Nazi's treatment of disability people

Discussions on the Holocaust and 20th Century War Crimes. Note that Holocaust denial is not allowed. Hosted by David Thompson.
User avatar
TheContemplator
Member
Posts: 66
Joined: 14 Mar 2002, 07:06
Location: USA

Nazi's treatment of disability people

#1

Post by TheContemplator » 20 Apr 2002, 07:43

What was the Nazi's view on disability people? How did they deal with them?

I have heard that they used deaf people to type classified papers and afterwards shot them? Can anyone affirm this story with evidence?

IAR80
Member
Posts: 184
Joined: 15 Mar 2002, 22:05
Location: Satu Mare, Romania

#2

Post by IAR80 » 20 Apr 2002, 09:26

<deleted>
Last edited by IAR80 on 20 Apr 2002, 19:14, edited 1 time in total.


Timo
Member
Posts: 3869
Joined: 09 Mar 2002, 23:09
Location: Europe

#3

Post by Timo » 20 Apr 2002, 09:57

It was called "Aktion T 4" (Euthanasia of insane people, of chronically ill people, Jews and the so-called "Asoziale").

Dr. Horst Schumann (first lieutenant of the air force and SS-Sturmbannführer), was born in 1906 as son of a physician in Halle/Saale. he entered the NSDAP in 1930 under the number 190.002 and two years later, joined the SA. In 1933, Dr. med. in Halle, was employed in the Public Health Office in Halle since 1934 and recruited to the air force as physician in 1939, after the outbreak of the war.

Viktor Brack, director of the department "Aktion T 4" asked him to participate within the euthanasia program. After a short time of reflection, Schumann agreed. In January 1940, he became head of the euthanasia-institute Grafeneck in Württemberg, where people were killed by motor exhaust fumes. Half a year later, he became director of the institute Sonnenstein/Pirna in Saxonia.

After Hitler had officially ordered the extermination of "life unworthy of life" which was covered by the abbreviation "14 f 13" and also included camp inmates, Schumann belonged to a commission of doctors who transferred weak and sick prisoners in Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, FlossenbŸrg, Gro§-Rosen, Mauthausen, Neuengamme and Niederhangen concentration camps to the euthanasia killing centers.

On July 28, 1941, Schumann came to Auschwitz for the first time, where he selected 575 prisoners who were deported and killed in the killing center Sonnenstein/Pirna. The action "14 f 13" went on in August 1941; SS-guards injected phenole poison directly into the hearts of the sick inmates. One and a half years later, Schumann went back to Auschwitz, in order to test "cheap and efficient" mass-sterilisation of men and women with X-ray. Almost nobody survived, his victims died from inner injuries, from burnings, from additional "operations" - removal of ovaries and testicles, from exhaustion and the psychical shock. Schumann left Auschwitz in 1944. In October 1945, he suddenly appeared in Gladbeck where we was appointed urban sports-doctor.

He opened his own consulting practice in 1949 with a refugee credit (!) and was only recognized as a war-criminal in 1951. Schumann could flee. According to his statement, he then worked as a ship-doctor before settling in the Sudan in 1955. Four years later, he fled again via Nigeria and Libya to Ghana. Only in 1966, Schumann was delivered to the German Federal Republic, where the trial against him was opened in September 1970. But already in April 1971, the trial against him was interrupted because the defendant suffered from high blood-pressure. Without any public interest, Schumann was released from prison on July 29, 1972. He spent the rest of his life in Frankfourt and died on May 5, 1983, eleven years after he had been released. Medical treatment had saved him from condemnation and imprisonment.

Dan
Member
Posts: 8429
Joined: 10 Mar 2002, 15:06
Location: California

#4

Post by Dan » 20 Apr 2002, 15:48

IAR80 wrote:"What was the Nazi's view on disability people? How did they deal with them? "

All disabled individuals, especially mentally disabled, were to be "euthanasied", since such individuals were a disgrace to the superior Aryan race. Others were handed over to nazi doctors for as guinea pigs for medical research. Basically they had to be exterminated like the jewes.
You're speaking as a fool. The nazi's did in fact murder many thousand of patients in institutions, because they needed the hospital beds and didn't want the drain on resources they constituted.

