Today’s Systematic Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Sick and disabled people were systematically registered by the Nazi regime starting in the autumn of 1939, and murdered beginning in January 1940. The organizational headquarters of this campaign was located at Tiergartenstrasse 4, Berlin. The address of the murder headquarters provided the code name of the operation: “T4”. The operation was classified as “Secret Reich Business”, and its management involved the Reich Ministry of Internal Affairs and later the Reich Ministry of Justice, as well as the regional government agencies that were responsible for overseeing the institutions.
The murders were carried out in several phases. In 1940 and 1941, over 70,000 people were killed by poison gas in specialized institutions under “Operation T4”. From 1942 on, still more people were killed in institutions by hunger, poison, and systematic neglect. At least 5,000 children and adolescents were murdered in “pediatric wards”. Meanwhile in Poland and the Soviet Union, the armed task forces called the “Einsatzgruppen” killed tens of thousands of patients.
Registration forms were collected and evaluated to decide who was to be gassed in the killing centers. Beginning in October 1939, the registration forms sent by the Reich Ministry of Internal Affairs were filled out in the institutions, usually by doctors or directors. All patients with certain diagnoses, all patients who had been institutionalized for five years or more, all those who were not of “German or related blood”, and all the “criminally insane” who had been committed to institutions by the courts were to be registered. Based on these registration forms, outside consultants recommended the deaths of more than 70,000 people. The consultants rarely saw their victims in person.
On August 24, 1941, the Nazi government stopped “Operation T4” because of spreading uneasiness among the population.
Here are two of the victims of Operation T4:
Xaver Rager (shown above in 1910) was born in 1898 in Jengen, Ostallgau district. He lived thirty years in the Catholic institution in Ursberg. In 1940 he was transferred to the Kaufbeuren mental hospital; in 1941 he was murdered in the Hartheim killing center.
Leopoldine Schlager (shown above in 1920) was born in 1898. She lived in Müzzuschlag, Styria, until 1928, when she was admitted to the Am Feldhof state mental hospital in Graz. She was murdered in the Hartheim killing center in 1941.
Culled from: registered, persecuted, annihilated. The Sick and the Disabled under National Socialism
Morbid Sightseeing: Tiergartenstrasse 4
Out of curiosity, I did a Google search on Tiergartenstrasse 4 in Berlin and what came up on street view (from way back in 2008 – get it together, Google!) was an obvious memorial to the victims: a statue of one of the buses that transported the victims to the killing centers where they were gassed.
I looked it up and sure enough, a memorial has been built on the spot. Next time I’m in Germany, I will have to visit.
T4 – Memorial and Information Centre for the Victims of the Nazi Euthanasia Programme