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Five. Caring While Killing: Nursing in the “Euthanasia” Centers
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FIVE Caring While Killing: Nursing in the “Euthanasia” Centers Susan Benedict When giving the dissolved medicine, I proceeded with a lot of compassion. I had told patients that they would have to take a cure. Of course I could tell these fairy tales only to those patients who were still in their right minds to the extent that they could understand it. I took them lovingly into my arms and stroked them when I gave the medicine. If, for example, a patient did not empty the entire cup because it was too bitter, I talked to her nicely, telling her that she had already drunk so much that she should drink the rest, otherwise her cure couldn’t be finished . Some could be convinced to empty the cup completely. In other cases, I gave the medicine by the spoonful. Like I already told you, our procedure depended on the condition of the patients. Old women, for example, who had to be fed couldn’t drink on their own so it wasn’t possible to give them the medicine by the spoonful. They were not to be tortured more than necessary and I thought it would be better to give them an injection . In this connection, I would like to say that, like me, Luise E. [Erdmann], Margarete Ratajczak, and Erna E. thought that the patients were not to be tortured more than necessary.1 This was the testimony of Anna G., a nurse charged with killing 150 patients at Meseritz-Obrawalde, one of the German Third Reich euthanasia centers. This testimony was given at the nurses’ trial held in Munich in 1965. Today Meseritz-Obrawalde remains a functioning psychiatric hospital and is located in Poland. 95 96 Susan Benedict In the early twentieth century, the eugenics movement was actively supported in both Europe and the United States. This movement sought to apply the scientific principles of genetics to human society with the goal of improving and strengthening the human race. In the United States, eugenics courses were taught in such universities as Columbia, Harvard, Cornell, Brown, and Wisconsin.2 Involuntary sterilizations were carried out on both continents. In the United States, thirty states enacted legislation to allow involuntary sterilization of people with mental and/or physical handicaps. In fact, the United States led the Western world in involuntary sterilization, with the enactment of such laws twenty years before Germany did so. In 1907, Indiana became the first state to enact legislation to sterilize people judged to be feebleminded or genetically unfit. From 1907 through 1917, ten more states passed similar laws, and involuntary sterilizations were carried out in some states until the 1950s. By the time the German law for sterilization was enacted in 1933, at least thirty states in the US, as well as Alberta, Canada; Denmark; Finland; Sweden; and Iceland had similar legislation.3 Involuntary sterilizations were carried out in Germany beginning in 1933 and provided a first step in the “Healing of the Volk.” Sterilizations were, however, a means of improving the race slowly and over generations . A more expeditious remedy was the killing of the mentally and physically handicapped. In the 1920s and 1930s, involuntary euthanasia of the mentally and physically handicapped was widely discussed in Germany. Books and movies lauding euthanasia were popular, including Opfer der Vergangenheit (Victims of the Past), which was produced under Hitler’s direct order and shown by law in all 5,300 German movie theaters.4 Throughout the country posters were displayed that showed a strong and healthy German supporting on his shoulders the weight of handicapped individuals . The slogan on the poster was inflammatory: “You are sharing the load! A genetically ill individual costs approximately 50,000 Reichsmark by the age of sixty.”5 Similarly, a high school mathematics textbook of that time included problems based on the calculated cost of caring for the mentally ill.6 In 1935 Hitler told a leading Reich physician, Dr. Gerhard Wagner, that he would implement euthanasia once war began.7 Two years later, a secret Reich Committee for Research of Inherited and Other Severe Illnesses was established in Hitler’s Chancellory. In 1939 this committee drafted a prospective law calling for the “destruction of life unworthy of life,” which would have provided legal sanction for “killing people [54.224.52.210] Project MUSE (2024-03-27 06:20 GMT) Caring While Killing 97 suffering from serious congenital mental or physical ‘malformation,’ because they required long-term care, aroused ‘horror...