But your post makes it seem like they went door to door, and if anyone had a retarded child living at home they were taken away to be used in experiments or gassed.

And what about wounded soldiers?

Statements like yours is why I question certain other widely held beliefs concerning nazi attrocities.

Dan
Member
Posts: 8429
Joined: 10 Mar 2002, 15:06
Location: California

Re: Nazi's treatment of disability people

#5

Post by Dan » 20 Apr 2002, 15:50

TheContemplator wrote:What was the Nazi's view on disability people? How did they deal with them?

I have heard that they used deaf people to type classified papers and afterwards shot them? Can anyone affirm this story with evidence?
I rather think that the person who made that statement cares very little about evidence.

Ken Jasper
In memoriam
Posts: 699
Joined: 03 Apr 2002, 23:56
Location: Virginia

#6

Post by Ken Jasper » 20 Apr 2002, 16:53

Disabled individuals were not routinely murdered by the Nazis. During the Third Reich. There were organizations for disabled WWI veterans; a SA Military Sports Badge for War Wounded (disabled); and a DRL Sports Badge for the War Disabled.

IAR80
Member
Posts: 184
Joined: 15 Mar 2002, 22:05
Location: Satu Mare, Romania

re

#7

Post by IAR80 » 20 Apr 2002, 17:50

"You're speaking as a fool. The nazi's did in fact murder many thousand of patients in institutions, because they needed the hospital beds and didn't want the drain on resources they constituted.

But your post makes it seem like they went door to door, and if anyone had a retarded child living at home they were taken away to be used in experiments or gassed.

And what about wounded soldiers?

Statements like yours is why I question certain other widely held beliefs concerning nazi attrocities."

You misunderstood, what I meant to say is exactly what Timo has admirably elaborated.

Ovidius
Member
Posts: 1414
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 20:04
Location: Romania

#8

Post by Ovidius » 20 Apr 2002, 18:39

All disabled individuals, especially mentally disabled, were to be "euthanasied", since such individuals were a disgrace to the superior Aryan race. Others were handed over to nazi doctors for as guinea pigs for medical research. Basically they had to be exterminated like the jewes.
Almost the entire text is wrong.

First, the regime did not deal with physically disabled, but mentally disabled people.

Second, the reason was not "disgrace", but (in 1939-1940) the desire to eliminate a category of persons who could do nothing, but who were going to suffer first in the hypothesis of bombings/food blockade, draining in the same time precious resources.

Third, the same regime had established instituions for helping people who were physically disabled(amputees etc), but mentally healthy. I.e. organizations for war-disabled veterans etc.

Fourth, the regime did not impose to anyone to handle a disabled person(as in the door-to-door action exemplified by Dan).

Fifth, in your place I would think twice before saying what you did.

~Ovidius[/b]

IAR80
Member
Posts: 184
Joined: 15 Mar 2002, 22:05
Location: Satu Mare, Romania

re

#9

Post by IAR80 » 20 Apr 2002, 19:15

Ok, the message of my post has been completely misunderstood, so it was deleted.

User avatar
TheContemplator
Member
Posts: 66
Joined: 14 Mar 2002, 07:06
Location: USA

Re: Nazi's treatment of disability people

#10

Post by TheContemplator » 20 Apr 2002, 21:12

Dan wrote:
TheContemplator wrote:What was the Nazi's view on disability people? How did they deal with them?

I have heard that they used deaf people to type classified papers and afterwards shot them? Can anyone affirm this story with evidence?
I rather think that the person who made that statement cares very little about evidence.
Dan, why do you think so?

User avatar
TheContemplator
Member
Posts: 66
Joined: 14 Mar 2002, 07:06
Location: USA

#11

Post by TheContemplator » 20 Apr 2002, 21:17

Thanks to everyone who has shared their opinions and information. I checked out some resources as well myself:

"In 1907, Indiana passed a law to sterilize criminals, idiots, and rapists. Later, Harry Laughlin, a U.S. government worker, wrote that everyone should be sterilized who was stupid, insane, criminal, epileptic, drunk, diseased, blind, or deaf.

