Robertson Robertson Michael Robertson Astrid Ley Edwina Light UNDER THE NAZI REGIME A SECRET PROGRAM OF ‘EUTHANASIA’ WAS Ley UNDERTAKEN AGAINST THE SICK Light AND DISABLED. KNOWN AS THE KRANKENMORDE (THE MURDER OF THE SICK) 300,000 PEOPLE WERE KILLED. A THE INTO THE FIRST THE FURTHER 400,000 WERE STERILISED AGAINST THEIR WILL. MANY COMPLICIT DOCTORS, NURSES, SOLDIERS AND BUREAUCRATS WOULD FIRST THEN PERPETRATE THE HOLOCAUST. _ From eyewitness accounts, records and case fi les, The First into the Dark narrates a history of the victims, perpetrators, opponents to and INTO witnesses of the Krankenmorde, and reveals deeper implications for contemporary society: moral values and ethical challenges in end of life decisions, reproduction and contemporary DARK genetics, disability and human rights, and in THE remembrance and atonement for the past. DARK UTS ePRESS, IS A PEER REVIEWED, OPEN ACCESS THE NAZI PERSECUTION OF THE DISABLED SCHOLARLY PUBLISHER. THE FIRST INTO THE DARK Michael Robertson Astrid Ley Edwina Light THE FIRST INTO THE DARK THE NAZI PERSECUTION OF THE DISABLED UTS ePRESS University of Technology Sydney Broadway NSW 2007 AUSTRALIA epress.lib.uts.edu.au Copyright Information This book is copyright. The work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial-Non Derivatives License CC BY-NC-ND http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 First Published 2019 © 2019 in the text and images, the authors © 2019 in the book design and layout, UTS ePRESS Publication Details DOI citation: https://doi.org/10.5130/aae ISBN: 978-0-6481242-2-1 (paperback) ISBN: 978-0-6481242-3-8 (pdf) ISBN: 978-0-6481242-5-2 (ePub) ISBN: 978-0-6481242-6-9 (Mobi) Peer Review This work was peer reviewed by disciplinary experts. Declaration of conflicting interest The editors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this book. Funding The editors received no dedicated financial support for the research and publication of this book. UTS ePRESS Manager: Scott Abbott Books Editor: Matthew Noble Designer: Emily Gregory Enquiries: [email protected] For enquiries about third party copyright material reproduced in this work, please contact UTS ePRESS. OPEN ACCESS UTS ePRESS publishes peer reviewed books, journals and conference proceedings and is the leading publisher of peer reviewed open access journals in Australasia. All UTS ePRESS online content is free to access and read. To read the free, open access version of this book online, visit https://doi.org/10.5130/aae or scan this QR code with your mobile device: EPIGRAPH DOG FOX FIELD The test for feeblemindedness was, they had to make up a sentence using the words dog, fox and field. Judgement at Nuremberg These were no leaders, but they were first into the dark on Dog Fox Field: Anna who rocked her head, and Paul who grew big and yet giggled small, Irma who looked Chinese, and Hans who knew his world as a fox knows a field. Hunted with needles, exposed, unfed, this time in their thousands they bore sad cuts for having gaped, and shuffled, and failed to field the lore of prey and hound they then had to thump and cry in the vans that ran while stopped in Dog Fox Field. Our sentries, whose holocaust does not end, they show us when we cross into Dog Fox Field. - Les Murray, from the book Dog fox field. By kind permission v TABLE OF CONTENTS Epigraph .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. v Table of contents ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... vii List of illustrations ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................... ix Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. xv Part 1 : The Crime ....................................................................................................................................................3 Part 1 - Introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................................................5 Chapter 1 : The iron door ............................................................................................................................................................................9 Chapter 2 : ‘Life unworthy of living’ ...................................................................................................................................25 Chapter 3 : Aktion T4 – Implementation and resistance ....................................................39 Chapter 4 : ‘Dr Schneider’ ........................................................................................................................................................................65 Chapter 5 : ‘There was wonderful material among those brains’ .................93 Chapter 6 : ‘Cure or destroy’ .......................................................................................................................................................117 Part 2 : Lessons and legacies ............................................................................................................ 139 Part 2 - Introduction .........................................................................................................................................................................................141 Chapter 7 : Was Elvira Hempel a survivor of the Holocaust? ........................145 Chapter 8 : The ethical dimension ...................................................................................................................................165 Chapter 9 : Remembrance, commemoration, memorialisation ..................209 Epilogue ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 233 Endnotes ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 247 Glossary ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 301 Appendix 1 – Key historical figures and institutions ..................................................................... 305 Appendix 2 – Other crimes perpetrated by non-German scientists in the mid-twentieth century ................................................................................................... 311 Appendix 3 – Note on research and sources ............................................................................................ 315 Appendix 4 – Select English language bibliography ........................................................................ 319 Author biographies ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 334 vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIGURE 1. The Uchtspringe Institution in 1903 Uchtspringe-1903-Heil-und Pflegeanstalt (Healing and Nursing Home). Creative Commons, Public domain 2. The Uchtspringe Institution in the 1940s Brandenburg Memorials Foundation 3. Notes from the assessment of Elvira Hempel by Professor Fünfgeld in 1938 Photo courtesy of Heinz Manthey 4. Elvira Hempel (left) and Lisa Hempel (right) Photo courtesy of Heinz Manthey 5. The Brandenburg extermination centre in the 1940s Photo courtesy of Brandenburg Memorials Foundation 6. Direction from Adolf Hitler to Philipp Bouhler and Karl Brandt, 1 September 1939 Dokumentationszentrum Reichsparteitagsgelände. Public domain 7. Deborah Kallikak at work in the sewing room of the Vineland Training School for Feebleminded Children, c1910 Wikimedia Commons: The Kallikak Family. Public domain ix The First Into The Dark 8. A registration card for the Aktion T4 program Patientenarchiv im Christophsbad, Göppingen, Germany 9. Patients at the ‘Schloß Bruckberg’ care institution Pressestelle der Diakonie Neuendettelsau. Public domain 10. The Aktion T4 killing centres in Nazi Germany and Austria 1939-1941 in their present day locations Authors illustration. Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND 11. Anti-disability propaganda image published in the journal Neues Volk Photo: From exhibition ‘Die Landesanstalt Görden 1933 bis 1945: Psychiatrie im Nationalsozialismus’, Görden/Brandenburg. Reproduced with Permission. Author photo, November 2016 12. Archbishop of Münster Clemens von Galen Photo: Diocesan Archives, Münster. Reproduced with Permission 13. Karl Bonhoeffer, professor of psychiatry