By Kenny Fries: For More Info, Go Here…
Too few know the history of the Nazi methodical mass murder of disabled people. That is why I write.
At the Nuremberg “Doctors’ Trial” in 1947, Viktor Brack — the economist, SS officer and head of the office of the Chancellery of the Führer who was in charge of Aktion T4 — testified that the first of the mass murders of disabled people happened “in snow-covered Brandenburg on a winter’s day in December 1939 or January 1940.” The exact date of this “test killing” has not yet been determined.
No documents from the “test killing” have been preserved. According to information at the memorial, “Who the murdered patients were and where they came from is unknown.” What is known comes primarily from postwar testimony of those involved, or thought to be involved, in what took place that day.
Unlike the Holocaust, there are no T4 survivors. We know about T4 and its aftermath mainly through medical records and from the perpetrators. Aktion T4 does not have its Elie Wiesel or Primo Levi.
Though the exact date is somewhat speculative, the words of those responsible for the murder of 70,000 disabled people in Aktion T4, and the 230,000 killed after the program’s official end, clearly speak to the main cause for what happened: the disvaluing of disabled lives.
At a meeting with an unidentified representative of the Chancellery of the Führer, Widmann asked, “What for? To kill people?”
“No,” was the reply. “Animals in the form of humans.”
