The Journal of Holocaust Education

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Child Victims in Nazi Germany

Sally M. Rogow

To cite this article: Sally M. Rogow (1999) Child Victims in Nazi Germany, The Journal of
Holocaust Education, 8:3, 71-86, DOI: 10.1080/17504902.1999.11087097

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 Child Victims in Nazi Germany
SALLY M. ROGOW

During the Nazi years, thousands of non-Jewish German children were victims
of unrelenting persecution and genocide. Children who were blind, deaf,
physically disabled or mentally handicapped, orphans, juvenile delinquents and
adolescent non-conformists were removed from their homes and communities,
isolated in institutions and work camps and many thousands were murdered.
Significant members of the medical profession found it personally and
professionally profitable to engage in murder and gave it a protective veneer of
respectability. In the process Europe's most advanced and comprehensive system
of rehabilitative education was destroyed. This article, entirely based on
secondary literature, provides a concise synthesis of this history for teachers.

In a climate of social chaos, the Nazis launched a system of

persecution of children and young people with disabilities, as well as
orphans, young people with emotional problems and non-conformist
youth, that was unequalled in history. Terrorist tactics were used
against German families to force them to send their children with
physical or mental disabilities to state institutions and psychiatric
hospitals where they were subjected to gross abuse and neglect and
thousands were systematically murdered.
Under conditions of absolute power, careerism, greed, and
arrogance, well-known schools, hospitals and institutions were
changed from places of learning, healing and rehabilitation into work
camps, prisons and execution chambers. 1 Only children with very
severe and debilitating conditions were sent to institutions in
Germany. It is a myth that only children with severe disabilities were
killed or that the killings stopped in 1941; the last child was killed
almost a month after the war was over.

Sally M. Rogow is Professor Emerita of the Faculty of Education of the University of British
Columbia. She has written extensively in the areas of language and social development of
children with disabilities. Her most recent book is Language, Literacy and Children with
Special Needs. Dr Rogow is currently involved in a project designed to help prevent
emotional and psychological abuse and neglect of children and young people with disabilities.

The Journal of Holocaust Education, Vo1.8, No.3, Winter 1999, pp.71-86

PUBLISHED BYFRANK CASS, LONDON
72 THE JOURNAL OF HOLOCAUST EDUCATION

The fact that Germany pioneered the provision of community-

based services for children with disabilities is significant. The Nazis
destroyed the most comprehensive and progressive system of
rehabilitative education in the world. When children with even
mild mental handicaps were routinely isolated in large sterile
institutions in Britain and North America they were being
integrated into their home communities in Weimar Germany.
German educators believed children should be kept with their
families and live and work in the community.' In 1922, 1670 special
classes were organised in regular schools and served 34,300
students in 305 German towns and cities. More than 1000
community day schools (Hilfschule) were established to serve
children with more severe developmental problems so they could
'lead rewarding lives'." The Hilfschule organisation provided one of
the first European teacher-training programmes for special
education teachers. Children too weak or ill to go to school were
visited by teachers in their homes.
Community-based guidance centres and treatment programmes
were established for children with emotional and behavioural
problems. August Aichorn, a pioneer educator of disturbed and
delinquent youth, shared Anna Freud's belief that family life is far
superior to life in an institution and developed a community-based
treatment model that was copied by other European countries, the
USA and Canada.' Germany was unique in its support of public
education for very young blind children and the establishment of the
Carl Strehle Secondary School that became a gateway to university
education for blinded young people.' 'Open Air Recovery' schools
were established for children recovering from polio (an all too
common illness at the time), and religious schools (Catholic,
Protestant, and Jewish) received state funding." Progressive German
educators of the Weimar era worked hard to ensure that all
disadvantaged and disabled children received a good education. And
while not all their efforts and reforms were always successful, they
created a vital and comprehensive educational system, encouraged
the formation of parent-teacher associations and banned physical
punishment in the schools. Under Hitler, day and residential schools
and institutions were transformed from places of learning and
healing into work camps and killing centres.'
CHILD VICTIMS IN NAZI GERMANY 73

