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At the beginning of WWII, people with mental or physical disabilities were targeted for murder in what the Nazis called the T-4, or "euthanasia," program.
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.
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.
The Nazi Euthanasia Program, codenamed Aktion "T4," was the systematic murder of institutionalized people with disabilities. Read about Nazi “euthanasia.”
July 14, 1933. On this date, the German government passed the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases.
The German town of Hadamar housed a psychiatric clinic where almost 15,000 men, women, and children were killed between 1941 and March 1945 in the Nazi Euthanasia Program.
Theories of eugenics shaped many persecutory policies in Nazi Germany. Learn about the radicalization and deadly consequences of these theories and policies
The Nazis used poisonous gas to murder millions of people in gas vans or stationary gas chambers. The vast majority of those killed by gassing were Jews.
The Grafeneck T4 Center was the first centralized killing center to be established by German authorities within the context of the Nazi “euthanasia,” or T4, program.
Learn about the establishment of the Theresienstadt camp/ghetto, which served multiple purposes from 1941-45 and had an important propaganda function for the Germans.
Leading German physicians and administrators were put on trial for their role during the Holocaust. The resulting Nuremberg Code was a landmark document on medical ethics. Learn more
Jews were the primary targets for mass murder by the Nazis and their collaborators. Nazi policies also led to the brutalization and persecution of millions of others.
The Hadamar Trial of October 1945 was the first mass atrocity trial held in the US occupation zone of Germany following World War II.
The Nazis established killing centers in German-occupied Europe to mass murder Jews. Learn more about what happened to Jewish people at these killing centers.
To implement their policies, the Nazis had help from individuals across Europe, including professionals in many fields. Learn about the role of doctors and nurses.
To implement their policies, the Nazis had help from individuals across Europe, including professionals in many fields. Learn about the role of civil servants.
Hadamar was a psychiatric clinic and one of six killing facilities in the so-called Euthanasia Program. The goal of the Nazi Euthanasia Program was to murder people with mental and physical disabilities. The program...
Hadamar was one of six euthanasia killing facilities in the Nazi Euthanasia Program.
The "euthanasia" program targeted, for systematic killing, patients with mental and physical disabilities living in institutional settings in Germany and German-annexed territories. Historians estimate that the program claimed the lives of 250,000 men, women, and children.
The Nazis began experimenting with poison gas for the purpose of mass murder in late 1939 with...
In 1942, eleven-year-old Dawid Tennenbaum went into hiding with his mother, settling in the Lvov region as Christians. Dawid disguised himself as a girl and as mentally disabled. This exempted him from attending school and prevented his being exposed.
Hartheim castle, a euthanasia killing center where people with physical and mental disabilities were killed by gassing and lethal injection. Hartheim, Austria, date uncertain.
Otto Dix was a German artist who depicted the horrors of war. His art was targeted in the Nazi book burnings and “Degenerate Art” exhibition. Learn more.
Brandenburg was one of six killing centers the Nazis established to murder patients with disabilities under the so-called "euthanasia" program.
Racism, including racial antisemitism (prejudice against or hatred of Jews based on false biological theories), was an integral part of Nazism. Learn more
Children were especially vulnerable to Nazi persecution. Learn more about the fates of Jewish and non-Jewish children.
Nazi Germany and its allies established over 44,000 concentration camps and incarceration sites during the Holocaust. Read about the Nazi camp system.
Learn about conditions in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp system and the treatment of prisoners there, including medical experiments and forced labor.
August 24, 1941. On this date, Adolf Hitler ordered the cessation of centrally coordinated "euthanasia" killings due to public protests.
Soviet and Polish prisoners with disabilities stand in front of a tank of the 11th Armored Division, US Third Army. This photograph was taken at the Mauthausen concentration camp immediately after liberation. Austria, May 5–7, 1945.
