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The Murder of the Handicapped in Nazi Germany
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ^ | Posted March 19th, 2005

Posted on 03/19/2005 1:58:53 PM PST by M. Espinola

Wartime, Adolf Hitler suggested, "was the best time for the elimination of the incurably ill." Many Germans did not want to be reminded of individuals who did not measure up to their concept of a "master race." The physically and mentally handicapped were viewed as "useless" to society, a threat to Aryan genetic purity, and, ultimately, unworthy of life.

At the beginning of World War II, individuals who were mentally retarded, physically handicapped, or mentally ill were targeted for murder in what the Nazis called the "T-4," or "euthanasia," program.

The "euthanasia" program required the cooperation of many German doctors, who reviewed the medical files of patients in institutions to determine which handicapped or mentally ill individuals should be killed. The doctors also supervised the actual killings.

Doomed patients were transferred to six institutions in Germany and Austria, where they were killed in specially constructed gas chambers. Handicapped infants and small children were also killed by injection with a deadly dose of drugs or by starvation.

The bodies of the victims were burned in large ovens called crematoria.

Despite public protests in 1941, the Nazi leadership continued this program in secret throughout the war. More than 200,000 handicapped people were murdered between 1940 and 1945.

The T-4 program became the model for the mass murder of Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and others in camps equipped with gas chambers that the Nazis would open in 1941 and 1942. The program also served as a training ground for SS members who manned these camps.

All graphics added


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Foreign Affairs; Germany; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: eugenics; euthanasia; florida; handicaped; nazi; nazism; t4; terri; terrisfight; utilitarianism

This Nazi poster reads: "This person suffering from hereditary defects costs the people 60,000 Reichmarks during his lifetime. People, that is your money. Read 'New People'."

Law for the Protection of Hereditary Health: The Attempt to Improve the German Aryan Breed, July 14TH, 1933

Jewish Starvation Experiment Victim


1 posted on 03/19/2005 1:58:53 PM PST by M. Espinola
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To: M. Espinola

Hitler would be in awe and envious of what we have been doing since Roe vs. Wade. Hitler was an amateur.


2 posted on 03/19/2005 2:10:31 PM PST by auburntiger
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To: M. Espinola

And so it begins...again.

As I said on an earlier thread, I guess we owe the Nazi doctors executed after the war an apology. They were just ahead of their time, true visionaries. How much better a place the world would have been by now if we'd followed their policies for the past 60 years instead of demonizing them! /sarcasm


3 posted on 03/19/2005 2:19:40 PM PST by LibFreeOrDie (How do you spell dynasty? P-A-T-R-I-O-T-S!)
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To: M. Espinola

It is important to remember that the idea of killing off the "unworthy to live" got started in Germany before WWI, and it got going in practice under the Weimar Republic in 1930. All the Nazis really did was carry it to its logical conclusion.


4 posted on 03/19/2005 2:26:11 PM PST by Restorer
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To: M. Espinola

Very fitting w/ all that's going on down in FL.


5 posted on 03/19/2005 2:28:28 PM PST by OXENinFLA
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To: OXENinFLA

well except in fact it has been discovered that many of the children the Nazi killed were not even handicapped, many of them were normal, in these so called programs

however allowing someone who is 98 per cent dead to die is much differently then murdering someone who is handicapped or else we'd all be upset about the Holocaust of dogs and cats


6 posted on 03/19/2005 3:08:09 PM PST by llama hunter
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To: OXENinFLA

oh please..


7 posted on 03/19/2005 3:14:31 PM PST by mzbzybee ((formerly, Beeline40))
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To: Restorer

They just practiced what the celebrated Margaret Sanger preached.


8 posted on 03/19/2005 3:33:31 PM PST by az wildkitten
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To: auburntiger
Hitler would be in awe and envious of what we have been doing since Roe vs. Wade. Hitler was an amateur.

Yep.

9 posted on 03/19/2005 3:37:07 PM PST by k2blader (It is neither compassionate nor conservative to support the expansion of socialism.)
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To: OXENinFLA
I have a feeling Florida will be a place to avoid this coming hurricane season.


10 posted on 03/19/2005 3:57:21 PM PST by M. Espinola (Freedom is never free!)
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Comment #11 Removed by Moderator

To: OXENinFLA

Very fitting indeed. Right down to the starvation techniques.


12 posted on 03/19/2005 4:04:38 PM PST by festus (The constitution may be flawed but its a whole lot better than what we have now.)
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To: Jerry K.

Actually, just about all the ancient classical peoples practiced exposure of sickly, female or unwanted infants. The Jews were considered extremely weird by their neighbors for not practicing this. Historians of the time commented on it.

Generally, the father of the family made this decision for all females in the household, including slaves, etc.

The Spartans were unique in having a state agency make the decision.


13 posted on 03/19/2005 4:10:22 PM PST by Restorer
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To: M. Espinola

Sad to say, it wasn't just the Nazis:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics


14 posted on 03/19/2005 7:24:28 PM PST by Solamente
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To: Solamente
I was reviewing the link. Incredible, the evil lurking out there.
15 posted on 03/19/2005 7:33:15 PM PST by M. Espinola (Freedom is never free!)
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To: M. Espinola

Thank you for the post. it's the knowledge of the T-4 program and how it started with the mentally disabled and children that makes me crazy with the Terri case. Thank you for posting...More should have this information! And Hitler used laws and judges and courts and doctors for his murders!


16 posted on 03/19/2005 8:01:34 PM PST by lainde
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To: lainde
What really bothers me is the radical Left is desperately promoting this death (state mandated murder) coupled with the other diabolical items on their agenda for absolute control, in stages.

Are we heading down the same road as Nazi Germany with 'judges' such as Roland Freisler?

In February 1943, Freisler presides over the political trial of the Munich students who belong to the dissident anti-nazi White Rose movement. Barely in their twenties, he sentences all of them to death by the guillotine.

Freisler's brief moment of fame in history comes in the wake of the failed July 20, 1944 coup attempt against the Nazi regime. Throughout the second half of 1944 he presides over the show trials of many of the July 20th conspirators, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

As though by divine justice, the malevolent judge Roland Freisler is killed in February 1945 when a bomb from an Allied air-raid scores a direct hit on the court house. At that exact moment, conspirator Lieutenant Fabian von Schlabrendorff is inside the court room waiting for his turn to be convicted and sentenced to death. Freisler is discovered crushed to death by a massive column that has fallen on top of him, his hands still clutching a folder that contains Schlabrendorff's file. Freisler's successor quickly acquits Schlabrendorff after determining lack of sufficient evidence.

Justice served!

17 posted on 03/19/2005 8:22:04 PM PST by M. Espinola (Freedom is never free!)
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To: mzbzybee
oh please..

Actually it is a cross of Nazism and Slavery.

18 posted on 03/19/2005 8:23:59 PM PST by af_vet_1981
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To: M. Espinola

bttt


19 posted on 04/01/2005 1:04:15 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
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