90: Aktion T4

Aktion T4

Nazi Germany had the Aktion T4 (called so because of the Headquarters’ Address in Berlin - Tiergartenstrasse 4) Program.

From 1939-1945 Germany murdered (in Gas Vans, by Lethal Injunction and then in Gas Chambers - before the Death Camps were built) 300,000 Disabled Men, Women and Children (200,000 in Germany and Austria and 100,000 in German-Occupied Europe.) It was planned by Hitler and carried out by German Doctors.

(Gas Chamber at the Hadamar Euthanasia Center in Germany where 15,000 Men, Women and Children with Disabilities were murdered. Hadamar is still in use as a Hospital today.)

From 1939-1941 the Germans focused on murdering Disabled Children and from 1941-1945 they included Disabled Adults.

The Germans also Forcibly Sterilized another 400,000 Disabled.

Aktion T4 was condemned by the Pope in 1940 and then Hitler officially had the Program stopped – while in secret it continued until the war ended.

The use of Gas Vans and then the Gas Chambers were later implemented in the Holocaust of the Jews.

There were 6 “Euthanasia Centers” in Germany and Austria (Grafeneck, Brandenburg, Bernburg, Hartheim, Sonnenstein and Hadama) and 13 in German-Occupied Poland.

After the War, the Americans and Soviets (and later the West Germans and the East Germans) tried many of the Doctors, Nurses and other helpers involved in Aktion T4.

Several of the Doctors committed suicide either right when Germany was Defeated in 1945 or shortly before their Trials began.

As with most things dealing with Mass Murder in Nazi Germany the West Germans gave light sentences to many of the Doctors and Nurses involved.

In 2014, Germany opened The Memorial to the People with Disabilities Murdered by the Nazis on the site of Aktion T4 wartime Headquarters in Berlin.

While Nazi Germany was one of the few places that murdered or murders the Disabled many Countries also Forcibly Sterilized or Sterilizes the Disabled:

In Canada (from 1803-1982), in China (from 1978-Present), in Czechoslovakia (from 1973-1989), in Denmark (from 1936-1976), in East Germany (from 1945-1990), in Japan (from 1907-1996), in Peru (from the 1920s-1998), in Sweden (from 1934-1976) and in the United States (from 1883-1978.)