MFDJ 01/05/2021: Atrocity Exhibition

Today’s Unworthy Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

From September 1939, when World War II began, with German troops pushing eastward, the SS began to shoot inmates (of whatever race or nationality) of mental hospitals to empty them for the use of soldiers. For example, a hospital in Stralsund, an eastern German city on the Baltic Sea, was emptied by December 1939, and its patients were taken to Danzig to be shot. Their bodies were buried by Polish prisoners, who themselves were then shot. In Chelm-Lubelski, in the General Government of Poland, patients were shot en masse by SS troops, sometimes after having been chased through the asylum, and then buried in mass graves. Once Germany invaded Russia, in June 1941, Einsatzgruppen under Heydrich liquidated hospital patients as well as Jews, Gypsies, and Communist functionaries. Reports from the field mentioned the need for beds for injured soldiers, as well as “the German view” that these were lives unworthy of life.

The Germans set up two psychiatric extermination facilities at Meseritz-Obrawalde and Tiegenhof, both in the old Prussian territory of Pomerania. The policy was first to massacre Polish patients, then bring German patients into the emptied facility, and finally to kill them as well by such methods as shooting, gassing, injection, starvation, or drugs given with food. Standard R4 letters of condolence were sent to families. There is some evidence that physically or mentally impaired German soldiers were also given “euthanasia” in both institutions.

Emmi G., a 16-year-old housemaid diagnosed as schizophrenic. She was sterilized and sent to the Meseritz-Obrawalde euthanasia center where she was killed with an overdose of tranquilizers on December 7, 1942.

Concerning the technology of murder, there was diminished reliance on shooting because of psychological trauma to Einsatzgruppen troops. Explosives were tried – as in Russia, in September 1941, when mental patients were blown up. This method proved ineffective in that too much cleaning up was required and more than one charge was sometimes necessary. Gas was clearly preferable.

Carbon monoxide gas was increasingly resorted to – first in canisters (which became ever more expensive to bring from Germany as the troops moved east), and then, after further technological innovation, from the exhaust of vans. During two weeks in May and June of 1940, 1,558 mental patients from East Prussia were gassed in vans at a transit camp in Soldau. The killings were carried out by “the itinerant euthanasia squad known as Sonderkommando Lange [its commander],” and represented an early blending of three elements of the Final Solution: the “euthanasia” program, laboratory science and SS technology (contributing to innovations in gassing), and Einsatzgruppen units (here working with the new gassing technology). In October 1941, Brack and Eichmann decided to use these vans for Jews in general who were “incapable of working.” Three were installed at the first pure extermination camp at Chelmno/Kulmhof (using personnel from Soldau), where they killed mainly Jews, but also gypsies, typhus victims, Soviet POWs, and the insane. Victims were told they would shower while their clothing was being disinfected. SS officers wore white coats and carried stethoscopes. Prisoners had their valuables registered, then followed a “To the Bath” sign, up a ramp and into the van. When no more noise was audible from the van, it was driven to the woods nearby where Jewish Kommandos unloaded the corpses into mass graves. (Because of noxious gases, a crematorium was latter installed.)

Jews photographed just prior to being sent to the gas chamber at Chelmno. 

Culled from: The Nazi Doctors

Atrocious Artwork!

Stella wrote to tell me about Emily Carroll.  I’m entranced!

“I haven’t seen you post anything about Emily Carroll, so I’m not sure if you’ve come across her work or not. She is a comics writer and artist, and her work has beautiful imagery and really intense body horror, and I thought it might be something you’d enjoy/enjoy sharing. She has a bunch of free comics available on her website (http://emcarroll.com/), and also has an Eisner-winning book of short stories out which I highly recommend. It includes the comic His Face All Red (http://emcarroll.com/comics/faceallred/01.html), which she is probably best known for online.”

Thank you, Stella!  I highly recommend “HIs Face All Red” and “When the Darkness Presses“.  Great stuff!