During the Holocaust, it is estimated that 300,000 disabled individuals were killed. Who were these disabled individuals, and did families willingly give up their disabled family members to the Nazis?

The Euthaniasia Program or Aktion T4 was the mass killing of the mentally and physically disabled in Nazi Germany. The program began in September 1939 and lasted until the very final days of the war. The victims were people, regardless of age and gender, who had some sort of mental or physical disability that had a major impact on their life and those around them. Some examples include someone who may have been blind or deaf, have schizophrenia, OCD, tourette's syndrome, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy... the list goes on. But it is important to note that medicine in the 1930's to 1940's is not like the modern standard of today. Such names for such disabilities were not known as the same name as today but they did exist. Treatment was very poor and many families, if their family member was not at home, they were likely in a physchiatric hospital or some kind of other caregiving facilitity.

The USHMM has a list here of the names of victims who died in the Aktion T-4. There were six major killing centers in Germany for the program: Brandenberg, Grafeneck, Bernburg, Sonnenstein, Hartheim, and Hadamar. In these six places, victims were killed, often by gassing. There were also two different Euthanasia Programs: Children's and Adult. Child victims were mostly children under three, but up to 5000 youth up to the age of 17 were killed. In hospitals, midwives and medical personnel were required to report newborns and toddlers that showed signs of some kind of disability, mental of physical.

The program, led by Philipp Bouhler and Karl Brandt, was run in secret. Only those who worked in one of the six centers and those running it, knew about the killings. Those required to report were simply following orders of the Reich. Beginning in October 1939, parents were encouraged to send their children with disabilities to "specially designed pediatric centers" which were really the killing centers. The 5,000 children that were sent there were murdered by starvation, experimentation, or lethal overdoses.

The program for adults was different. It started after the children's program and was expanded. Questionaires were sent out to all health officials in hospitals, nursing homes, and psychiatric hospitals. Those questionaires were designed to look like a statistical report but in reality they were designed to find out how many people were disabiled so those behind the T4 program would know who to take away. Once those were selected by a team of doctors who analyzed the forms, the victims were taken by bus to one of the killing centers.

From there, they were often killed within the first twenty-four hours in gas chambers. The T4 program use of gas chambers was later expanded to the Holocaust and mass killing of Jews that way. Some were not killed immeadiately and were kept in the killing centers. Some had some use to the doctors and were used for medical experiments before they were killed. Once the victim was killed, their body was cremated and their ashes were sent back to the family.

Did families willingly give up their disabiled family members to the Nazis?

The answer is a complicated both yes and no. This depended on the family, the victim, the type of disability the victim had, the pressure from the Reich, and the situation of the family. Some families willingly handed over their family member with a mental of physical disabilty to a "home" for them where the family thinks they will be cared for. The moment they are sent to a home, they were in the hands of the Reich. The Reich allowed the family to send the victim gifts and the victim could write to their family, sometimes the family could visit. The family was responsible to pay a certain amount each month.

Letters to the family and visits from the family were heavily censored so the truth wouldn't get out. After the victims was in a "home" for a few months, they were notified that the victim was being moved and at that point, communication was less frequent. The movement was to one of the six killing centers and the victims arrived by bus. Many were killed within the first day by gassing, others lived a little longer but nearly all were killed after several weeks. The family was then told that the victim was dead after so long and the cause of death was listed as some kind of illness to suicide in some cases. Then the victims ashes, after they were cremated, were sent to the family. The family was not given specific answers.

One story of a T4 victim was that of Emilie Rau, a woman who died in the Hadamar killing center. She was a mother to four, and was mentally well until 1931 when she became confused and depressed. Later that year, she was diagnosed with physcosis. During much of the 1930's after her diagnosis, she spent much of her time in and out of psychiatric homes. Her husband and family were denied visitation with her. She died in Hadamar by gassing on 21 February 1941.

The family had a lot of tensions with each other over Rau's diagnosis and it put a strain on their relationships. Nevertheless, Emilie's husband still tried to visit her and do as much as possible for her. The doctors killed anyone in capable of work in the gas chambers immeadiately and Rau was determined to be able to work. Her family was given false information about her death. She was gassed. Instead the family was told she "died unexpectedly from complications from a boil from her lip, with resulting meningeal infection". She was cremated the family still had to pay for her "treatment" so they falsifed the day she died to prolong payments.

The truth for Rau's family and the families of the other thousands of victims were not known for a while after the end of the war. Prior and during the war, it was kept a secret from most of the Germans. Exposure was feared so much that the program was halted for a while after 1941 when word potentially got out into the wrong hands. The killings resumed in secret after a while. Not much was known about the program, not even directly after the war. Much of it was exposed after Germany was reunited and many records behind the iron curtain were released to the world. Even to this today, more is still being learned about the T-4 program.

Sources: Fuller Torrey, E., and Robert H Yolken. “Psychiatric Genocide: Nazi Attempts to Eradicate Schizophrenia.” Schizophrenia Bulletin 36, no. 1 (September 16, 2009).

Hechler, Andreas. “Diagnoses That Matter: My Great-Grandmother's Murder as One Deemed 'Unworthy of Living' and Its Impact on Our Family.” Disability Studies Quarterly 37, no. 2 (2017).

Hohendorf, Gerrit. “THE EXTERMINATION OF MENTALLY ILL AND HANDICAPPED PEOPLE UNDER NATIONAL SOCIALIST RULE,” November 17, 2016.