The U.S. government never used Laughlin's plan. But the Germans did. The Nazis used it as a model for their own "eugenics" program. They called it the "Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring."

The Nazis passed the "eugenics" law in 1933. It was the first and only time in history that a government tried to put a plan for eugenics to work."



http://clerccenter.gallaudet.edu/worlda ... t/why.html

User avatar
Scott Smith
Member
Posts: 5602
Joined: 10 Mar 2002, 22:17
Location: Arizona
Contact:

RADIATION EXPERIMENTS...

#12

Post by Scott Smith » 20 Apr 2002, 21:52

I don’t know any details but I understand that the U.S. government did radiation sterilization experiments on prisoners in the 1950s. The experiments were voluntary, to the extent that any medical experimentation on prisoners and soldiers is “voluntary,” but nevertheless in exchange for privileges. In addition, my understanding is that the Clauberg experiments on prisoners were on dangerous sex criminals and that the German criminal code from the Weimar era, still in effect in Germany today, allowed desexing of this class of criminal. I don’t know any details, as this is not a subject of particular interest to me. I know that the Luftwaffe high-altitude and hypothermia experiments were conducted on dangerous or condemned criminals in exchange for privileges or commutation of capital sentences. However, all sentences were extended indefinitely for the duration of the war because the SS wanted prisoner labor.

Anyway, we should be cautious in reading this kind of crap.
:)

User avatar
Roberto
Member
Posts: 4505
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 16:35
Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Re: RADIATION EXPERIMENTS...

#13

Post by Roberto » 20 Apr 2002, 22:06

Scott Smith wrote:I don’t know any details but I understand that the U.S. government did radiation sterilization experiments on prisoners in the 1950s. The experiments were voluntary, to the extent that any medical experimentation on prisoners and soldiers is “voluntary,” but nevertheless in exchange for privileges. In addition, my understanding is that the Clauberg experiments on prisoners were on dangerous sex criminals and that the German criminal code from the Weimar era, still in effect in Germany today, allowed desexing of this class of criminal. I don’t know any details, as this is not a subject of particular interest to me. I know that the Luftwaffe high-altitude and hypothermia experiments were conducted on dangerous or condemned criminals in exchange for privileges or commutation of capital sentences. However, all sentences were extended indefinitely for the duration of the war because the SS wanted prisoner labor.

Anyway, we should be cautious in reading this kind of crap.
:)
Well, the kind of crap we should be careful reading is the one our dear Reverend just wrote, about the victims of Nazi medical experiments of being "dangerous or condemned criminals in exchange for privileges or commutation of capital sentences". The victims were actually Gypsies, Jews (some of them condemned for trivial offenses such as "Rassenschande") and Soviet prisoners of war.

The Reverend is again invited to have a look at the files of the Nuremberg "Medical Case":

http://www.ushmm.org/research/doctors/index.html

and show us what support for his often-repeated propaganda nonsense is contained in those files.

User avatar
Scott Smith
Member
Posts: 5602
Joined: 10 Mar 2002, 22:17
Location: Arizona
Contact:

MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS...

#14

Post by Scott Smith » 20 Apr 2002, 22:47

Yeah, whatever, Roberto.

Hope you're enjoying the Führer's birthday.

Here's a photo from the Holosite you linked to. The lady is being displayed at Nuremberg to claim that some experimental procedure was performed on her leg in order to treat future wounded soldiers.

I guess German doctors just couldn't find injured people in the Third Reich to test their antibiotics and new medical procedures on.

Also, gathering epidemiolocal data on people, e.g., soldiers and prisoners, is not the same as performing medical experiments on them.

