From: fr@compu.com (Fred Rump from home)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: Grafeneck: The Gassings Begin
Keywords: Grafeneck,Hadamar,Hallervorden,Tiessler,Wirth,Wurm
Date: 24 Jan 93 21:59:21 GMT
Organization: CompuData Inc.

All of the below quoted information is part of the public record of the 
beginnings of the mass murder in wartime Germany.  My reason for reposting
this from soc.history is to remind those readers here who seem to forget that
the killings were organized against 'all' who the state thought redundant -
not just Jews.  In immoral state does not differentiate simply because of
quantity.  It goes about its business like a machine that can't be stopped
except thru its own destruction.

Many people in Germany knew that from day one but were powerless to cause that 
destruction. We know today that even Cardinal Clemens August Count von Galen 
was not powerful enough to resist the state. The Kreuzkampf of Nov. '36 was 
quietly given in to publicly but really resolved with arrest of the leading
individuals and their eventual disappearance in the KZ.  The dissolution of
confessional public schools with the substitution of Gemeinschaftsschulen
under strict state guidelines brought further unrest among the people in the
Spring of 1938.  Again, any resistance to a God-less school system was put
down by the state with the arrest of those who opposed it.

Once the state got power, the people had lost their voice.  The pictures we
see of the happy multitudes were indeed great NAZI propaganda that is today
still categorizing the entire German people in some people's eyes.  They love
to believe what they want to be true without looking beyond the pain of those
who opposed that system.

I still doubt seriously that any number of postings, any amount of reasonable 
dialog will change the prejudiced opinions of those whose main emphasis is to
spread lies and hate just as did those whom they cite as examples of such.  It
is a sad commentary for the continuance of the human condition.  Perhaps some
day, in the future of mankind, we will stop categorizing entire groups of
people, as seen from our own feelings of hate, and simply include everybody in
the family of man without prejudgement.

Fred


kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca (Ken Mcvay) writes:

"Around Grafeneck signs were posted: `Danger -- Epidemic,' and all access
was barred. The exterminations rose to an average of more than thirty a day.
Since it was awkward, time-consuming, and too expensive to kill so many with
drugs, Criminal Police Commissioner Wirth devised a method for mass
extinction. The people, upon arrival, were undressed, given a one-minute
physical examination, then herded into a shed whose walls had been mortered
and sealed. Since many of these patients, removed from their accustomed
surroundings, were in a state of great agitation, Wirth tried to calm them
by leading them to believe that they would be given showers. The shed, in
fact, was equipped with dummy shower heads. Once all were inside the doors
were locked, and coal gas or carbon monoxide was pumped in.

To dispose of the bodies, a crematorium was erected. Dr. Hallervorden,
however, thought it a shame that so much `scientific' material should go up
in smoke. In a despostion for the trial [Nuremberg] he related: `I went up
to them and told them, `Look here now, boys, if you are going to kill all
these people, at lease take the brains out so that the material could be
utilized.' They asked me, `How many can you examine?' And so I told them an
unlimited number -- the more the better!'

Since Grafeneck was situated on a ridge adjacent to a Wehrmacht training
area and the town of Munsinger was but three miles away, it had not taken
long for people to make the connection between the transports on which
thousands arrived and no one ever departed and the nauseous smoke that
continually wafted over the countryside from the high chimney. By July 1940,
Grafeneck created such a tempest in Wu"rttembery that Bishop Wurm, the head
of the Lutherin Church in the province, addressed a letter to Frick:

`For some months past, insane, feeble-minded, and epileptic patients have
been transferred on the orders of the Reich Defense Council. Their relatives
are informed a few weeks later that the patient concerned has died of an
illness, and that, owing to the danger of infection, the body has had to be
cremated. Several hundred patrients from institutions in Wu"rttemberg alone
must have met their death in this way, among them war-wounded of the Great
War.

`The manner of action, particularly of deceptions that occur, is already
sharply criticized. Everybody is convinced that the causes of deaths which
are officially published are selected at random. When, to crown everything,
regret is expressed in the obituary notice that all endeavors to preserve
the patient's life were in vain, this is felt to be a mockery. The air of
mystery gives rise to the thought that something is happening that is
contrary to justice and cannot therefore be fefended by the government. It
also appears very little care was taken in the selection of the patients
destined for annihilation. The selections were not limited to insane
persons, but included also persons capable of work, especially epileptics.

