Label:
Rationalizing the killings, Muller-Hill and Watson
Description:
Interviewee: Benno Muller-Hill, James Watson
DNAi Location:
Chronicle>in the third reich>"the final solution"
Reasons for killing
Although euthanasia was first used for children with severe birth defects, the practice was extended to mentally ill adults at the beginning of the war – to free up hospital space for wounded soldiers.
"The final solution" to mental illness
In September 1939, Hitler attacked Poland. Sterilizations slowed nearly to a halt, likely because most people who fit the legal crtieria had already been sterilized. Acting on Hitler's suggestion that incurable mental patients "be granted mercy killing," a panel of psychiatrists and medical doctors completed a one-page questionnaire on each of 283,000 patients in mental hospitals throughout Germany. More than one-fourth of cases, those who were incurable or could not work, were marked with a "†" for death.
In January, 1940 a shower room fitted with a carbon monoxide vent was first tested to kill patients at the psychiatric hospital in Brandenberg, outside Berlin. Gas chambers on the Brandenberg model were quickly set up at Bernberg and other sites around Germany to accept patients marked for death. In 1940-41, more than 70,000 patients were poisoned with carbon monoxide at these extermination centers. Other patients were starved; given sleeping pills, morphine or scopolamine; or slowly administered poisons to disguise the cause of death. No such ruse was thought necessary in Poland and East Prussia, where storm troopers simply shot thousands of mental patients.
Benno Müller-Hill takes James Watson on a tour of the gas chamber at Bernberg Psychiatric Hospital, one of six euthanasia facilities for mental patients established in 1940-41.
Biological elements:
Concepts precesses:
eugenics, killing, sterilization
Tools & methods :