But if the Germans had developed a decent vaccine for typhus, a lot more KL prisoners would have survived the war.
:)

Image

User avatar
Roberto
Member
Posts: 4505
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 16:35
Location: Lisbon, Portugal

#15

Post by Roberto » 22 Apr 2002, 15:59

Here's a photo from the Holosite you linked to. The lady is being displayed at Nuremberg to claim that some experimental procedure was performed on her leg in order to treat future wounded soldiers.
Which seems to be oK for the Reverend. After all, the lady was just Polish sub-human trash, wasn’t she?
In the murders in this field the Jews were not the only victims. The Nazi doctors also used Russian prisoners of war, Polish concentration camp inmates, women as well as men, and even Germans. The “experiments” were quite varied. Prisoners were placed in pressure chambers and subjected to high-altitude tests until they ceased breathing. They were injected with lethal doses of typhus and jaundice. They were subjected to “freezing” experiments in icy water or exposed naked in the snow outdoors until they froze to death. Poison bullets were tried on them as was mustard gas. At the Ravenbrück concentration camp for women hundreds of Polish inmates - the “rabbit girls” they were called - were given gas gangrene wounds while others were subjected to “experiments” in bone grafting. At Dachau and Buchenwald gypsies were selected to see how long, and in what manner, they could live on salt water. Sterilization experiments were carried out on a large scale at several camps by a variety of means on both men and women; for, as an SS physician, Dr. Adolf Pokorny, wrote Himmler on one occasion, “the enemy must be not only conquered but exterminated.” If he could not be slaughtered - and the need for slave labor toward the end of the war made that practice questionable, as we have seen - then he could be prevented from propagating. In fact Dr. Pokorny told Himmler he thought he had found just the right means, the plant Caladium seguinum , which, he said, induced lasting sterility.
William Shirer,
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich8/quote], Simon & Schuster New York, 1960, pages 979 to 991.

I strongly doubt that a single wounded German soldier ever benefited from experiments like those mentioned in the above quote.
I guess German doctors just couldn't find injured people in the Third Reich to test their antibiotics and new medical procedures on.
For once the Reverend is guessing right. Given the lethal nature of the experiments in question, not only were there no volunteers, but performing such experiments on injured Volksgenossen might also have led to a public outcry perilous to the regime.
Also, gathering epidemiolocal data on people, e.g., soldiers and prisoners, is not the same as performing medical experiments on them.
It was this Dr. Sigmund Rascher who seems to have been responsible for the more sadistic of the medical experiments in the first place This horrible quack had attracted the attention of Himmler, among whose obsessions was the breeding of more and more superior Nordic offspring, through reports in SS circles that Frau Rascher had given birth to four children after passing the age of forty-eight, although in truth the Rashers had simply kidnapped them at suitable intervals from an orphanage.
In the spring of 1941, Dr. Rascher, who was attending a special medical course at Munich given by the Luftwaffe, had a brain storm. On May 15, 1941 he wrote Himmler about it. He had found to his horror that research on the effect of high altitudes on flyers was still at a standstill because “no tests with human material had yet been possible as such experiments are very dangerous and nobody volunteers for them.”

Can you make available two or three professional criminals for these experiments ... The experiments, by which the subjects can of course die, would take place with my co-operation.

The SS Führer replied within a week that “prisoners will, of course, be made available gladly for the high-flight research.”
They were, and Dr. Rascher went to work. The results may be seen from his own reports and from those of others, which showed up at Nuremberg and at the subsequent trial of the SS doctors.
Dr. Rascher’s own findings are a model of scientific jargon. For the high-altitude tests he moved the Air Force’s decompression chamber at Munich to the nearby Dachau concentration camp where human guinea pigs were readily available. Air was pumped out of the contraption so that the oxygen and air pressure at high altitudes could be simulated. Dr. Rascher then made his observations, of which the following one is typical.

The third test was without oxygen at the equivalent of 29,400 feet altitude conducted on a 37-year old Jew in good general condition. Respiration continued for 30 minutes. After four minutes the TP [test person] began to perspire and roll his head.
After five minutes spasms appeared; between the sixth and tenth minute respiration increased in frequency, the TP losing consciousness. From the eleventh to the thirtieth minute respiration slowed down to three inhalations per minute, only to cease entirely at the end of that period. ... About half an hour after breathing had ceased, an autopsy was begun.


