addition, a large number of patients died from starvation and exhaustion. The killings took place in stages;52 how they proceeded de- pended on a whole series of factors, including the level of cooperation between the Einsatzkommando and the local German military command, the degree of involvement of hospital personnel in the killing, the location and conditions of the hospitals, etc. The direct organizers of the killings had mostly pragmatic motives, with vacating hospital premises to make room for the Wehrmacht, confiscation of property and food, seizure of the hospitals’ subsidiary farms for the German command, and savings gained by eliminating “superfluous eaters” being key factors. We are aware that the numbers put forward here need to be further augmented to reflect the overall total of psychiatric facilities in the territory of Soviet Ukraine, as well as accurate numbers of patients at each site, both before the war and after- wards. Additionally, the sources introduced here await further analysis and con- textualization with associated events. We expect that this collection will prompt both new research on and reassessment of WWII-era events, including their im- pact on Soviet psychiatric hospital patients, whose fate is still on the fringes of collective memory. Gelinada Grinchenko

Olena Petrenko

Translated from Ukrainian by Ksenia Maryniak

52 An exception would be the shooting of 435 patients at the psychiatric clinic in Strilecha village, Kharkiv oblast; all the patients were killed on 21–22 November 1941, with only one survivor. See the “Special memo from P. Medviediev, head of NKVD Unit 2 for the Ukrainian SSR to N. Khrushchev and D. Korotchenko, secretaries of the CC CP(b)U, and P. Fedotov, head of NKVD Unit 2 for the USSR, about the killing of psychiatric hospital patients in Strilecha village, Lyptsі district, Kharkiv oblast, in the Chief State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine 60–83517, ff. 81–82, publ. in: Vasyl’iev et al.Nasyl’stvo nad tsyvіl’nym naselenniam Ukraїny, 632н.