Varför är gaskammrarna så viktiga?

"---The practice of euthanasia, as illustrated by two early cases, began with requests from individuals for physician-assisted death. In March 1937, a child was killed by his father because he was significantly mentally ill. When put on trial for murder, the local health office came to the father’s defense, influencing the court to grant him a nominal prison sentence instead of the death penalty asked for by the prosecutor. Proctor, Racial Hygiene, supra at 182.
The next year, a man named Knauer wrote the German government asking that his blind and mentally retarded daughter, born without an arm and leg, be granted Gnadentod (mercy death). The Chancellor instructed his personal physician, Dr. Karl Brandt, to investigate, and, if the letter were true, to grant the request. Proctor, Racial Hygiene, supra at 186; Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, supra at 93-96. Brandt found “a child who was born blind, an idiot—at least it seemed to be an idiot—and it lacked one leg and part of one arm.” Gallagher, By Trust Betrayed, supra at 47; Proctor, Racial Hygiene, supra at 186. According to the testimony of Brandt, “The parents should not feel themselves incriminated at some later date as a result of this euthanasia—that the parents should not have the impression that they themselves were responsible for the death of this child.” Alexander Mitscherlich, The Death Doctors (1962) (James Cleugh, trans.) at 234.

Many parents were eager to obtain the Wohltat of physician- assisted death for their ill, deformed, or disabled children and many “wrote to hospitals to ask if their child could be relieved of his or her misery and be granted euthanasia.” Proctor, Racial Hygiene, supra at 194; Kamisar, supra, 42 Minn. L. Rev. at 1032-1033 13

Both doctors and parents preferred to use euphemisms, to allow for psychological defense mechanisms of rationalization and denial of what really was happening. After taking a poll of parental opinion, it was determined by the government that, although many supported Gnadentod for their severely disabled children, “parents would prefer it if they were told that their child had succumbed to this or that illness.” Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, supra at 98. 14

As many as 6,000 children were provided the “benefit” of euthanasia in this first phase of physician-assisted death in Germany. Id. at 111; Lifton, The Nazi Doctors, supra at 50, 56.---"

In January 1940, Brandt, Brack and others conducted the first large-scale test of assisted death for incurable adults in a psychiatric hospital near Berlin. It was a gassing process, which “included a fake shower room with benches, the gas being inserted from the outside into water pipes with small holes through which the carbon monoxide could escape.”

What occurred in the adult program is exemplified by the hospital at Hadamar, one of the major T-4 institutions. Between January and August 1941, over 10,000 mentally ill Germans were provided a “painless death” in the shower-room gas chambers at Hadamar. An administrative supervisor at Hadamar was Alfons Klein. He testified at his war crimes trial that, from October 1940 Heinrich Ruoff, chief male nurse who worked more closely with the patients, remembered that the T-4 program at Hadamar began slightly earlier. In 1940 the program of killing started. Those people who were brought here were German mentally sick. These people were gassed to death and then burned. . . . During the year 1941, because of complaints from Germans, this work was eliminated. As Ruoff said, by 1941, word began to spread of involuntary killings. So, in August 1941, the psychiatric/physician-assisted death program at Hadamar and the other T-4 hospitals were officially ordered to be discontinued. By this time, 80,000-100,000 people had been killed under the T-4 program. At Hadamar, however, the program never ceased. Only the method of death changed; another 3,500 were euthanized by lethal injection between August 1941 and August 1942.

Beginning in 1942, the program recommenced elsewhere, except instead of gas, injections and starvation were the method of inducing death, largely on a case-by-case basis.

3. Genocide Under 14f13: “Special Treatment” for Jews and Other “Undesirables.”

World War II caused a change in emphasis and an acceleration of the killing process. Resources were scarce, and it was perceived that the armed forces had a greater claim to food, clothing, and medicine than did the sick, mentally ill, and social undesirables. The government accordingly took advantage of the distractions of the war to eliminate these “burdensome” people.

“The original ‘euthanasia’ project, the killing of those who were seriously ill [T-4], was extended to killing virtually anyone whose death was desired.” First, hospitalized Jews who had previously been denied a mercy death were given Sonderbehandlung, “special treatment,” and killed along with Germans in the euthanasia program. Later, it was ordered that Jews and other undesirables be transported from the concentration camps to the same killing centers used by the T-4 program.

During this operation, according to meticulously kept records, 70,273 German mental patients were killed by gassing, and a further 20,000 by lethal injection and drugs. It was here that the technical means of group murder by gas was first introduced.

