Nazi Eugenics (Times 26th November 2009)

It was in 1934 that the Nazis brought into force the “law for the prevention of genetic ill procreation”. For Hitler, the sterilisation of “genetically ill” people was a “humane deed” for mankind. “The passing pain of one century can and will release thousands of years from suffering,” he wrote in Mein Kampf. This “passing pain” was inflicted on about 400,000 people. The exact number is difficult to ascertain because many victims did not survive their ordeal.

Men and women were classified as genetically ill if they suffered from “hereditary mental retardation”, “schizophrenia”, or “manic-depressive insanity”, but also if they were deaf or blind. People who were heavily disabled and some who were alcoholics could suffer compulsory sterilisation, with or without anaesthetic. To achieve this the Nazis established “genetic health tribunals” to arbitrate. Many victims were healthy, but had had the ill-luck to belong to a marginalised social class.

The former Franciscan convent Hadamar in Hasse is one of six central facilities for murdering patients established in Germany between 1939 and 1941, and still looms forbiddingly over the town. The systematic annihilation took place in the white-painted house next to it. A small staircase leads down into the cellar to the 14sq m death chamber. With its black and white tiles it looks like a shower, but the holes in the wall for the gas pipes are still visible. A peephole used by the doctor who performed the act of murder is now covered over.
In the room behind was an autopsy table for medical investigations, while a short distance away to the right are the ovens used to burn the bodies. Ten thousand people were gassed there in 1941, and between 1942 to 1945 another 4,400 were killed either by “hunger-diet”, injections of venom, or toxic drugs.

These killings formed part of the programme “Aktion T4”, so-named because of the Berlin headquarters in Tiergartenstrasse 4 where the extermination was organised. The killings were halted after protests from Protestant and Roman Catholic churchmen and other people – but unsanctioned killings still continued.

Paul Eggert was the second youngest of 13 children from a poor family. In school he had to beg for food and the Nazis considered him “asocial” and “cretinous”. After being sterilised, he was sent to a concentration camp for children. Every evening the medical team entered the dining hall, and the physician would point at the children that were to come to him next morning to receive the “diphtheria injection”; he’d choose five to six children.

Some of them Eggert saw again when he had to bring the washing to the laundry. Once, at the age of 12, he lifted the blankets to see why the carriages were so heavy. He saw the the corpses of the children.

For people such as Hans Heissenberg, the end of the war and the Nazi regime did not mean an end to his privations. In the spring of 1946, on the day he was to marry a farmgirl called Erika, with whom he had fallen in love, the director of the hospital where he had been sterilised prevented the marriage. Hans says: “He took the marriage announcement out of the administrative office saying, ‘How can he marry? He is a cretin!’ My bride was waiting in the church.”

Hans never saw her again and has never married. “I could not even think of it,” he says and begins to cry. He sits on his small bed in a nursing home in Lemgo contemplating his life. “I am glad it is over,” he whispers, “but I cannot forget, I cannot forget.”