`What conclusions will the younger generation draw when it realizes that
human life is no longer sacred to the state? Cannot every outrage be excused
on the grounds that the elimination of another was of advantage to the
person concerned? There can be no stopping once one starts down this
decline. God does not permit people to mock Him. Either the National
Socialist state must recognize the limits which God has laid down, or it
will favor a moral decline and carry the state down with it.'

No response to the letter was forthcoming. Frequently, if a critic did not
take on the system publicly and the issue was likely to be embarrassing, the
Nazis preferred to let the matter disappear in the caverns of the
bureaucracy. There, with exquisite, polite casuistry, officials communicated
with each other in such terms as: `I have the honor to inform you that the
female patients referred from your institution on November 8, 1940, to the
institutions of Grafeneck, Bernburg, Sonnenstein, and Hartheim all died in
November of last year.'

In truth, the euthanasia exterminations were just getting in full gear. On
September 5, 1940, Bishop Wurm wrote Frick again, deploring that, since his
last letter, `this practice has reached tremendous proportions. Recently,
the inmates of old-age homes have also been included. The basis for this
practice seems to be the opinion that in an efficient nation there is no
room for weak and frail people. If the leadership of the state is convinced
that it is an inevitable war measure, why does it not issue a decree with
legal force, which would at least have the good point that official quarters
would not have to seek refuge in lies? Is it necessary that the German
nation should be the first civilized nation to return to the habits of
primitive races?'

Soon all pretense of eliminating only `incurables' ceased. Small
institutions were shut down, and larger ones left operating as fronts with a
minute fraction of their former patients. A young, hardworking farmer by the
name of Koch was ordered to report for sterilization because he was an
epileptic. He wrote his mother he was feeling fine and asked her to send him
some tobacco. The next his mother heard was that he had died of an incurable
disease. His neighbors had no doubt that he had met a violent death and
expressed great indignation.

As 1941 progressed, attention shifted to the small town of Hadamar in a
famous cheese-making region near the Dutch bornder. There, with the Nazi
knack for conspicuousness, an extermination installation was set up in a
former monastery situated on a hill overlooking the community. Children,
with their instinct for cruel truth, taunted each other: `You're crazy!
You'll be sent to bake in Hadamar.' The bishop of Limburg adressed Justice
Minister Gu"rtner: `The population cannot grasp that systematic actions are
carried out which, in accordance with Paragraph 211 of the German criminal
code, are punishable by death.'

But it was not until late July of 1941 when Count von Galen, the bishop of
Mu"nster, spoke up, that anyone dared to bring the matter of the killings
into the open. Von Galen's family had been renowned in Germany for hundreds
of years, and his name was so famous it provided him with a certain
immunity. `Citizens of Mu"nster,' the bishop addressed his parishoners,
`wounded soldiers are being killed recklessly6 since they are of no more
productive use to the state. Mother, your boy will be killed too if he comes
back home from the front crippled.' The recent British air attacks on
Mu"nster, the bishop warned, should be interpreted as God's vengeance on the
German nation.

Walter Tiessler,  Goebble's deputy for propaganda and public enlightenment,
responded by suggesting `that we adopt the only measure that can be taken as
good propaganda as well as legal punishment -- namely: to hang the bishop of
Mu"nster. A general public notice of the execution of the death penalty as
well as a detailed justification of the measure should be made.'

By this time, the preponderance of `useless eaters' and `lives unworthy of
living' had been exterminated. Brandt and Bouhler were ordered to
deemphasize but not discontinue the euthanasia program. `Directors of
asylums,' one official reported, `were instructed that `useless eaters' who
could not work very much should be killed by slow starvation. This method
was considered very good, because the victims would appear to have died a
`natural death.'"

Excerpted from --------------------------------------------------------
Conot, Robert E. JUSTICE AT NUREMBERG. New York: Harper & Row, 1983. pp
207-210.

-- 
W. Fred Rump 	office:	   fred@COMPU.COM     "A man's library is a sort of 
26 Warren St.   home: fr@icdi10.compu.com 	harem" - Emerson (1860) 
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