This was not 'medicalized killing,' first envisaged, as no medical expertise was required. Initially, the gassing apparatus was operated by the medical director at each euthanasia institution who became known as the 'Vergasungsärzte' ('gassing doctors') in accordance with orders from the Chancellery. This soon changed, however, as it was realized that turning on a gas valve did not require any medical expertise.

...

In the western part of the Reich, gassing was the preferred 'killing agent' as it was a more sophisticated and discreet method. In the East, without the need for absolute secrecy, it became a free and open policy to murder whomever and by whatever means was available. It is clear that euthanasia and associated experimental killing operations elsewhere are inextricably linked to the Final Solution. Further indications of this direct link can be seen in the deceptive maneuvers that were later transferred to the death camps in Poland. For example, at Hadamar, the victims were given a stamped postcard on which to report to relatives a safe arrival at their destination followed by a cursory medical examination at reception only minutes before they were taken to the gas chamber. Even the general medical staff at intermediate institutions had their suspicions confirmed when identifiable clothing belonging to their patients was returned shortly after the patients had been taken away to an unknown destination.

...
By the late summer of 1941, when possible solutions to the Jewish Question were emerging, the Reichsarzt-SS und Polizei (Reich Doctor for the SS and Police), SS-Gruppenführer Dr. Grawitz, advised the HHE/KdF that gassing was the most appropriate means for carrying out 'special treatment' of large numbers of people. The means Dr Grawitz favored were static chambers supplemented by mobile chambers (gas vans), as used at Chelmno and the former collective farm at Maly Trostenets (Minsk). Only the 'gassing agent' had to be determined.

ADOLF HITLER

Berlin, 1 September 1939

Reichsleiter Bouhler and
Dr. med. Brandt

are instructed to broaden the powers of physicians designated by name, who will decide whether those who have - as far as can be humanly determined - incurable illnesses can, after the most careful evaluation, be granted a mercy death.

/signed/ Adolf Hitler

"---An opinion poll conducted in 1920 revealed that 73% of the parents and guardians of severely disabled children surveyed would approve of allowing physicians to end the lives of disabled children such as their own. Newspapers, journal articles, and movies joined in shaping the opinion of the German public. The Ministry of Justice described the proposal as one that would make it "possible for physicians to end the tortures of incurable patients, upon request, in the interests of true humanity" (reported in the N.Y. Times, 10/8/33, p. 1, col. 2). And the savings would redound to the German people if money was no longer thrown away on the disabled, the incurable, and "those on the threshold of old age."

A 1936 novel written by Helmut Unger, M.D., further assisted the German people in accepting the unthinkable. Dr. Unger told the story of a physician whose wife was disabled by multiple sclerosis. She asks him to help her die, and he complies. At his trial he pleads with the jurors to understand his honorable motive: "Would you, if you were a cripple, want to vegetate forever?" The jury acquit him in the novel. The book was subsequently made into a movie which, according to research by the SS Security Service, was "favorably received and discussed," even though some Germans were concerned about possible abuses.

With the public now assenting, the question turned from "whether" to "by whom" and "under what circumstances."

The first known case of the application of this now-acceptable proposal concerned "Baby Knauer." The child's father requested of Adolph Hitler himself that his son be allowed death because he was blind, retarded, and missing an arm and a leg. Surely, in his condition, he would be better off dead. Hitler turned the case over to his personal physician, Karl Brandt, and in 1938 the request was granted.---"

I sin karriär som massmördare började Franz Stangl således med att organisera gasningarna i Hartheim o.s.v., innan han c:a 1 1/2 år senare fulländade teknikerna som kommendant för Treblinka och i en mycket större skala.

Klipper litet ur den av Ezzelino så varmt uppskattade boken av Gitta Sereny, "Vid Avgrunden" som handlar om Treblinka, sid. 55:

Stangl: Min skuld är att jag är fortfarande här. Det är det som är min skuld.

Sereny: Fortfarande här?

Stangl: Jag borde ha dött. Det var det som var min skuld.

Sereny: Det säger ni nu. Men då?

Stangl: Det är riktigt. Jag fick ju ytterligar tjugo år, tjugo goda år. Men tro mig, jag skulle ha föredragit att få dö framför det här...

Han såg sig omkring i det lilla fängelserummet.

Jag hyser inget hopp längre. Och nu får det vara nog. Jag vill att vi genomför våra samtal, men sedan ... sedan räcker det. Sedan får det vara slut.
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Franz Stangl dog nitton timmar senare av hjärtsvikt. På en lapp på väggen i cellen hade han antecknat ett namn han hade försökt komma ihåg inför vårt samtal dagen därpå.