An Austrian inmate, Anton Pacholegg, who worked in Dr, Rascher’s office, has described the “experiments” less scientifically.

I have personally seen through the observation window of the decompression chamber when a prisoner inside would stand a vacuum until his lungs ruptured. They would go mad and pull out their hair in an effort to relieve the pressure. They would tear their heads and face with their fingers and nails in an attempt to maim themselves in their madness. They would beat the walls with their hands and head and scream in an effort to relieve pressure on their eardrums. These cases usually ended in the death of the subject.

Some two hundred prisoners were subjected to this experiment before Dr. Rascher was finished with it. Of these, according to the testimony at the”Doctor’s Trial”, about eighty were killed outright and the remained executed somewhat later so that no tales would be told.
This particular research project was finished in May 1942, at which time Field Marshal Erhard Milch of the Luftwaffe conveyed Göring’s “thanks” to Himmler for Rascher’s pioneer experiments. A little later, on October 10, 1942, Lieutenant General Dr. Hippke, Medical Inspector of the Air Force, tendered to Himmler “in the name of the German aviation medicine and research” his “obedient gratitude” for “the Dachau experiments.” However, he thought, there was one omission in them. They had not taken in to account the extreme cold which an aviator faces at high altitudes. To rectify this omission the Luftwaffe, he informed Himmler, was building a decompression chamber “equipped with full refrigeration and with a normal altitude of 100,000 feet. Freezing experiments,” he added, “along different lines are still under way at Dachau.”
Indeed they were. And again Rascher was in the vanguard. But some of his doctor colleagues were having qualms. Was it Christian to do what Rascher was doing? Apparently a few German Luftwaffe medics were beginning to have their doubts. When Himmler heard of this he was infuriated and promptly wrote Field Marshal Milch protesting about the difficulties caused by “Christian medical circles” in the Air Force. He begged the Luftwaffe Chief of Staff to release Rascher from the Air Force medical corps so that he could be transferred to the SS. He suggested that they find a “non-Christian physician, who should be honorable as a scientist,” to pass on Dr. Rascher’s valuable works. In the meantime Himmler emphasized that he

personally assumed the responsibility for supplying asocial individuals and criminals who deserve only to die from concentration camps for these experiments.

Dr. Rascher’s “freezing experiments” were of two kinds: first, to see how much cold a human being could endure befroe he died; and second, to find the best way of re-warming a person who still lived after being exposed to extreme cold. Two methods were selected to freeze a man: dumping him into a tank of ice water or leaving him out in the snow, completely naked, overnight during winter. Rascher’s reports to Himmler on his “freezing” and “warming” experiments are voluminous; an example or two will give the tenor. One of the earliest ones was made on September 10, 1942.

The TPs were immersed in water in full flying uniform ... with hood. A life jacket prevented sinking. The experiments were conducted at temperatures between 36.5 and 53.5 degrees Fahrenheit. In the first test series the back of the head and the brain stem were above water. In another series the back of the neck and cerebellum were submerged. Temperatures as low as 79.5 in the stomach and 79.7 in the rectum were recorded electrically. Fatalities occurred only when the medulla and the cerebellum were chilled.
In autopsies of such fatalities large quantities of free blood, up to a pint, were always found in the cranial cavity. The heart regularly showed extreme distention of the right chamber. The TPs in such tests inevitably died when body temperature had declined to 82.5, despite all rescue attempts. The autopsy findings plainly prove the importance of a heated head and neck protector for the foam suit now in the process of development.


A table which Dr. Rascher appended covers six “Fatal Cases” and shows the water temperatures, body temperature on removal from water, body temperature at death, the length of stay in the water and the time it took the patient to die. The toughest man endued on the ice water for one hundred minutes, the weakest for fifty-three minutes.
Walter Neff, a camp inmate who served as Dr. Rascher’s medical orderly, furnished the “Doctor’s Trial” with a layman’s description of one water-freezing test.

