On 1 September 1939 Hitler charged the defendant Karl Brandt and
Reichsleiter Bouhler with the execution of the Euthanasia Program. The
letter of appointment stated:
“Reichsleiter Bouhler and Dr. Brandt, M. D., are charged with
the responsibility of enlarging the authority of certain
physicians to be designated by name in such a manner that
persons who, according to human judgment, are incurable can,
upon a most careful diagnosis of their condition of sickness, be
accorded a mercy death.” (_630-PS, Pros. Ex. 330._)
This document in no way limited the application of euthanasia to insane
persons but included anyone who might be designated as “incurable.”
The witness Mennecke testified that the program was carried out in the
following way:
Every German mental institution received questionnaires from the Reich
Ministry of the Interior which were to be completed for each inmate of
the institution and to be sent back to the Reich Ministry of the
Interior. Experts then had to examine the questionnaires after they had
been photostated; they had to express their medical opinion on them, and
had to return them, with their opinion, to the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft
(Reich Labor Association). (_Tr. pp. 1872, 1873._)
This Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft cooperated with the “Stiftung”
(Charitable Foundation for Institutional Care), and the Patients
Transport Corporation. The “Stiftung” was in charge of the financial
side of the program, while the Patients Transport Corporation was used
when patients were moved from one institution to another in order to
bring them closer to the euthanasia institutions and finally into the
euthanasia institutions themselves. These three organizations,
Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft, “Stiftung,” and Patients Transport
Corporation, were in fact camouflaged names for the operation of the
Euthanasia Program and were under the supervision of one management.
They did not work independently but together. (_Tr. p. 1874._)
As to the questionnaires, three experts received photostated copies,
and, independently of each other, they expressed their opinion on
individual cases. Then so-called top experts expressed their opinion. A
list was made up of the patients who were judged subject to euthanasia,
and the patients were removed from the institution to so-called
collecting points, and from there were transferred to euthanasia
institutes. (_Tr. pp. 1877, 1878._) Non-German nationals and Jews were
subjected to euthanasia as well as Germans. (_Tr. p. 1881._)
The activities of the experts were extended in the early summer of 1940
to inmates of concentration camps. A doctors commission, which consisted
of doctors and officials from the Euthanasia Program, filled out the
questionnaires on inmates from among those who had been preliminarily
selected by the camp doctors. Numerous concentration camps were visited,
some of them twice, in the period between 1940 and the end of 1941.
(_Tr. pp. 1882, 1883._) Dr. Mennecke, who visited a number of
concentration camps to select inmates, received the orders for these
activities from the top experts in the Euthanasia Program and from the
defendant Brack. (_Tr. p. 1882._) Announcements about these trips were
made from the Berlin agency of the program to the individual
concentration camps. (_Tr. p. 1885._) Non-German Nationals and Jews who
were inmates of concentration camps were subjected to the Euthanasia
Program in extensive numbers. (_Tr. p. 1887._)
Another function of the Euthanasia Program was the killing of mentally
and bodily deficient children. The witness Walter Schmidt testified that
the agency which handled this part of the program was called the Reich
Committee for Research on Hereditary and Constitutional Severe Diseases
[Reichsausschuss zur wissenschaftlichen Erfassung von erb- und
anlagebedingten schweren Leiden]. The questionnaires were filled out by
the health departments, the chief of children’s clinics, physicians,
doctors, midwives, hospitals, etc., and reports were made to Dr.
Linden’s office in Berlin. Linden was a member of the Ministry of the
Interior. There a committee of chief experts, on the strength of these
reports, decreed euthanasia through so-called authorizing orders in the
form of a photostatic copy of the report, which had been approved in
writing. These activities continued until 1944. (_Tr. pp. 1833, 1834._)
Schmidt himself was in charge of a special department for the killing of
such deformed children. (_Tr. p. 1833._)
Workers from the occupied eastern territories who had become unfit for
labor were executed pursuant to the Euthanasia Program. Busses belonging
to the Patients Transport Corporation, which were operated by the
personnel of the Patients Transport Corporation, took these victims to
the extermination center of Hadamar, where they were killed. (_Tr. pp.
1842-1845_; _NO-1116, Pros. Ex. 415_.)
This evidence on the method of carrying out the program is corroborated
by the affidavit of the defendant Brack (_NO-426, Pros. Ex. 160_), the
affidavit of Pauline Kneissler (_NO-470, Pros. Ex. 332_), the chart
drawn by Brack (_NO-253, Pros. Ex. 331_), as well as numerous other
documents in the record.
The evidence concerning the activities of the top experts and experts of
the Euthanasia Program in the various concentration camps is
corroborated by the affidavit of the camp doctor of the Dachau
concentration camp, Dr. Muthig (_NO-2799, Pros. Ex. 497_), who states
that in the fall of 1941, Professor Heyde, as leader of a commission of
four psychiatrists, came to the Dachau concentration camp. This doctors
commission selected inmates, unable to work, for extermination by gas.
Heyde was the first top expert of the Euthanasia Program. (_Tr. p.
2495._) The affidavit of Dr. Gorgass reveals that he and Dr. Schumann,
both of whom were active in the Euthanasia Program, visited the
Buchenwald concentration camp in June 1941. Gorgass states explicitly
that the purpose of this trip was to acquaint himself with the
assignment of concentration camp inmates to euthanasia institutions.
This visit was made on the order of Brandt, and was transmitted by the
defendant Brack. (_NO-3010, Pros. Ex. 503._)