Euthanasia

The Killing of the Handicapped: Murder in a Klagenfurt Old-Age Home

The so-called Nazi euthanasia program began in 1939, with institutionalized German physically disabled and psychiatric patients as the first victims. The killings extended to nearly three thousand Jews by the spring of 1940. Originally known as T4, named for the administrative headquarters at Tiergartenstrasse 4 in Berlin, the program initially used carbon monoxide in mobile vans to murder the victims; later, enclosed gas chambers were used. After 1941 the original T4 program expanded to include concentration camp prisoners too ill to work, and was known as “14f13." By 1943 the so-called euthanasia program had become decentralized. Killing operations were established in many hospitals and sanitaria, and the number of victims expanded rapidly to even larger figures than the seventy thousand patients killed during the first year between 1939 and 1940. These later killings were done by starvation and by pharmaceutical overdoses.

One example of the euthanasia killings is found in the following document, which details the death of the elderly Maria Tillian in an old-age home near Klagenfurt in 1944. The statement was made as part of postwar Austrian pretrial investigations into euthanasia killings by Dr. Franz Niedermoser in the Klagenfurt Psychiatric Hospital. This document, part of the trial record, is located in the Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes (Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance), Vienna, file E 18371. Translation by Patricia Heberer.

During the month of November 1944, the pensioner Maria TILLIAN, formerly resident in Spittal-on-Drau, Ponau 20, after a residence of long duration in the old-age home in Klagenfurt, was murdered in the course of experiments conducted by Dr. NIEDERMOSER.

On 28 March 1946 the factory worker Alois MANDL, residing in Spittal-on-Drau, Ortenburgerstrasse 48, reported to the local gendarmerie post the following:

In 1943 my close acquaintance Maria Tillian, a resident of Spittal-on-Drau, Ponau 20, was placed in the old

age home in Wernberg near Villach as a result of her advanced age and a lack of appropriate care. After a short time, she was returned to Spittal-on-Drau and placed in the municipal hospital. Because of her age, she was then transferred to an old-age home in Klagenfurt. She was, despite her advanced age, completely healthy. From this institution Tillian often wrote me letters in which she complained that she received too little to eat. In the beginning Tillian was in the main building, but she was later placed in a rear ward. In September 1944 I visited Tillian for the last time in Klagenfurt. During my visit she was confined to a day room. She beseeched me to take her out of the institution. Because I was short on space, I could do nothing for her. In October 1944 I received her last letter, enclosed here, in which she reported that women disappeared from her ward at night and were never seen again. Tillian further complained that she was beaten by a female attendant and received nothing more to eat. Moreover, she was given a spoonful of medicine even though she was not ill; she was forced to take this, although she spit it out immediately. She later received another spoonful of medicine that made her dreadfully sick. This was the last letter she wrote. On 5 November 1944 I was notified that Tillian had died.

Else's Mother Wants to Know

As the "euthanasia" program decentralized and expanded in the last two years of the war, many patients were transferred without notification of or permission from their relatives to hospitals where they were eventually killed. The families of the deceased often requested more information, but arrogant physicians responded with hostility and contempt. The following document is a letter from Elisabeth inquiring about her daughter Else's fate. (Elisabeth's surname has been blacked out in accordance with Germam privacy laws.) Assured that her daughter was healthy, Elisabeth learned of Else's death at the distant psychiatric hospital of MeseritzObrawalde, where Else had been transferred from Galkhausen in the Rhineland. Else was twenty-eight years old when she was killed on 19 July 1944. This letter was used in an exhibition about sterilization and euthanasia at the provincial psychiatric hospital and nursing home Galkhausen in the Rhineland; these archival records are deposited at the Rheinischer Landesklinik Langenfeld (formerly known as the Provinzial Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Galkhausen). The document was published in Matthias Leipert, Rudolf Styrnal, and Winfried Schwarzer, Verlegt nach unbekannt: Sterilisation und Euthanasie in Galkhausen, 1933-1945 (Cologne: Rheinland Verlag, 1987), 239. Translation by Patricia Heberer.

whether they were very surprised or shocked to hear now that in the Landes-Heilanstalt at Hadamar over 470 Russians and Poles died by injections. This question was mostly answered in the affirmative. I want to talk about the motives underlying the cause of the law-makers to excuse them.

