The Disabled

"There was no room in Hitler's world for anyone...

[that] he considered inferior" (Ayer 13).

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Among Hitler early victims were the disabled.  Again, the reason for this goes back to the idea of a perfect race.  This meant that anyone with mental problems or physical defects did not fit in.  Hitler called them "useless eaters".  Healthy Aryans were not to mix blood with these people.  

"In October 1939, just one month after war broke out, [Hitler] authorized a top secret mass murder program".  Doctors would fill out a Questionnaire for each disabled person.  This document stated if this person could maybe do some kind of work, or if they were just a "useless eater".  This was forwarded to a panel of 3 Reich doctors.  These doctors decided if the patients life was useless or not (Bartoletti 94-95).   

If the patient's were considered a Burden to Society, they were placed in a killing center.  The family was told that the person died from heart failure or pneumonia. 

100,000 Germans were put to death from 1939 to 1941.  There were between 70,000 and 80,000 in medical and nursing institutions, 10,000 to 20,000 segregated invalids and disabled, any Jewish people in psychiatric hospitals, and 3,000 (ages 3-13) in special schools or special care that were persecuted and murdered.  In 1941, however, the mass killings were suspended.  There was growing upset among the population about the many invalids that died.  The program was called "T-4".  The people working in this program were needed to kill all of the Jews rounded up by the Nazis. 

"[The Nazis] produced short documentaries to convince the public that the patients' lives were not worth living".  "On walls and in buildings the Nazis plastered posters that advertised the tax payers cost of caring for the patients" (Bartoletti 94). 

 This slide shows the cost of feeding a person with a hereditary disease.

The slide shows that a family of healthy Germans can live for one day on the same

amount of money it takes to support a disabled person for the same amount of time. 

(USHMM, courtesy of Roland Klemig)

Furthermore, the Nazis tried to prevent these defects from ever happening.  They "forcibly sterilized men and women considered too mentally or physically unfit to produce desirable children".  The government passed a law that required nurses and midwives to report newborn babies that had defects or deformities (Bartoletti 94). 

This chart illustrates the probability of mental illness among the offspring of

schizophrenics, manic-depressives, and members of the general population.

(USHMM, courtesy of Bezirkskrankenhaus Kaufbeuren) 

Other links to visit:

Nazi Euthanasia

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