Mental Disabilities during World War 2.

   During World War 2 the soldiers and workmen thought that mentally retarded people were not needed and thought of them as something that nobody cares for.

   The physically and mentally handicapped were viewed as useless, individuals who were mentally retarded were targeted for murder in what the Nazis called “T4” or “Euthanasia”.

Handicapped infants/small children were killed by injection with a deadly dose of drugs or by starvation. The bodies of victims were burned. Despite public protest in 1941, the Nazi leadership continued this program in secret throughout the war. About 200,000 people were murdered during that time period.

    The T4 program became the new model for that mass murder of Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and others in camps equipped with gas chambers that the Nazis would open during 1941 time period. Adolf Hitler called the beginning of the “euthanasia” program– the repeating killing of those Germans that the Nazis deem “unworthy of life”. Those patients are sent to various “euthanasia” killing centers in Greater Germany and killed by lethal injection or in gas chambers.

     Mounting public criticism of the “ euthanasia” killings prompts Adolf Hitler to order the end of the program. Gas chambers in the various “euthanasia” killing centers are dismantled. Although the “euthanasia” program is officially ended, the killing if physically or mentally challenged people continues in secret in individual cases. Hartheim castle one of the Euthanasia killing centers.

www.ushmm.org