THE PRESIDENT-While this Commission is willing that you take all the time you need to make any statements, statements that are not pertinent to the issues . . . are not. . . relevant... The laws of the German Reich are not a point at issue. Confine your statement to the points that I have just explained, namely, the killing of the Russians and Poles at Hadamar Institution between the dates of 1st July, 1944, and 1st April, 1945.

ACCUSED KLEIN-I want to talk about transports which were transferred to the Institution. I remember very well all details of the first big transport. As I stated before, this transport came from the labor camp in Hersfeld. I received all the transport lists and case histories from the leader of the transport in Limburg, and I looked through all medical papers specifically. It was to be seen from these medical papers without doubt that all sick people who arrived had been treated in hospitals for several months because of tuberculosis. Because they were not curable, they were released from these hospitals and brought back to the labor camps. After I had seen that from the papers, that evening I myself went up to the ward and I myself saw a great part of these sick people after they were undressed. All of the witnesses and also the accused must certify that, as far as the big transport is concerned especially, more than half of these diseased people had tuberculosis. In a large number of these diseased people, pus areas could be seen in the body the size of a hand. I remember a transport in which two children of the age of six arrived. This small transport arrived one afternoon and I saw it come towards the Institution. I looked at these small children who had pus extending on both arms. When the children came to this Institution, they were crying already. I am of the sure conviction that if the gentlemen of the Commission had a chance to see such a transport it would not be difficult for them to judge whether the deeds which took place at Hadamar and whether this case can be looked upon as a violation of International Law. I myself believe it is cruel that such people who were incurable had to endure pain, if one would let them live longer, because this was a big danger to Eastern workers at that time. If these tubercular people remained in the camps, without doubt one would have to reckon that hundreds of thousands would be infected with tuberculosis. One had to consider that in part of these labor camps sanitary conditions are not of such a kind that such a disease can be treated.

BY THE PROSECUTION—There is nothing further that you wanted to say?

ACCUSED KLEIN-No.

Gypsies

Himmler Circular Letter, 10 March 1944

On 10 March 1944 Heinrich Himmler ordered that the publication of restrictive decrees against Jews and Gypsies be discontinued since their “evacuation and isolation" had already been accomplished. Even in this deceptive language, the text reveals that the mass murder of European Jews and Gypsies had been largely completed by the spring of 1944; and it was thus unnecessary to publish such decrees.

This document, PS 664, was used by the American prosecution at Nuremberg and was published in English translation in the Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10 [Green Series], 14 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1950-52), 3:713. The original German text reproduced in facsimile below is from documents in Washington, D.C., National Archives, Record Group 238.

Berlin, 10 March 1944

The Reich Leader SS
Minister of Interior Affairs
S. Pol. IV D 2 c-927/44 g-24

[Initial] TH [Thierack]

[Stamp] Reich Ministry of Justice 17 March 1944 Dept. VII

SECRET

To the Supreme Reich Authorities

Subject: Posted prohibitions concerning Poles, Jews, and Gypsies

The separately published decrees and rules governing the livelihood of Poles, Jews, and Gypsies within the jurisdiction of the Reich, have frequently led to a summary equalization of these groups in the public eye as far as saleand-utilization prohibitions, public announcements in the press, etc., are concerned. This attitude does not correspond with the differentiated political position to be granted to these groups now, and in the future.

As far as Jews and Gypsies are concerned the accomplished evacuation and isolation of these groups by the Chief of the Security Police and the SD has made the publication of special directives (concerning the all inclusive prohibition of participation in many livelihoods) in the previous manner meaningless. Therefore, corresponding public directives may be eliminated.