done away with or are also to be done away with), but also they get the impression that the selection of the persons affected by this measure is done in a completely arbitrary manner. If the State really wants to carry out the extermination of these patients or certain kinds of mental diseases, should not a clear law-openly accounted for to the people-be published, a law which would give every single person the guarantee of a careful examination of his liability to die or right to live, and would also give relatives the chance to be heard, as in the case of the law for the prevention of the transmission of hereditary diseases? With regard to the other patients entrusted to our institutions, I urgently beg you to do all you can to get the execution of these measures suspended, at least until a clear legal position has been created. Heil Hitler! [signed] Schlaich. I have sent a copy of this letter to the Head of the Reich Chancellery, Reich Minister Dr. Lammers, by the same post. Copy. To Reich Minister of Justice Dear Mr. Schlaich, Berlin, 10.9.1940. Your letter of the 6th of this month concerning the affair of the "transfer of inmates of institutions to another institution" reached me yesterday. For reasons of competence I sent it on to the Reich Minister of the Interior. To: Heil Hitler! Yours truly, [signed] Dr. Guertner. The Supervisor of the Sanatorium for Mental patients and epi Enclosed I take the liberty of sending you a letter from the su pervisor of the sanatorium in Stetten i.R., which I received last night, as I am not the competent person to deal with the directive asked for by the supervisor. I have notified the sender of the passing on of his letter. Heil Hitler! Yours truly, The Reich Minister Dr. Frick Reich Ministry of the Interior. TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT M-152 COPY Wuerttemberg Evangelical Provincial Church To the Reich Minister of the Interior Dr. Frick. Berlin NW. Dear Reich Minister, 19 July 1940. For some months past, insane, feeble-minded and epileptic patients of state and private medical establishments have been transferred to another institution on the orders of the Reich Defence Council. Their relatives, even when the patient was kept at their cost, are not informed of the transfer until after it had taken place. Mostly they are informed a few weeks later that the patient concerned had died of an illness, and that, owing to the danger of infection, the body had had to be cremated. On a superficial estimate several hundred patients from institutions in Wuerttemberg alone must have met their death in this way, among them war-wounded of the Great War. Owing to numerous inquiries from town and country and from the most variegated circles, consider it my duty to point out to the Reich Government that this affair is causing a particular stir in our small province. Firstly because one of the institutions concerned, Grafeneck castle, to which the patients are delivered and where a crematorium and registrar's office have been set up, is in Wuerttemberg. Grafeneck is the property of an institution of the "Inner Mission," the Samaritan Foundation, which for years. has been taking in and looking after persons who are physically or mentally maimed. On the outbreak of war, it was transferred to the convent of Reutte in Upper Swabia on the order of the Wuerttemberg Ministry of the Interior; Grafeneck was intended for the reception of patients brought from other institutions. The castle lies on a height of the Swabian Alb in a sparsely populated forest district. With all the more attention does the population of the surrounding area follow the events that take place there. The transports of sick persons who are unloaded at the small railway station of Marbach a.L., the buses with opaque windows which bring sick persons from more distant railway stations or directly from the institutions, the smoke which rises from the crematorium and which can be noticed even from a considerable distance-all this gives all the more rise to speculation as no one is allowed into the castle. The second reason why grave importance is attached to these things in Wuerttemberg is the fact that symptoms of degeneration are not rare even in mentally and morally high-ranking families in our small province. It is partly the consequences of marriages between relations, connected with the long seclusion of the province, that are noticeable here. A comparatively large number of families from the cultured class also is thus affected by the measures directed towards annihilation which are being taken against patients of institutions. The manner of action is already sharply criticised in these circles; there is much talk, in particular, of deceptions which occur in this connection. Everybody is convinced that the causes of deaths which are published officially are selected at random. When, to crown everything, regret is expressed in the obituary notice that all endeavors to preserve the patient's life were in vain, this is felt as a mockery. But it is, above all, the air of mystery which gives rise to the thought that something is happening that is contrary to justice and ethics and cannot therefore be defended by the Government with full publicity like other necessary and severe war measures. This point is continually stressed -by simple people as well-in the numerous written and oral statements which come to us. It also appears that very little care was taken, at first at any rate, in the selection of the patients destined for annihilation. They did not limit themselves to insane persons, but included also persons capable of work, especially among the epileptics. The most important thing seems to me, however, that the Reich Government should appreciate the fundamental objections which have been raised among