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March 31, 2005

Would you believe we're worse than . . . .

The Nazis?

In the aftermath of the judicially-ordered starvation-killing of Terri Schiavo, America has achieved a dubious distinction: We are now more depraved than the Nazis, whom we prosecuted for crimes against humanity a mere sixty years ago.

Now, I realize that I'm making a spectacularly outrageous charge, and admit that we're not even in the same ballpark as the National Socialists when it comes to depriving people of their rights -- not to mention their lives. But there is one area in which I think the accusation is reasonable, and supported by the historical record.

A review of the Nazi's murderous practices reveals that 70,000 people were euthanized, killed, without their permission, because they were living "lives not worth being lived," at least according to the likes of Adolf Hitler and his followers.

All aspects of German society was implicated in the killings, from the judiciary to the medical profession. Nurses were actively involved in more than 10,000 of the killings, with 14 nurses standing trial more than twenty years later in Munich during the 1960s.

The road to the killing of the sick, the mentally ill, began in Germany in 1920, when a pamphlet, "The Sanctioning of the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Living," coauthored by a physician, was widely read. The cause was helped by the success of a novel in the 1930s, Sendung und Gewissen (Mission and Conscience), wherein a woman with multiplesclerosis is euthanized -- killed -- by her husband. Widely read, this book helped the German public grow accustomed to the idea that some people ought to be killed because others judged their lives to be unworthy of continuing.

The novel was subsequently made into a popular film, the first of several dealing with the concept of "lives not worth living." The medical profession was receptive to the cost-based arguments in favor of killing the ill, which often began with proposals to limit treatment to the elderly.

"It must be made clear to anyone suffering from an incurable disease that the useless dissipation of costly medications drawn from the public store cannot be justified" and "...it made no sense for persons 'on the threshold of old age' to receive services such as orthopedic therapy or dental bridgework; such services were to be reserved for healthier elements of the population."

"You Are Sharing the Load! A Genetically Ill Individual Costs Approximately 50,000 Reichsmarks by the Age of Sixty," read a poster from the mid-30s. Students were indoctrinated about the neglible worth of the handicapped through the use of high school textbooks with math problems using the cost of caring for the mentally ill as examples.

In the late 1930s, a Reich Committee comprised of three medical and phsychiatric specialists drafted a proposed law calling for the "destruction of life unworthy of life."

In 1939, a Ministry of Justice panel proposed:

Clause 1: Whoever is suffering from an incurable or terminal illness which is a major burden to him or others, can request mercy killing by a doctor, provided it is his express wish and has the approval of a specially empowered doctor.

Clause 2: The life of a person who because of incurable mental illness requires permanent institutionalization and is not able to sustain an independent existence, may be prematurely terminated by medical measures in a painless and covert manner.

The Germans instituted a protocol requring physicians and midwives to report the birth of mentally ill or deformed children. A panel of physicians would examine reports -- not the actual child -- and decide if the child should be killed. The parents were then contacted and told to bring the children to "treatment centers," where they were informed that, for the child's well being, special "care" would be provided.

The children targeted for euthanasia were either starved or given an overdose shortly after they arrived at the medical facility.

Sound familiar?

In the pediatric unit of Haar, for example, 332 children died of deliberate starvation or by an overdose of Luminal [Phenobarbital]. This drug was mixed into the children's food every morning and night until they became unconscious and developed pneumonia. Some were also given injections of morphine and scopolamine (Burleigh, 1994, p. 102).

Here's where I maintain that Americans have demonstrably devolved to a point where, morally, we are worse than the Nazis. I say this because vast segments of the American public maintain, without shame, that Terri Schiavo ought to die, and that those of us opposed to her death were deserving of opprobrium.

How did the Germans feel about killing the sick, the ill, the defenseless? They were ashamed.

The nursing staff of the pediatric unit of Haar was led by a senior nurse, Emma D., and two younger colleagues, Emma L. and Maria S. They were forced to swear an oath of loyalty, pledging eternal silence regarding what went on in the clinic, under pain of death. Initially, however, they swallowed the line that what they were doing was scientifically important, rationalizing the high number of deaths as being merely what one might call collateral casualties. Although they sometimes requested transfers, and undoubtedly found the work disturbing, nonetheless they also regarded it as necessary to 'release' the 'regrettable creatures' in their care from their suffering. Like many nurses who worked in these clinics, they received a 25RM-per-month [approximately $80 US] supplementary payment, know pejoratively as 'Schmutzgeld' [dirty money]. The doctors sometimes received a 250RM [approximately $800 US] Christmas bonus. In some clinics (notoriously the Kalmenhof at Idstein), the tensions of the job were soothed by a visit to the wine cellars to mark every fiftieth killing with copious amounts of wine and cider (Burleigh, 1994, p. 104-105).

That's right, the Germans at least had the vestiges of a conscience, such that they knew that what they were doing was, hmmm, what do those Taliban-Wing-Republican-Christers call it? "Wrong!" Yes, that's it.

The Nazis had to bribe people and swear them to silence to engage in the kind of cold-hearted extermination that the American Judiciary and the ACLU defends.

The Germans expanded their euthanasia programs from just children to include mentally ill adults, some of whom were sane enough to comprehend what the doctors and nurses were about to do -- and to request they be given last rites by a priest.

The bottom line is that we have become a society wherein it is acceptable to call for the court-ordered starvation of a woman as the "humane" means of ending a "life not worth living."

We should be ashamed.

Posted by Mike Lief at March 31, 2005 11:57 AM