The Economics of Persecution

Viewed by the Nazis as the 'debris of the past' and 'a waste of
money', community-based day-schools, special classes, and
treatment programmes were disbanded and their funds were
diverted to the building of new children's hospitals, free summer
camps and other benefits. Generous family allowances and public
health care was taken from welfare agencies, health insurance,
guardianship courts, municipalities and private charities. Dr. Ernst
Wentzler, one of the chief architects of the children's killing
programme, built his modern children's clinic in Berlin with funds
appropriated from Catholic Sisters who looked after children with
mental handicaps: 'Expropriation from enemies of the state and
destruction of unusable people were both preconditions and
complementary elements of the new, cheery, reformed German
children's hospital."
By 1941, the number of day-schools for children with mental
handicaps was sharply reduced and those that remained became
training centres for street sweepers, domestic workers and rubbish
collectors." These schools were deprived of funds at the same time as
they were required to register an increasing number of students.
Standards of care in residential schools and institutions rapidly
deteriorated, state inspections became perfunctory or were
suspended entirely and Jewish children were expelled."
Cloaked in the terminology of Social Darwinism and Eugenics,
the persecution of children with disabilities was justified on the
grounds that they were a threat to the health of the German nation.
Blindness, deafness, physical disabilities and mental handicaps were
designated 'hereditary illnesses'. Social non-conformity, delinquency
and emotional problems were also attributed to 'inferior genes'.
Hitler personally ordered the making of propaganda films to
persuade the public that 'inferior' people were able to survive only at
the expense of healthy people." No one with a mental handicap was
allowed to live or work in the community without first submitting to
sterilisation, and teachers were required to deliver their students for
sterilisation procedures: 12
The results of our science had earlier attracted much attention
(both support and opposition) in national and international
74 THE JOURNAL OF HOLOCAUST EDUCATION

circles. Nevertheless, it will always remain the undying,

historic achievement of Adolf Hitler and his followers that
they dared to take the first trail blazing and decisive steps
towards such brilliant race-hygienic achievement in and for
the German people. In so doing, they went beyond the
boundaries of purely scientific knowledge. He and his
followers were concerned with putting into practice the
theories and advances of Nordic race conceptions ... the fight
against parasitic alien races such as Jews and Gypsies ... and
preventing the breeding of those with hereditary diseases and
those of inferior stock. 13
Genetic Health courts were created for the sole purpose of
enforcing Nazi health laws and decrees, and physicians were
required to register every child with a disability; failure to do so was
punishable. The reports were filed in specially created data banks."
Non-conformist behaviour was an important criterion for exclusion
and removal from the community. Troubled children and young
people who posed problems to the authorities by running away or
committing delinquent acts were deemed 'genetically inferior' and
kept under surveillance, imprisoned or sent to work camps."

Schools, Hospitals and Institutions under the Nazis

By 1934, the entire school system was centralised and controlled by
the Nazi regime and the administration of schools was removed
from the jurisdiction of the individual states." Bernhard Rust, a
fanatical Nazi and unemployed schoolteacher who had been
dismissed from the school system for unprofessional conduct, was
appointed Minister of Education. One of his first actions was to
destroy the educational provisions made for disadvantaged and
disabled children. I? Under his leadership, parent-teacher
associations became powerless, corporal punishment was
reintroduced in the schools and textbooks proclaimed racist and
antisemitic propaganda.
Early childhood and kindergarten programmes sponsored by
church and private organisations were banned." The Froebel
Association, which pioneered early childhood education in Germany,
CHILD VICTIMS IN NAZI GERMANY 75
was forced to disband along with humanitarian private schools. The
Waldorf School, based on the humanitarian philosophy of Rudolf
Steiner, established in Stuttgart in 1919, was forced to close its doors
in 1935. The Stuttgart school was the model for the many Waldorf
Schools established in other European countries and North America.
'Always a thorn in the side of the Nazis, the Waldorf school was
harassed and plagued by constant injunction. Soon the existence of
the first grade was forbidden, in an attempt to throttle the school
from below. When this proved too slow, the authorities closed down
the school completely."?
Some schools for students with mental handicaps were turned into
work camps and those students who could not or would not perform
the arduous and physically demanding labour were expelled."
Children attending day-schools were required to pass state
intelligence-tests, and, to ensure that as few children as possible
would pass the tests, they were made increasingly difficult. Even the
psychiatrists admitted that many 'normal' children would not be able
to provide correct answers to the questions on the revised tests."
Some teachers tried to protect their students by teaching them the
answers to test questions."
Children who did not pass the tests were classified as 'severely
mentally handicapped' or 'feeble-minded' and were transferred to
designated state institutions or psychiatric hospitals. Nurses and
attendants at the state institutions observed newly arrived children
who spoke fluently and could read and write; but this did not prevent
them from being described as 'hopeless cases'. 23
Blindness and deafness were regarded as 'hereditary illnesses'
whether or not they were caused by a genetic condition. Children
under five years of age were sent directly to state institutions.
Preschool programmes for blind or deaf children were eliminated
and residential schools faced an increasing number of social and
economic restraints, many residential schools were closed. In some
jurisdictions blind or deaf students were also subject to sterilisation
procedures." When schools were closed, their buildings were sold or
leased to youth organisations." Residential schools administered by
Catholic orders or Protestant church groups were closed and their
students transferred to state institutions. The only religious schools
that remained in operation were located in rural areas.
76 THE JOURNAL OF HOLOCAUST EDUCATION

