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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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52 |
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| “LIFE UNWORTHY OF LIFE”: THE
GENETIC CURE |
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with high-ranking administrators to organize a structure
for the project; and prominent academic administrative doctors sympathetic to
the regime were called in to maintain and administer this medicalized
structure. It was decided that the program was to be secretly run from the
Chancellery, though the health division of the Reich Interior Ministry was to
help administer it. And for that purpose an organization was created: the Reich
Committee for the Scientific Registration of Serious Hereditary and Congenital
Diseases (Reichsausschuss zur wissenschaftlichen Erfassung von erb- und
anlagebedingten schweren Leiden). The name conveyed the sense of a
formidable medical-scientific registry board, although its leader, Hans
Hefelmann, had his degree in agricultural economics. That impression was
maintained in a strictly confidential directive (of 18 August 1939). by the
minister of the interior to non-Prussian state governments. The directive
stated that, “for the clarification of scientific questions in the field
of congenital malformation and mental retardation, the earliest possible
registration” was required of all children under three years of age in
whom any. of the following “serious hereditary diseases” were
“suspected”: idiocy and mongolism (especially when associated with
blindness and deafness); microcephaly; hydrocephaly; malformations of all
kinds, especially of limbs, head, and spinal column; and paralysis, including
spastic conditions.19
Midwives were
required to make these reports at the time of birth (with a portion of the
report filled in by a doctor, if present), and doctors themselves were to
report all such children up to the age of three. District medical officers were
responsible for the accuracy of the reports, and chief physicians of maternity
clinics and wards were all notified that such reports were required.20 The reports took the form of questionnaires that
originated in the Reich Health Ministry. At first simple, they were expanded
considerably in June 1940 by participating doctors to go beyond specific
illness or condition and to include: details about the birth; elements of
family history, especially concerning hereditary illness and such things as
excessive use of alcohol, nicotine, or drugs; a further evaluation of the
condition (by a physician) indicating possibilities for improvement, life
expectancy, prior institutional observation and, treatment, details of physical
and mental development, and descriptions of convulsions and related
phenomena.21 The wording of the questionnaire
and the essential absence of a traditional medical history and record led many
physicians and district medical officers to assume, at least at first, that
affected children would merely be registered for statistical purposes.
(Hefelmann later testified that the diseases were broadly described in order to
disguise the reason for the duty to report.)22
Three central medical experts* were then
required to make their |
__________
* The medical experts
consisted of four outside consultants and two members of the
“euthanasia” bureaucracy. The consultants were Werner Catel, the
professor of psychiatry at the Leipzig clinic where the Knauer child had been
treated; Professor Hans Heinze, head of the state institution at Görden
near Brandenburg, which had a large children’s division; the
pediatric psychiatrist Ernst Wentzler of Berlin, and the ophthalmologist-author
Helmut Unger. The institutions led by three of these men eventually became part
of the child-“euthanasia” network; indeed Görden was its first
and most important establishment. The representatives of the
“euthanasia” bureaucracy were Brandt and Linden. |
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THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical Killing and the
Psychology of
Genocide
Robert J. Lifton
ISBN 0-465-09094
©
1986 |
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