The adult killing program, coded Aktion T4, (named for the address of the “Reich Charitable Foundation for Curative and Institutional Care” headquarters at 4 Teirgartensstrasse in Berlin) targeted handicapped German adults living in mental institutions and nursing homes. The entire German healthcare system — public health officials, public and private…
In 1942 Viktor Brack — director of T4 murder operation — wrote a letter to Heinrich Himmler stating, I am of the opinion that out of approx. 10 million European Jews at least 2–3 million men and women will be fit for work and should be kept alive. . ….
Jews and other devalued and dehumanized groups were regarded as fitting “material” for medical and biological experiments that were forbidden under Germany’s Guidelines for Human Experimentation (1931) (details above). These included handicapped persons and numerous ethnic and groups who were expelled from German society. Foremost among these were Jews, who…
Ravensbrück was a concentration camp built exclusively for women. . It was designed to terrorize, brutalize, humiliate, torture & murder. During its six year operation, from 1939–1945, an estimated 132,000 women were imprisoned there; only 15,000 are estimated to have survived. Ravensbrück was built after six major concentration camps were already in operation…
Ravensbrück operated under strict SS rules noted for its regimentation, terrorization, brutality and humiliation. The policy was strictly enforced by specially trained female SS guards; many of who were vicious and capable of horrific sadistic brutality. The new female guard had a specific status in the SS hierarchy; like SS…
Pervasive violence, brutality and murder, combined with hard labor, overcrowding, disease, and starvation systematically limited the number who survived Ravensbrück. The coercive hierarchy of the camp encouraged the guards to brutalize and terrorize prisoners. Paradoxically, women conscripted to work as slave laborers considered themselves lucky; they avoided being “selected” and transported…
Bonding between women was of utmost importance for their survival in the camp. The women at Ravensbrück formed close bonds (mostly) within their ethnic groups, creating surrogate “families” who nurtured one another and protected the weak and vulnerable. Women who had strong moral, political and/ or religious beliefs bonded with…
Dr. Walter Sonntag, the senior doctor at Ravensbrück, had trained to be a dentist, but switched to medicine when he realized the career opportunities for doctors who were given a prominent role in Hitler’s racial cleansing program. Sonntag joined the Nazi Party and the SS along with the other medical…
Ravensbrück was conveniently situated and its Revier (hospital) was staffed with doctors and nurses. Experimental medical atrocities were conducted under the watchful eye of chief of SS chief Heinrich Himmler who was fascinated by medical experimentation, and his approval was necessary for every deadly experiment conducted at SS concentration camps. Five miles from…
Physicians were not pawns of the Nazi regime; they legitimized mass murder. In contradiction to the myth perpetuated by both the German and American medical establishments; the vast majority of physicians and biological scientists lent their support to Racial Hygiene laws. They provided the “scientific” ideological justification for exterminating carriers…
At the end of the war, Allied and Soviet military intelligence officials were on a competitive mission to locate the weapons arsenals, radar, rockets and jet engines, and to obtain Germany’s military, scientific and technical information, in the hope of obtaining advanced beneficial results from their research. During the war…
Even as their profession’s crimes were coming to light, they elected Dr. Karl Haedenkamp, a Nazi as their first president. His specialty had been the removal of Jewish physicians from the professional associations. His successor was Dr. Erich Fromm, a Nazi who was an active SS (Storm Troopers); the third…