Helen Keller was an author, suffragist, and disability rights advocate. Her socialist and anti-war writing was burned under the Nazi regime in 1933. Learn more.
Georg Grosz was a German artist of the Dada movement. His books, which had many of his best-known plates, were burned in Nazi Germany in 1933. Learn more.
Psychiatric patients are evacuated to clinics where they will be murdered as part of the Nazi Euthanasia Program. Photo taken in Germany and dated circa 1942–1944. The term "euthanasia" usually refers to causing a painless death for a chronically or terminally ill individual who would otherwise suffer. In the Nazi context, however, "euthanasia" was a euphemistic or indirect term for a clandestine murder program that targeted individuals with physical and mental disabilities.
Poster promoting the Nazi monthly publication Neues Volk. Jews were not the only group excluded from the vision of the "national community." The Nazi regime also singled out people with intellectual and physical disabilities. In this poster, the caption reads: "This hereditarily ill person will cost our national community 60,000 Reichmarks over the course of his lifetime. Citizen, this is your money." This publication, put out by the Nazi Party's Race Office, emphasized the burden placed on society by…
Germany invaded Norway on April 9, 1940. Read more about this invasion, the collaborator Vidkun Quisling, and the tragic fate of Norway’s Jews.
The Hostage Case was Case #7 of 12 Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings against leading German industrialists, military figures, SS perpetrators, and others.
Propaganda slide produced by the Reich Propaganda Office showing the opportunity cost of feeding a person with a hereditary disease. The illustration shows that an entire family of healthy Germans can live for one day on the same 5.50 Reichsmarks it costs to support one ill person for the same amount of time. Dated 1936. Nazis defined individuals with mental, physical, or social disabilities as “hereditarily ill” and claimed such individuals placed both a genetic and financial burden upon society…
December 11, 1944. On this date, German authorities at Hartheim performed the last gassing of inmates.
Bernburg was the fifth of six centralized killing centers established by German authorities within the context of the Nazi “euthanasia,” or T4, program.
Robert and his family were Jehovah's Witnesses. The Nazis regarded Jehovah's Witnesses as enemies of the state for their refusal to take an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler, or to serve in the German army. Robert's family continued its religious activities despite Nazi persecution. Shortly before Robert's birth, his mother was imprisoned briefly for distributing religious materials. Robert's hip was injured during delivery, leaving him with a disability. When Robert was five years, he was ordered to report…
Robert and his family were Jehovah's Witnesses. The Nazis regarded Jehovah's Witnesses as enemies of the state for their refusal to take an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler, or to serve in the German army. Robert's family continued its religious activities despite Nazi persecution. Shortly before Robert's birth, his mother was imprisoned briefly for distributing religious materials. Robert's hip was injured during delivery, leaving him with a disability. When Robert was five years, he was ordered to report…
Antisemitism: hostility toward or hatred of Jews as a religious or ethnic group, often accompanied by social, economic, or political discrimination. Appellplatz: German word for roll call square where prisoners were forced to assemble. Aryan: Term used in Nazi Germany to refer to non-Jewish and non-Roma (Gypsy) Caucasians. Northern Europeans with especially "Nordic" features such as blonde hair and blue eyes were considered by so-called race scientists to be the most superior of Aryans, members of a…
Under the Nazis, Jewish and other “non-Aryan” women were often subjected to brutal persecution. Learn more about the plight of women during the Holocaust.
Fascism is a far-right authoritarian political philosophy. Learn about the history and principles of fascism and its implementation in Nazi Germany.
The “Final Solution” was perpetrated by the SS along with other Nazi institutions and professionals. Learn more about key perpetrators of the Holocaust.
Learn more about Nazi racism and racial antisemitism. These prejudices were at the core of Nazi ideology, policies, and practices. They led to murder on a mass scale.
Learn more about how and why Nazi German SS and police units, including the Einsatzgruppen, perpetrated mass killings of Jews in the occupied-Soviet Union.
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