our people from humane and religious motives against this action, and should not consider the present ill-humour as a disregard of national and political necessities. I would therefore request permission to deal in greater detail with the problem of annihilation: I myself formerly had, as a subsidiary duty, the care of souls at a state sanatorium and nursing home and am therefore not unacquainted with the conditions and problems which arise in this connection. Naturally, everybody who sees such pitiful men, thinks over and over again "Would it not be better to put an end to such an existence? It has no value for itself and means a heavy burden on the relatives." When the consequences of the blockade made themselves felt during the Great War and many patients died of tuberculosis and other illnesses fostered by malnutrition-the number of funerals which I had to hold amounted normally to about 20, but increased to 50 in 1917-everybody accepted this as a natural consequence of the war and as a divine ordinance, and one could be thankful in many cases that the end had come. It is, however, quite a different matter to take steps to bring about this end through human intervention. Many patients are conscious of their existence and position to a much greater extent than healthy people assume; in many cases, when one believes that they have not heard or have not understood, words addressed to them, it transpires afterwards that they have in fact done so, but were not able to react as a healthy person would have reacted. Many are distinctly sensitive as to whether they are treated lovingly or roughly by their doctor and nurse. Now put yourself into the mental position of a patient who draws the conclusion from all sorts of signs that something is to happen to him, who, maybe, is even subjected to force in order to make him board the transport-and you will be convinced that this is wrong, as God's will is interfered with and human dignity violated thereby. The decision as to when the life of a human sufferer should be terminated rests with Almighty God, according to whose inscrutable decision a completely healthy and valuable man is taken away before his time in one case, and an incapacitated man languishes on for decades in another. I can well understand that, in view of these and of many other facts which cannot be explained rationally, many people reject belief in God and adopt a creed of blind fate in its place; but I cannot understand that a party which implicitly rejects atheism and which has selected and introduced the term "believers in God" for those outside the Christian faith, should approve of and carry out a violation of God's sovereign right, as is the case in the treatment of the patients of the institutions. The Fuehrer has only recently called for prayer for the fighting troops and for humble thanksgiving for the glorious victory over France; can we not also entrust the lives of our suffering compatriots to this God, and is it not his will that we look after them while he lets them live? Here I come to the second reason why the sensibilities of our Pre-Christian Antiquity people take offence at these measures. already laid down the principle: res sacra miser, the unfortunate person is a holy thing. Christianity has always made it its duty to look after the sick and suffering, because of Him, of whom it is said: He bore our sickness and took our pains upon Himself. As opposed to the roughness of primitive paganism, man was treated as a human being and not as an animal. The progresses in the field of medicine were utilised for mental patients as well in the institutions of the Christian labour of love. And it is actually specialists in institutions of the Inner Mission and in state institutions who have made considerable progress. I have often admired the conscientiousness and patience of institution psychiatrists who, while showing a much smaller percentage of successful cures as compared to other doctors, nevertheless treat every patient as something of value entrusted to them. How hard it must be for these men to allow and to defend measures contrary to the whole tradition of their profession, that are directed towards the opposite of the humane attitude which, in addition to scientific accuracy, forms the honour and dignity of the medical profession! Perhaps, however, I shall receive the reply: the hundreds of thousands of physically and mentally incapacitated persons are too heavy a burden economically and financially for the German people who have now undertaken such big tasks; the relatives must make their sacrifices, as the families of those killed at the front have made much heavier sacrifices! Against this one must say that a people fights for its existence, and that no one is too good to risk his life in this battle for existence-that we may accept as God's will and commandment, that, however, the weak and defenseless should be destroyed, not because they represent a danger to us, but because we are tired of feeding them and caring for them that is contrary to God's commandment. Do we not praise our soldiers because, when they have done their duty against the armed enemy, they mercifully look after the unarmed, especially women, children, wounded and sick, and do not consider them burdens which they thus impose on themselves and the nation. It would indeed be possible to entertain the thought: we have no reason to spare an inimical nation which has done us as much harm as the French. But this thought would be worty of a Clemenceau, not of a German. It is no doubt very painful for the parents if among their children there is one who is mentally deficient; but they will let this child feel their whole love as long as God allows it to live; contrary treatment, which of course does occur also, is condemned by |