In 1940, the Am Spiegelgrund clinic was opened in Vienna. Austrian children went there. The associations with medicine, however, are misleading - behind the brick wall, the only difference between the death of young patients was the diagnosis. It was enough that the word "idiot" appeared in the disease record ...
The doors of Am Spiegelgrund opened to the "patients" relocated here as part of the T4 action on July 24. There was room for 640 people in the complex of nine buildings. He was approached by children who, according to specialists from the Third Reich, did not meet the criteria of a good citizen:they were handicapped, deformed, or simply… naughty! Jewish origins also provided an excellent excuse for the "hospitalization" of the toddler.
The staff of Am Spiegelgrund was tasked with assessing the possibilities of adapting them to life in the socialist realities. As you might guess, any sign of thought contrary to Nazi ideas, as well as incurable disease, parental alcoholism, or a different phenotype were excellent reasons for making a negative diagnosis.
To be liquidated
Children who showed maladjustment to life in the "ideal society of the Reich" were treated in Spiegelgrund as a burden for the state. It quickly became clear that the center was not established to treat the youngest. He was, in fact, the incorporation of a eugenics program that was designed to eliminate "defects". Therefore, after the initial evaluation, clinic residents could receive one of three indications:follow-up, permission to live outside the hospital, or euthanasia.
"Sick" and non-prognostic children were killed in Am Spiegelgrund - through poisoning or deliberate neglect and torture - and then blamed on deadly diseases to reassure the public. . The most frequently reported causes were pneumonia or fatal muscle spasm from mental illness.
Playroom at the Children's Hospital. 1921
Meanwhile, in fact, the "therapy" involved electric shock, immersion in ice-cold water until the internal organs were paralyzed, as well as injections of sulfur solutions. The latter caused a number of ailments, described by the few survivors as pain in the lower limbs and limited ability to move.
The effects of apomorphine, phenobarbital and sedatives were tested on small patients. The "science" staff observed the children starved to death, sick and cold . Some have been deliberately infected with tuberculosis in order to conduct vaccine testing.
As reported by the director of the facility from 1942, Ernst Illing, the death of children after administering barbiturates in tablets occurred at very different times. Sometimes it only took a few hours, other times days. During his tenure, Illing was killed most often with luminal or veronal tablets, which were crushed and mixed with sugar for better flavor.
In the name of ideas and science
However, death was not the last stage of the total dehumanization at Am Spiegelgrund. The dead children were put on the tables in the section where they were dismembered and placed in formalin "for research purposes" . One of the researchers specializing in this was Dr. Heinrich Gross. He conducted an extensive experiment for the needs of which he collected sliced fragments of children's brains. This macabre activity was deeply respected by the National Socialist milieu. The doctor even received the Austrian Cross First Class for Merit in the Fields of Science and Art.
Spiegelgrund process
The parents of the little victims themselves also applied the bestial practice. It happened that, steeped in the ideology of the Reich, they gave disabled children to “specialists”. The first victim of the criminal system was Gerhard Kretschmar, who was handed over to the perpetrators due to serious developmental defects.
“The parents called the son a" monster. " They wrote to Hitler asking for permission to kill him "- we read in" Asperger's Children "by Edith Sheffer:
The Führer sent his personal doctor Karl Brandt to Leipzig to examine the baby, who declared that five-month-old Gerhard was an "idiot". Presumably, the child was given barbiturates and died three to five days later, on July 25, 1939. Church records attributed his death to "heart failure."
This case initiated the subsequent actions to liquidate "harmful" units in the Reich, which in Am Spiegelgrund alone led to the death of nearly 800 children. It is well known, however, that it was not only there that attempts were made to implement Nazi eugenics, and that there were many more victims of the sick ideology.
The Am Spiegelgrund Clinic is another example of how deeply rooted the idea of the perfect nation was in the Reich - and what radical politics combined with widespread propaganda can lead to. In a similar way, the T4 euthanasia action also "eliminated" adults from psychiatric institutions (under the guise of accidental deaths due to causes beyond the control of doctors). And from here, there is only one step left to mass extermination - after all, the first gas chambers were designed as part of the above-mentioned action ...
Bibliography:
- Sheffer, E., Children of Asperger. Medicine at the services of the Third Reich , Poznań Publishing House, Poznań 2019.