The so-called Nazi Euthanasia Program targeted for murder Germans with mental and physical disabilities. It claimed the lives of an estimated 250,000 people.
Hartheim castle, a euthanasia killing center where people with physical and mental disabilities were killed by gassing and lethal injection. Hartheim, Austria, date uncertain.
Item View![This photo originates from a film produced by the Reich Propaganda Ministry. [LCID: film01]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/2ee91faf-6a84-49b4-88a1-7a2f7ffed943.jpg "This photo originates from a film produced by the Reich Propaganda Ministry. [LCID: film01]")
This photo originates from a film produced by the Reich Propaganda Ministry. It shows two doctors in a ward in an unidentified asylum. The existence of the patients in the ward is described as "life only as a burden." Such propaganda images were intended to develop public sympathy for the Euthanasia Program.
Item View![Cemetery at Hadamar where victims of euthanasia killing at Hadamar were buried. [LCID: 73719]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/7432f1ec-426c-4f49-9922-d6376b476927.jpg "Cemetery at Hadamar where victims of euthanasia killing at Hadamar were buried. [LCID: 73719]")
Cemetery at Hadamar. This photograph was taken toward the end of the war. Hadamar, Germany, April 1945.
Item View![Helene Melanie Lebel [LCID: 1823]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/fdb79b19-b2fe-41ea-9db5-10b256fbe713.gif "Helene Melanie Lebel [LCID: 1823]")
The elder of two daughters born to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, Helene was raised as a Catholic in Vienna. Her father died in action during World War I when Helene was just 5 years old, and her mother remarried when Helene was 15. Known affectionately as Helly, Helene loved to swim and go to the opera. After finishing her secondary education she entered law school.
1933-39: At 19 Helene first showed signs of mental illness. Her condition worsened during 1934, and by 1935 she had to give up her law studies and her job as a legal secretary. After losing her trusted fox terrier, Lydi, she suffered a major breakdown. She was diagnosed as schizophrenic, and was placed in Vienna's Steinhof Psychiatric Hospital. Two years later, in March 1938, the Germans annexed Austria to Germany.
1940: Helene was confined in Steinhof and was not allowed home even though her condition had improved. Her parents were led to believe that she would soon be released. Instead, Helene's mother was informed in August that Helene had been transferred to a hospital in Niedernhart, just across the border in Bavaria. In fact, Helene was transferred to a converted prison in Brandenburg, Germany, where she was undressed, subjected to a physical examination, and then led into a shower room.
Helene was one of 9,772 persons gassed that year in the Brandenburg "euthanasia" center. She was officially listed as dying in her room of "acute schizophrenic excitement."
Item View![A US Army soldier views the cemetery at the Hadamar Institute, where victims of the Nazi euthanasia program were buried in mass graves. [LCID: 05508]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/c398ca5a-ba98-43b5-83a9-010b865a594b.jpg "A US Army soldier views the cemetery at the Hadamar Institute, where victims of the Nazi euthanasia program were buried in mass graves. [LCID: 05508]")
A US Army soldier views the cemetery at Hadamar, where victims of the Nazi euthanasia program were buried in mass graves. This photograph was taken by an American military photographer soon after the liberation. Germany, April 5, 1945.
Item View!["Euthanasia" centers, Germany 1940-1945 [LCID: ger73070]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/51696999-44d4-4cf6-af6c-8a5135466d2e.gif "\"Euthanasia\" centers, Germany 1940-1945 [LCID: ger73070]")
In Nazi usage, "euthanasia" referred to the systematic killing of those Germans whom the Nazis deemed "unworthy of life" because of alleged genetic diseases or defects. Beginning in the fall of 1939, gassing installations were established at Bernburg, Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Hadamar, Hartheim, and Sonnenstein. Patients were selected by doctors and transferred from clinics to one of these centralized gassing installations and killed. After public outrage forced an end to centralized killings, doctors instead administered lethal injections to those selected for "euthanasia" in clinics and hospitals throughout Germany. In this way, the "euthanasia" program continued and expanded until the end of World War II.
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