The T4 Program The T4 program, which was established following Hitlers secret order, took its name from its Berlin office address, Tiergarten 4, which address housed the coordinating organization for the program, the Reich Work Group of Sanatoriums and Nursing Homes. In charge were Philip Bouhler, chief of the Chancellory, and Dr. Karl Brandt, Hitlers personal physician and chief medical officer of the land. Their first task was to devise the questionnaires which would be used to categorize the targetted institutionalized populations. Four categories were specified: Patients suffering from specified diseases who are not employable, or are employable only in simple mechanical work. These included schizophrenia, epilepsy, senile diseases, therapy-resistant paralysis, feeble-mindedness, and the like. Patients who have been continually institutionalized for at least five years. Patients who are criminally insane. Non-German patients. While including these categorizations, the questionnaire overall gave the impression of a rather neutral statistical survey, which also delved into the patients biographies, their financial situations, and the like (Figure 1). It was accompanied by a questionnaire for the institution in which the patient was housed, which asked about staffing, beds available, and budgetary questions. A significant stress was also put on detailing the patients abilities to work. The first questionnaires went out in October 1939, the month Hitler signed his order, to state hospitals and other public and private institutions where mental patients, epileptics, the mentally retarded, and other handicapped persons resided. The responsibility for filling them out, often in a very short period of time, fell on the physicians at those institutions. The questionnaires were then sent to panels of three or four psychiatric experts, who indicated their opinion about whether the patient (whom they had never seen, much less examined, and whose medical history they were unfamiliar with) was to live or die. Each expert made his or her decision independently, and passed on the questionnaire to the next. The choice for the experts was effectively only one of two options: a plus sign in red, which meant death; or a dash in blue, which meant life. Occasionally, a psychiatrist would put a question mark in the space provided. The questionnaires were then sent to a chief expert, who passed the final judgment. At this higher level, there was no alternative other than life or death. In fact, the senior expert was not bound by the recommended decisions. From his judgment, there was no appeal. From that point on, it was merely a matter of sending back the decision to the relevant institution, where the final dispensation of the patient was carried out, and, if so ordered, sending him or her to one of the designated killing centers. These centers were supervised by medical personnel, who oversaw the killing, and were responsible for devising the fraudulent death certificates which were sent to the families of those who had been determined to have lives not worthy to be lived.
Posted on: Sun, 03 Nov 2013 14:35:08 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015