Disturbed, delinquent or defiant behaviour and all the failures of

the social welfare system were blamed on the child clients; they were
said to be 'untreatable'. Child welfare administrators were required
to separate the 'successful' from the 'unsuccessful' welfare cases;
'unsuccessful' cases were moved out of the welfare system into state
institutions and work camps." Children who were wards of agencies
or wardship courts were transferred from orphan homes or treatment
facilities to state institutions and work camps without informing the
wardship courts of their transfers, causing a multitude of legal
problems, confusion and chaos. Children who were wards of social
welfare agencies, like children with physical disabilities or mental
handicaps, had no effective protection.

Forced Institutionalisation
Parents (including those who were members of the Nazi party) were
coerced, cajoled and forced to institutionalise their children." Lies
and deception combined with regulations and decrees were effective
in forcing parents to commit their children to designated
institutions. Families of children with disabilities were deprived of
family allowances and, fearing loss of all services, many parents
believed their children would be better served in an institution than
at home without treatment. The regulation that banned disabled
children from treatment in ordinary paediatric hospitals (even for
ordinary illnesses) effectively forced the institutionalisation of
children who needed medical treatment. Public health officials,
responsible for enforcing the institutionalisation of children with
disabilities, promised dubious parents that their children would
receive the most advanced and expert therapy on open wards."
Those parents who refused to commit their children into institutions
were threatened with loss of guardianship rights. Single mothers
who refused to part with their children found themselves assigned to
contractual labour, which, in the end, forced them to surrender their
children." As the war progressed, the numbers of children requiring
services increased and directors of welfare facilities, orphanages and
other treatment centres were pressured to transfer children to
designated state institutions and psychiatric hospitals, where they
were assigned to work in the kitchens, laundries and janitorial
CHILD VICTIMS IN NAZI GERMANY 77

service. Children as young as 12 and 13 years of age were forced to

work long hours without relief and those who tried to escape were
severely punished."
Private institutions that had been known for their successful
rehabilitation programs were taken over by the state and transformed
into work camps." Jewish doctors and nurses were dismissed. Sharply
reduced budgets combined with overcrowding created unhealthy and
unhygienic conditions in state institutions, where one physician was
responsible for 400 to 500 patients. Child patients were rarely
examined or given therapy or treatment." By 1940, the child
populations at state institutions and psychiatric hospitals doubled or
tripled. There were not enough beds and newly admitted children slept
on unhygienic straw mattresses. There were not enough wheelchairs or
mobility aids and children who were unable to walk were kept in their
beds or highchairs or lay on mats on the floor. Malnutrition and
hunger were common; there was so little food in some institutions that
kitchen workers brought food from their homes."
Professional nurses who were also active trade union members
were dismissed and their places taken by former domestic or farm
workers, unemployed members of the Sturmabteilung (SA), Nazi
women groups and the League of German Maidens. These people
had little understanding of the children in their care and simply
followed orders." The emotional toll on the children was enormous;
fear, resistance and rebellion were silenced with drugs, electric
shocks and beatings. Letters from children to their parents have been
discovered and tell of their anguish, loneliness and despair: 'Dear
Mommy. I do not want to stay with these people. I want to go free.
I do not stay here. Please come and get me.:"
The lives of institutionalised children were further brutalised by
visits from members of the SA, SS, Hitler Youth and League of
German Maidens who regarded the tours as 'freak shows'. More
than 20,000 visitors came to the Eglfing-Haar institution where Dr.
Pfannmuller, the director, lectured to visitors about the necessity of
killing disabled children. pfanmuller advocated killing children long
before the child euthanasia programme was put into effect and used
starvation as his preferred method."
Once their children were committed, parents had little control
or influence over their lives. They had no choice as to which
78 THE JOURNAL OF HOLOCAUST EDUCATION

