The children’s killing program established the bureaucratic processes and willing workforce necessary

for the next stage in the Nazi regime’s extermination campaign: the involuntary ‘euthanasia’ of adults
with disability. This program, named Aktion T4 as per the address of its headquarters at
Tiergartenstrasse 4 in Berlin, required the registration of asylum patients with epilepsy, senile dementia,
schizophrenia and ‘feeble- mindedness’, those who were criminally insane or had been institutionalised
for more than five years, foreigners and ‘racial aliens’ (Mostert 2002: 163). The large number of
potential victims identified through this process prompted the Nazis to find a more ‘efficient’ killing
method: carbon- monoxide poisoning in specially constructed gas cham-bers, with the flow of gas
administered by physicians (Gallagher 2008). Operations commenced in 1940, and asylum inmates were
transported by bus to six killing centres spread across Germany (Mostert 2002). After the victims were
killed, their gold teeth and dental bridges were extracted prior to a mass cremation (Mostert 2002).
While the authorities tried to keep their activities secret, providing the families of those killed with urns
of anonymous ashes and ficti-tious causes of death, public suspicion was soon aroused. Concerned
families caused a general outcry, which was taken up by German Roman Catholic Bishop Clemens von
Galen in a powerful sermon on 3 August 1941 (Benedict et al. 2009). Faced with open accusations of
homicide and fearing public backlash, the regime shut down the killing centres. Although the official
Aktion T4 program ceased, the killings did not, and the involuntary ‘euthanasia’ of disabled people once
more became the responsibility of physicians and nurses in medical institutions. The closure of the
killing centres and removal of centralised operational processes caused medical staff in asylums and
hospitals to revert to ‘low- tech’ methods of killing people in their care, including starvation, lethal
injection and exposure (Mostert 2002). These killings continued unabated for both adults and children
until several months after the fall of the Nazi regime in April 1945 (Benedict et al. 2009).

MLA (Modern Language Assoc.)

Linda Graham. Inclusive Education for the 21st Century : Theory, Policy and Practice. Routledge, 2020.

APA (American Psychological Assoc.)

Linda Graham. (2020). Inclusive Education for the 21st Century : Theory, Policy and Practice. Routledge.