Blind Workshop and Holocaust Museum

"The German armies launched their attack on the USSR on 22 June1941. The murder detachments of the Einsatzgruppen began their work in the USSR within three months, shooting Jews, Gypsies, and mental patients... However it was not possible to kill eleven million European Jews in this way. Modern technology in the form of gas would be needed. Heydrich could call upon the experience of those who had been trained to kill mental patients with carbon monoxide since, at about this time, the euthanasia program was stopped. It is not known who made this decision to put an end to the programme but it seems logical to assume Heydrich was involved in order to free these trained staff to work on the extermination of the Jews."

Benno Muller-Hill (1995), p. 46

Readings:

Aly, Gotz. “Medicine Against the Useless” in C. Pross (ed.). Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1994: 22-98.

Biesold, Horst. Crying Hands: Eugenics and Deaf People in Nazi Germany. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet UP. Chapter 9: “Euthanasia and Deaf Germans.”

Mueller-Hill, Benno. Murderous Science: Elimination by Scientific Selection of Jews, Gypsies, and Others, Germany 1933-1945, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988. Chapter 3: “From the Killing of Mental Patients to the Killing of Jews and Gypsies.”

Synopsis:

Disability in the Holocaust Timeline: Euthanasia killings as model for genocide