Registration of Children with Disabilities

German officials ordered the registration of all newborn babies and children under three years of age who showed signs of severe mental or physical disabilities. This order highlighted the participation of midwives. They were paid a small sum for each infant they reported. Parents were encouraged to surrender their children with disabilities to the care of state-run residential clinics. There, medical staff secretly murdered the children by starvation or lethal injection.

As German policymakers shifted the country’s economy onto a war footing, they began to view people with disabilities as a financial, as well as genetic, burden. The so-called “racial hygiene” policies of Nazi Germany took a radical turn. Portrayed falsely in propaganda as “mercy deaths,” the secret, so-called “euthansia” program soon expanded to include adults with disabilities as well.