Newsgroups: alt.revisionism,soc.history
Subject: Holocaust Almanac: "In the hand of a physician ..."
From: kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca (Ken Mcvay)
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 92 12:01:04 GMT
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Old Frog's Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords: Bernburg,Brack,Brandenburg,Hadamar,Hartheim,Sonnenstein,Grafeneck

Holocaust denial inevitably includes the assertion that no government
extermination plan existed, and that no gassings occurred within areas
controlled by the Nazi state. Whether these assertions are made in the
belief that the audience is either too stupid, or too lazy, to check the
facts for themselves, or simply to parrot what nazi activists have said over
and over again isn't known.

What _is_ known is that gassings most certainly _did_ occur, in Germany
itself, and that these gassings were part of an overall deliberate plan on
the part of Hitler himself to eliminate not only the mentally ill and
infirm, but "non-German patients" as well. The "euthanasia" centres quickly
became the training ground for the mass murderers needed to exterminate the
Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, and anyone else Hitler considered less than worthy...

"... death generally occurred within twenty-four hours of the patient's
arrival at the killing center. Under T4 <1> policy, a doctor had to do the
actual killing, in accordance with the motto enunciated by Dr. Viktor
Brack, head of the Chancellery's `Euthanasia' Department II: `The syringe
belongs in the hand of a physician.'<54> Rather than a syringe, however, it
was usually a matter of opening a gas cock.

There were six main killing centers -- Hartheim, Sonnenstein, Grafeneck,
Bernburg, Brandenburg, and Hadamar. Typically they were converted mental
hospitals or nursing homes; at least one had been a prison. They were
in isolated areas and had high walls - some had originally been old castles
- so that what happened within could not be readily observed from without.
`The unloading of the buses could be done in a way [so that] neither the
screams of the patients nor any other occurrences could penetrate to the
outside world.'<55>

Hitler himself is said to have decided upon the use of carbon monoxide gas
as the killing method, on the so-called medical advice of Dr. Heyde. The
decision followed upon an experiment conducted in early 1940 at
Brandenburg, then being converted from a prison into a killing center.
Killing by injection (using various combinations of morphine, scopolomine,
curare, and prussic acid [ cyanide ]) was directly compared with killing by
means of carbon monoxide gas. Karl Brandt, `a very conscientious man [who]
took his responsibility very seriously,' requested the experiment; and he
and Conti administered the injections themselves `as a symbolic action in
which the most responsible physicians in the Reich subjected themselves to
the practical carrying through of the Fuehrer's order.'<56>

The four or six injected patients (`six at the most') `died only slowly,'
and some had to be injected again. In contrast, the gas worked perfectly.
The first Nazi gas chamber had been constructed under the supervision of
Christian Wirth, of the SS Criminal Police, lent to the T4 staff. The
arrangement included a fake shower room with benches, the gas being
inserted from the outside into water pipes with small holes thourhg which
the carbon monoxide would escape. Present were two SS chemists with
doctoral degrees, one of whom operated the gas. The other, August Becker,
told how eighteen to twenty people were led naked into the `shower room':
through a peephole he observed that very quickly `people toppled over, or
lay on the benches' - all without `scenes or commotion.' The room was
ventilated within five minutes; SS men then used special stretchers which
mechanically shoved the corpses into crematory ovens without contact. The
technical demonstration was performed before a select audience of the inner
circle of physicians and administrators of the medical killing project.
Having been shown the technique, Dr. Irmfried Eberl, newly appointed head
of the Brandenburg institution, took over `by himself and on his own
responsibility.' Both Brack and Brandt expressed their satisfaction with
the experiment, the latter stressing that `only doctors should carry out
the gassings.'<57>"

<1>  T4 - The camouflage organization created for the medical killing of 
     adults was known as the Reich Work Group of Sanatoriums and Nursing 
     Homes (Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft Heil- und Pflegeanstalten, or RAG).  
     It operated from the Berlin Chancellery, at Tiergarten 4, hence 
     the "T4" code name.

<54> Testimony by August Becker, 21 April 1960, Heyde Trial, p. 295
<55> Heyde Trail, page 380
<56> Heyde testimony, 12 October - 22 December 1961. Heyde Trial, 
     pp. 292-3

Extracted from--------------------------------------------------- 
THE NAZI DOCTORS: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide.
Lifton, Robert Jay,       London: Papermac, 1986 (Reprinted 1990)
--------------------------------------------------------pp. 71-72

For an extensive bibliography dealing with the Holocaust, and containing over 
1100 citations, contact kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca - it will be sent to you
by return email. Additions to this bibliography are actively solicited.

-- 
The Old Frog's Almanac - Public Access UseNet for Central Vancouver Island
     (604) 245-3205 (v32) (604) 245-4366 (2400x4) Waffle XENIX 1.64
Ladysmith, British Columbia, CANADA. kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca (Ken McVay)
                    < October 26th: voting NO >
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism