Nazis and psychiatric patients

David Thompson · Post by **David Thompson** » 01 Feb 2004 19:02

The Nazi euthanasia program in Germany, directed against "life unworthy of life," is reasonably well-documented. Here are accounts of three incidents involving the murders of patients in Ukrainian psychiatric hospitals by Nazi officials. As described in these Soviet reports, the expression "mercy killings" appears to be a misnomer.

David Thompson · Post by **David Thompson** » 01 Feb 2004 19:04

Part 2:

David Thompson · Post by **David Thompson** » 01 Feb 2004 19:06

Part 3:

David Thompson · Post by **David Thompson** » 01 Feb 2004 19:08

Part 4:

David Thompson · Post by **David Thompson** » 01 Feb 2004 19:09

Part 5:

Sergey Romanov · Post by **Sergey Romanov** » 01 Feb 2004 19:25

In the city where I live patients were destroyed too. Boris Filistinskij, who was chief of local Gestapo, took part in murders. He fled from USSR and settled in USA, where he changed his name to Boris Filippov and became a well-known scholar and publisher of Russian literary works.

http://webtext.library.yale.edu/xml2htm ... P.con.html

Cammin1 · Post by **Cammin1** » 01 Feb 2004 20:57

Sergey Romanov wrote:In the city where I live patients were destroyed too. Boris Filistinskij, who was chief of local Gestapo, took part in murders. He fled from USSR and settled in USA, where he changed his name to Boris Filippov and became a well-known scholar and publisher of Russian literary works.

http://webtext.library.yale.edu/xml2htm ... P.con.html

My goodness

Cammin1 · Post by **Cammin1** » 01 Feb 2004 21:09

Just wondering but how do you know Boris is the same man?

Sergey Romanov · Post by **Sergey Romanov** » 01 Feb 2004 22:16

Cammin1 wrote:Just wondering but how do you know Boris is the same man?

http://webtext.library.yale.edu/xml2htm ... P.con.html

BORIS FILIPPOV (1905-1991)

Boris Filippov was born Boris Andreevich Filistinskii in Stavropol', in the Caucasus, on 6 August 1905. In the early 1920s, Filippov was active in experimental schools and educational societies, under the tutelage of accomplished scholars. Filippov later credited one of these, the philosopher Sergei TSvetkov, with having had the greatest impact on his own thought.

[...]

Upon his release in 1941, Filippov was exiled to Novgorod, where he was reunited with Sergei Askol'dov, and also met such prominent pre-revolutionary figures as Tat'iana and Natal'ia Gippius, sisters of the Symbolist poet Zinaida Gippius. When the invading German army occupied Novgorod soon thereafter, Filippov, Askol'dov and other exiled intellectuals took an active part in city administration and published in pro-Nazi Russian-language publications. His actions, perceived by some as collaboration, became a source of controversy in the post-war years. In 1943 Filippov followed the retreating Germans to Pskov, Riga, and then on to Germany, where he lived for a time in a displaced persons' camp near Munich.

The info about euthanasia comes from historian Boris Nikolaev. I'll try to contact him and get more details.

Cammin1 · Post by **Cammin1** » 02 Feb 2004 00:48

Very very interesting, was he ever exposed? Was I well known? I'm guessing it only came out after his death.

michael mills · Post by **michael mills** » 02 Feb 2004 01:26

It is undeniable that the German occupation authorities carried out a program of killing the inmates of Soviet mental hospitals, in order to make the hospital facilities available for Wehrmacht use.

The notorious gas-van, that is a mobile gas-chamber using the engine exhaust as the killing agent, was originally developed in the autumn of 1941 specifically for the purpose of killing the Soviet mental patients.

The German authorities did regard gassing with carbon monoxide as a "mercy death", and the objective fact is that carbon monoxide poisoning is one of the most gentle ways in which death can be inflicted. That is why today gassing oneself with car engine exhaust is one of the most popular means of suicide.

I take with a grain of salt the claim in the reports of the Soviet investigation commissions that the inmates of the mental hospitals were well supplied with food until the arrival of the German occupiers. Given the way in which the Soviet Government treated its people in general, I doubt that it would have wasted resources on providing a comfortable standard of living for mental patients. It may well be that the emaciated condition of some of the victims established by the forensic investigation was their normal condition, not the result of starvation subsequent to the German occupation.

Some of the mental hospitals appear to have had farms, on which the inmates no doubt worked. But how much of the farm produce they actually got to eat is debatable.

I spent a week in one of the better Soviet hospitals (the Botkin Institute in Moscow) in October 1968, and I remember being hungry all the time. I got three meals a day, but each meal consisted of a bowl of gruel called kefir. I used to look forward to the evening meal where the kefir had a few raisins in it.

If that was the standard of nutrition in a good Soviet hospital in the happy-go-lucky Brezhnev days, I hate to think what conditions were like in Stalin's time. Perhaps the inmates of the Soviet mental hospitals were better off being put out of their misery.

michael mills · Post by **michael mills** » 02 Feb 2004 01:36

Concerning Boris Filippov:

From the material posted by Sergey Romanov, it appears that this person was a victim of Soviet Government persecution because of his religious and philosophical activities, and later collaborated with the German occupiers because of that persecution.

After the war he fled to the West and became active in opposition to the Soviet Government through publishing the works of persecuted intellectuals, including those of the two Jewish dissidents Daniel' and Siniavskii.

Obviously the Soviet Government set out to destroy him because of his anti-Soviet activity. One means of doing that was to bring up his record of collaboration with the German occupiers.

The accusation that he took part in murders may well be a typical Soviet-era slander, and Filippov would be a typical target for such slander. What is its basis?

Sergey Romanov · Post by **Sergey Romanov** » 02 Feb 2004 02:22

michael mills wrote:Obviously the Soviet Government set out to destroy him because of his anti-Soviet activity. One means of doing that was to bring up his record of collaboration with the German occupiers.

Yep. But note the fact that in this particular bio nothing is said about euthanasia, even with relation to collaboration charges.

The accusation that he took part in murders may well be a typical Soviet-era slander, and Filippov would be a typical target for such slander. What is its basis?

The claim was made in a recent documentary film "Kresty i zvezdy" ("Crosses and stars"), and was based on research by Boris Nikolaev. As I said, I'll try to get in touch with him, and if I'm lucky, I might even scan some original documents or copies of them.

xcalibur · Post by **xcalibur** » 02 Feb 2004 17:17

michael mills wrote:
Some of the mental hospitals appear to have had farms, on which the inmates no doubt worked. But how much of the farm produce they actually got to eat is debatable.

I spent a week in one of the better Soviet hospitals (the Botkin Institute in Moscow) in October 1968, and I remember being hungry all the time. I got three meals a day, but each meal consisted of a bowl of gruel called kefir. I used to look forward to the evening meal where the kefir had a few raisins in it.

If that was the standard of nutrition in a good Soviet hospital in the happy-go-lucky Brezhnev days, I hate to think what conditions were like in Stalin's time. Perhaps the inmates of the Soviet mental hospitals were better off being put out of their misery.

You were in a Soviet mental hospital? May I enquire as to the nature of the malady that afflicted you?

ChristopherPerrien · Post by **ChristopherPerrien** » 02 Feb 2004 17:34

Excellent zinger! Xcaliber

Rarely is the H+wc that funny

Chris