Götz Aly

Une entrevue du Spiegel

German historian Götz Aly is an expert on euthanasia during the Nazi era. In a SPIEGEL interview, he discusses why many accepted the murder of the handicapped and mentally ill, and how his own daughter has shaped his views on how the disabled should be treated today.

SPIEGEL: Your daughter went to an alternative kindergarten and then a special school, and today she lives in a supervised group home. How do you feel about the most recent efforts to achieve inclusion, meaning that all schools should be open to all children? Critics say that when disabled children are sent to mainstream schools, they are more likely to feel different from the norm and suffer even more as a result.

Aly: There are children who recognize that they have a special role, and they enjoy it. But there are also many who sense that they can’t do what the others can do, and they’re happy to be placed in a protected school. It depends on their personalities. That’s why it should be a matter of choice.

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SPIEGEL: Hence the title of your book: “The Burdened.” You demonstrate that killings on such a massive scale would not have been possible without the tacit consent of family members.

Aly: I wouldn’t call it consent. The organizers of the euthanasia murders systematically asked how often a patient was visited, and by whom. If they had the impression that a family was not very close-knit, the sick person was taken away far more quickly than someone who received regular visits. After the murder, the relatives received an official death certificate with a fabricated cause of death. Most people resigned themselves to this fictitious truth, accepting the chance they were given by the government not to have to know the real cause of death. Later on, this same social phenomenon — in which crimes were committed in semi-obscurity and a certain amount of looking the other way was required — is what helped facilitate the Holocaust. The murderers who began the euthanasia program in 1939 were surprised at how little resistance they encountered. It had to do with the shame many family members felt.

Some 200,000 people who were mentally ill or disabled were killed in Germany during the Nazi era. The cynical name for the extermination program was “euthanasia,” which means “beautiful death” in ancient Greek. This horrific past has shaped the way Germany treats the terminally ill and the disabled. Germany’s laws on assisted suicide are restrictive, and the country has stricter rules on pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, a form of embryo profiling, than most other European countries.

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Le Kiosque a publié: La folle histoire de la folie

Extrait:

L’Opération T4

En octobre 1939, un mois après le début de la guerre, dans une semi-clandestinité, un petit groupe d’«experts», mené par un haut fonctionnaire nazi, Philipp Bouhler et Karl Brandt, le médecin personnel d’Hitler, identifient les «vies sans valeur» qui seront sacrifiées:  les patients déficients, les malades mentaux, les schizophrènes, les épileptiques et les séniles. Le bureau du groupe est au numéro 4 de la rue Tiegerstrasse, ou T4, qui donne son nom à l’Opération. Hitler donne le feu vert en janvier 1940. L’équipe est prête.

Arrachés à leurs asiles, les malades sont conduits dans une demi-douzaine de centres d’euthanasie spécialement aménagés (Grafeneck, Hartheim, Brandeburg, Hadamar). Ces «bouches inutiles», comme disent les nazis, sont exterminées par gazage, piqûres, etc., puis incinérés. Une lettre officielle envoyée aux proches explique le décès de différentes façons, surtout par épidémie.

Août 1941. Hitler a mis l’Europe à genoux. Il vient d’envahir l’URSS. Près de 70 000 personnes sont déjà euthanasiées en Allemagne; 60 000 autres sont regroupées en vue de leur discrète élimination.

Mgr Clemens August von Galen, évêque de Münster, est mis au courant et décide d’intervenir. Il ne se fait pas d’illusions: s’il parle, il risque d’être arrêté comme «ennemi du peuple allemand» et exécuté.