It was the worst experiment ever made. Two Russian officers were brought from the prison barracks. Rascher had them stripped and they had to go into the vat naked. Hour after hour went by, and whereas usually unconsciousness from the cold set in after sixty minutes at the latest, the two men in this case still responded fully after two and a half hours. All appeals to Rasher to put them to sleep by injection were fruitless. About the third hour one of the Russians said to the other, ‘Comrade, please tell the offices to shoot us.’ The other replied that he expected no mercy from this Fascist dog. The two shook hands with a ‘Farewell, Comrade’ ... These words were translated to Rascher by a young Pole, though in a somewhat different form. Rascher went to his office. The young Pole at once tried to chloroform the two victims, but Rascher came back at once, threatening us with his gun. The test lasted at least five hours before death supervened.

The nominal “chief” of the initial cold-water experiments was a certain Dr. Holzloehner, Professor of Medicine at the University of Kiel, assisted by a Dr. Finke, and after working with Rascher for a couple of months they believed they had exhausted the experimental possibilities. The three physicians thereupon drew up a thirty-two page top-secret report to the Air Force entitled “Freezing Experiments with Human Beings” and called a meeting of German scientists at Nuremberg for October 26-27, 1942, to hear and discuss their findings. The subject of the meeting was “Medical Questions in Marine and Water Emergencies.” According to the testimony at the “Doctors’ Trial’, ninety-five German scientists, including some of the most eminent men in the field, participated, and though the three doctors left no doubt that a good many human beings had been done to death in the experiments there were no questions made as to this and no protests therefore made.
Professor Holzloehner [Footnote: Professor Hoçlzloehner may have had a guilty conscience. Picked up by the British he committed suicide after his first interrogation]and Dr. Finke bowed out of the experiments at this time but the persevering Dr. Rascher carried on alone from October 1942 until May of the following year. He wanted, among other things, to pursue experiments in what he called “dry freezing.” Auschwitz, he wrote to Himmler,

is much better suited for such tests than Dachau because it is colder there and because the size of the grounds causes less of a stir in the camps (The test persons yell when they freeze.)

For some reason the change of locality could not be arranged, so Dr. Rascher went ahead with his studies at Dachau, praying for some real winter weather.

Thank God, we have had another intense cold snap at Dachau [he wrote Himmler in the early spring of 1943]. Some people remained out in the open for 14 hours at 21 degrees, attaining an interior temperature of 77 degrees, with peripheral frostbite ...

At the “Doctor’s Trial” the witness Neff again provided a layman’s description if the “dry-freezing” experiments of his chief.

A prisoner was placed naked on a stretcher outside the barracks in the evening. He was covered with a sheet, and every hour a bucket of cold water was poured over him. The test person lay out in the open like this into the morning. Their temperatures were taken.
Later Dr. Rascher said it was a mistake to cover the subject with a sheet and to drench him with water ... In the future the test persons must not be covered. The next experiment was on ten prisoners who were exposed in turn, likewise naked.


As the prisoners slowly froze, Dr. Rascher or his assistant would record temperatures, heart action, respiration and so on. The cries of the suffering often rent the night.

Initially [Neff explained to the court] Rauff forbade these tests to be made in a state of anesthesia. But the test persons made such a racket that it was impossible for Rascher to continue these tests without anesthetic.


Source of quote: Shirer, as above.

Was that “gathering epidemiolocal data on people”, Reverend?
But if the Germans had developed a decent vaccine for typhus, a lot more KL prisoners would have survived the war.
Typhus was not exactly a major killer in the concentration camps. The incomplete Auschwitz death books, for instance, contain the certificates of 68,864 registered prisoners who died from August 1941 to December 1943.
The same records show that only 2060 of the 68,864 deaths were from typhus. Still, I appreciate the Reverend’s reasoning. Let’s assume that there’s a new experimental vaccination against AIDS which will either render you immune to the disease for good or kill you miserably. I’m sure the Reverend would object to being turned into a guinea pig for this vaccination, would he?

Post Reply

Return to “Holocaust & 20th Century War Crimes”