Posted on 01/18/2005 2:22:59 PM PST by Shermy
MUNICH - A second cousin of Adolf Hitler was one of the victims of the mass killing of the handicapped and mentally ill under the Nazi dictator's rule, new research has shown.
Aloisia V., who had spent many years in a secure psychiatric centre, was murdered in the gas chambers of the Hartheim Institute near Linz in Austria in December 1940, researchers said Monday.
She was 49 at the time, only two years younger than Hitler.
The fate of Hitler's second cousin has come to light after study of previously unknown Nazi documents by the Institute for Forensic Medicine in Munich and the Obersalzberg Institute for contemporary history at Berchtesgaden.
Aloisia V. had spent nine years at the secure Am Steinhof psychiatric hospital in Vienna until 28 November 1940 when she was transported to another institute near Ybbs and finally sent to the gas chambers at Hartheim on 6 December of that year.
It is thought at least 200,000 handicapped, mentally ill and other institutional patients were murdered by the Nazis as part of the policy of extermination decreed by Hitler himself.
Salzburg-based US historian Dr Timothy W. Ryback and private researcher Florian M. Beierl worked with Munich forensic scientist Professor Wolfgang Eisenmenger in the investigation.
Ryback said Hitler's attempts to keep details of his family history a secret were legendary.
"After 60 years we now know why. This man really had something to hide," he said.
According to patient files from the Am Steinhof psychiatric hospital, which also became a centre for mass murder, Aloisia V. suffered from schizophrenia and depression and was prone to hallucinations, mental distraction and delusions.
She spent her time in a cot and was subject to outbursts of rage but also carried out craftwork peacefully. She had once asked in a letter in 1934 to be administered poison "to free me from my terrible torture".
Eisenmenger said no conclusions on Hitler's mental health should be drawn from the new research. There has been no evidence that Hitler was, for example, schizophrenic, he said.
However in genealogical trees which show as many cases of illness as that of the Hitler family tree it was possible that "abnormal personalities" sometimes appear more frequently.
Aloisia V. came from Hitler's father's branch of the family tree, the Schicklgrubers, in which there were several cases of mental illness and one relative who committed suicide.
Other relatives of the Austrian-born dictator, including a cousin and an aunt from his mother's side, suffered from physical defects such as curvature of the spine or stunted growth.
The two institutes are preparing a detailed report of the significance of the newly discovered documents in German and Austrian archives which they say give fresh insights into Hitler's largely unknown family history.
DPA
Oh man, TG I wasn't drinking milk...
The Nazi genocides were so humongous, wide, mechanical and rationalized they are the greatest crimes the world has seen. Though for speed the Hutus probably rank higher.
Nazis were the worst, but hardly the first genociders. What is completely unique to them is they targeted the disabled. I don't know any culture that ever so targeted the disabled, let alone their own disabled.
I'm doing this off the top of my head,but every women with the exception of one (whom he married off to a homosexual aid) committed suicide. Shades of Rosemary's baby I guess.
That "tour" story reminds me of a joke:
Hitler is having a staff meeting of a couple dozen generals and advisors. He's right in the middle of a point, and somebody sneezes. Hitler explodes: "Who sneezed?!?"
Of course, no one owns up. After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, Hitler says, "Unless someone tells me who sneezed, I vill choose one person at random every 30 seconds, and have him shot! You have 30 seconds!" No one speaks up, so he chooses a guy at random, who is seized by the guards, taken out into the lobby, and shot. 30 seconds later, still no confession, and another guy is taken out and shot. Another 30 seconds, Hitler chooses another victim. Just as he's about to be taken out, one of the advisors speaks up:
"I'm sorry, Fuhrer, but it vas me! I am the one who sneezed!"
Hitler looks at him, and says, "Gezundheit!"
you know Michael Crichton in a prolog or epilog to "State of Fear", discussed eugenics and how it was considered science by all of Europe and North America, including both Presidents Roosevelt, up until we all learned what Hitler and the Vunderkind who ran his Concentration Camps and Creamatoriums did with the concept. Then it became junk science....kind of like global warming...
you mean "Spezielle Athletische Wettbewerbe"... Konkurrenz does also mean competition but competition as in (business) rivalry, not sports competitions. But I like your dig at the Kennedy's :-)
What is completely unique to them is they targeted the disabled.
Actually what made them unique was the industrialization
of genocide.
not to be in any way wishing to defend Hitler, but Nazi guncontrol was a myth. The gun laws were enacted by the Weimar Republic to help them in case they needed to de-arm Hitler's stormtroopers. He was a vegetarian out of necessity (meat gave him stomach pains) and was not gay (but didn't disapprove of them until he started the war). Hitler fancied young girls though...
I disagree.
IIRC, it was the American eugenics movement, in which Sanger figured prominently, that inspired Hitler.
the Nazis were most emphatically NOT the worst - that "honor" goes to Stalin and his pet bastard Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beriya.
An order of magnitude worse.
Can to tie in the Swimmer with that word too?
From his website:
lol!! Hey maybe there`s two anti-christs, Oprah and Hitlery.
The Beast and the False Prophet.
Very interestink! In the book 'The Third Reich' there's a little anecdote that tells us the Fuehrer's nickname was 'tepichfresser' - which translates to 'carpet-chewer'
Seems that when he was besides himself with rage, he would get down on the floor and chew the carpet.
Mentally ill? Heck no. Well, at least the mufti of Jerusalem didn't think so when Hitler promised him that no Jews would be allowed by the Reich to migrate to Palestine.
Islam and the Fuehrer - the source of the 'final solution'
Two madmen with so much in common - Hitler and mohammad. Both were schizophrenic. Both were delusional. Both cast an evil spell. Both are responsible for the death of millions...but Hitler's dead and islam isn't. Yet.
an order of magnitude of 2 to 1 worse to be exact.
The Nazis were sort of an historian's dream regime. Efficient Germans, they filmed and photographed so much horror, and kept very meticulous records of the deaths in their camps - until near the end.
The Soviets kept sloppy Russian records, and often destroyed the accounts they had. For instance, there are very few photos of Stalin's Ukrainian Holocaust, and the death toll can still be only estimated at between 5 to 10 million people, a huge discrepancy of humans. It was a monstrous time, and Stalin had the full benefit of Western communist sympathizers who refused to acknowledge any such mass enforced starvation going on. Just as Western communists refused to believe in the Gulags, while screaming the whole time about the well-documented Nazi concentration camps which killed much fewer people.
I am half-Ukrainian.
believe me, I am aware of the double standard.
< /Nazi bastard. >
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