When writing a book covering the years 1933 – 45 in German history, the research is often very depressing. So many unspeakably terrible things happened during this time, so many innocent people became victims of the dictatorship.
One of the most difficult topics in both research and writing was the one behind the harmless-sounding name “T4”. The name (only used in the post-war period) comes from the address of the place that organized the murders of people who were viewed by the Nazi dictatorship as “unworthy to live” (the term alone sends shivers down the spine) – Tiergartenstrasse 4 in Berlin. During the dictatorship people were considered “unworthy to live” for many reasons; here it refers to those who had mental illnesses or intellectual disabilities. During the Nazi era, the murder of these people was referred to as “euthanasia” or veiled as “Aktion Gnadentod” (Action mercy death) … in a regime for which mercy was an alien concept anyway. The propaganda tried hard to convince the population that some lives were “unworthy of living” and that death would be a mercy in such cases. There were short films that indignantly announced how much people in sanatoriums and nursing homes (the forerunners of today’s psychiatric hospitals) would cost the state and the much-vaunted national community and of how little use they would be, as well as an entire movie from the year with that Name “I accuse”. In my book “Life’s Labyrinthine Course” a mother whose child fell victim to the T4 murders describes the film as follows:
It’s actually about a woman who wants to die because of multiple sclerosis. Her husband ends up giving her a lethal drug and is indicted. And what a surprise! The woman’s doctor, who initially rejected killing her as unethical, now takes a completely different viewpoint! Because in the meantime, a mentally ill child made him realize that it would be much more merciful to put such people out of their misery. The child’s parents also saw it that way. Ultimately, the whole disgusting movie is an advertisement for eliminating ill people.
Fortunately, there were also people who dared to publicly denounce these murders. The best known one is certainly Clemens August Graf von Galen, the Bishop of Münster, whose powerful sermon on the subject can be read here in an English translation. The courage it took to speak so openly in such years cannot be overestimated. Others also spoke publicly, relatives investigated, and word spread about the murders. This had an effect and the murders largely stopped. As with the Rosenstraße protest in 1943, one inevitably wonders in which other areas larger protests and a more decisive stance could have had an impact.
But there were also those who couldn’t believe that something like this would happen in sanatoriums and nursing homes. “These are doctors! Doctors don’t kill people!” is a reaction in my book and “propaganda from England and you are only too willing to believe it. That doesn’t happen here.” From today’s perspective, this reaction may seem naive, but the realization that doctors destroy lives instead of preserving them, that they kill, not heal – that was not easily comprehensible for someone without today’s knowledge about the events and living in a regime with censorship and propaganda. Even with today’s knowledge, it was very difficult for me to realize that doctors could do something like that. It was even more difficult for me to process the information that some of these murderous doctors were able to continue their careers seamlessly after the war.
I had an average knowledge what had happened. Hadamar, the name of one of these sanatoriums and nursing homes that became killing centers, was familiar to me early on. I can never drive past the highway sign with that name on it without thinking about what happened there. Grafeneck was also known to me as such a killing center. People were gassed there and in other places, tens of thousands of them; they were taken by bus to the six killing centers. The monument of the gray buses reminds us of this. I saw some years ago in Frankfurt, amid the cheerful lightheartedness of Goetheplatz, a quiet, haunting reminder of the country’s darkest time, directly across from the Goethe Monument.
When I researched the topic in more detail for “Life’s Labyrinthine Course”, especially the T4 murders of children, I learned that the murders were also carried out through deprivation of food and lethal medication. The reports of the torturous agony of children murdered in this way were painful to read. I admit, I didn’t even know whether I could write about it, but my aim was to describe the various atrocities of that time and the fates behind them. After I wrote the scene where a child dies like that, I had to take few days off from writing.
Another aspect that shocked me was the care taken to cover up the murders. The dead were cremated immediately, and the institutions‘ own registry offices issued death certificates with natural causes. Often, attempts were made to make visits from relatives more difficult. But mistakes also happened. As the mother of the murdered child states in “Life’s Labyrinthine Course”: “I found other mothers and also relatives of adults who were in sanatoriums and nursing homes. Many received death notices and there’s something strange going on. Since last year physically healthy people have been dying in these institutions! Sometimes causes of death are given that cannot be correct. Someone without an appendix allegedly died of a ruptured appendix!”
There was something even more shocking. Some parents (I focused my research on the murders of children) were quite in agreement with their children dying. When an SS man says in my book: “Our brave soldiers risk their lives and make sacrifices every day, the population makes sacrifices, the damn English are bombing the capital and useless eaters are sitting here wasting valuable resources.”, then that is a statement I read in contemporary documents, as disgusting as it sounds.
A doctor who then answered like this was unfortunately not an exception: “The children here are already receiving little food, some of them didn’t last long. This is often a relief for the parents and ultimately for the child too. Who would want to continue living like that?”
The dialogue between father and doctor in the book continues as follows:
“In times like these, we should concentrate even more on eliminating weaknesses. With our airstrikes on London we have now really shown the British that the invasion is only a matter of time and then we’ll have won the war. We have new living space in the East and now we can set the course for an unprecedented development of our people.”
“Not all parents see it as rationally as you do.”
(…) “Some people just get lost in sentimentality. But a fait accompli usually helps to look ahead and leave these sentimentalities behind.” He gestured towards the door. “Ending some situations is, as you said, often a relief for everyone involved.”
“Many mothers are prone to the sentimentality you mentioned. Your wife–“ “Don’t worry about my wife. She can’t do anything about a fait accompli. Some things just happen, people just have to deal with that.”
According to prevailing opinion, at least one major impetus for the child murders was one parental couple who wrote directly to the dictator asking that their disabled son be granted a “mercy death.” If you google „Baby Knauer“ oder „Knauer child“ you’ll find more information about this case This happened in Leipzig, where my Schönau saga takes place, and Leipzig, a leader in child psychiatry in the Weimar Republic, became a leader in murdering these same children during the dictatorship. The Leipzig-Dösen “sanatorium and nursing home” gained a dark reputation here.
On of my readers wrote me something which really touched me: “I was particularly affected by (…)’s death. I researched the topic and found the following (…): ‚At least 5,000 people fell victim to child euthanasia in over 30 so-called ‚children’s special departments‘ .‘ Normally I would have read the sentence and found it terrible, but now that I, as a reader, am so connected to the Schönau family (…), it has a completely new dimension.“
That’s exactly what I wanted to achieve with the Schönau story, among other things – show the fates behind the historical events. I felt the same way when I was researching – the facts themselves are horrific, but when you learn about specific fates, it has an even greater impact. I read through numerous biographies of T4 victims, the images and thoughts affected me deeply; I read a lot more than I needed to research. There were parents and relatives there who fought desperately for their children, whose suffering I cannot begin to fathom. Parents who believed they were doing the best for their children by placing them in supposedly skilled care. Also many who were pressured by the regime to place their children in institutions. The individual fates show a variety of suffering, grief and cruelty.
You can find more information in English here:
Heike Wolf - Historische Romane 