institution the child was sent and many were sent so far away that
parental visits were impossible. Some institutions discouraged
parental visits altogether. Official reports that exaggerated the
degree of their child's disability or contradicted reports they had
been given by family doctors made many parents suspicious.
Children who were speaking and playing independently at home
were described as incapable of speech and 'severely feebleminded';"
Parents who managed to visit their children, found them listless and
emaciated or bruised and when they complained they were told that
their child was refusing to eat or was hurting him or herself."
Parents who notified the institution of their intention to bring their
child home, discovered on their arrival that their child had been
moved." Those who believed they had placed their child for
temporary medical care were also unable to bring their children
home. Persistent parents were stonewalled and threatened with
legal action.
Children who were transferred to state institutions from religious
homes and schools were moved from place to place without their
families being informed where they were located. Official standard
letters informed them that their child was in transit and was being
sent to an unnamed institution."

Non-Conformist Youth
It is a little known fact that there were hundreds of young people
who refused to join the Hitler Youth movement. When the Hitler
Youth became compulsory, the demand for conformity dominated
youth activities. Rebellious youth groups offered meaningful social
identities and cultural expressions for young people between the ages
of 14 and 18 years of both working- and middle-class backgrounds.
The largest groups were the 'Edelweiss Pirates' and the 'Swing
Movement'.
With their dress and demeanour, the Edelweiss Pirates openly
defied Hitler Youth gangs and even fought Nazi youth on the streets,
bringing repressive measures against them. They were imprisoned or
placed in reform schools, labour and youth concentration camps."
The 'Swing Movement' appealed to young people from wealthy or
middle-class homes. The Swing Clubs that sprang up in the bigger
CHILD VICTIMS IN NAZI GERMANY 79
cities were apolitical, but they too refused to join the Nazi Youth
movement and indulged their passion for 'jitterbugging' and
American Jazz in nightclubs. Himmler ordered them to be rounded
up and sent to the Moringen concentration camp near Gottingen. By
1944, there were 1231 adolescents in the Moringen Youth Protection
Camp and very few were released. Those who reached their
eighteenth birthday in the camp were sent to psychiatric hospitals
and many were victims of 'euthanasia'."
The laws and regulations governing the treatment of child victims
were enforced by all-powerful special authorities appointed by, and
responsible only to, Hitler. These authorities replaced and
circumvented traditional local government agencies. As a result there
was constant conflict between administrative agencies, and increasing
chaos and rivalry that led to a growing reliance on extreme
measures." The purpose of forced institutionalisation became evident
with the initiation of the killing programmes in 1939, a few days after
war was declared to minimise the effects of public and church
protest." Hitler issued a decree that gave physicians the authority to
murder children.

The Euthanasia Programmes in Hospitals and Institutions

'Euthanasia' or 'mercy death' was the Nazi euphemism for murder.
Other terms such as 'disinfection' and 'special handling'
(Sonderbehandlung) were also used." Two separate programmes
were instituted, one for children and one for adults (which included
many children). The Chancellory of the Fahrer (Kdf, Kanzlei des
Fahrer) appointed the physicians who operated the child programme
under the name of a fictitious organisation, the 'Reich Committee
for the Scientific Registration of Severe Hereditary Ailments':"
In a self accelerating process in which morality was
progressively discarded, the scholars followed the direction of
their ideas with fatal consequences: from the approximately
360,000 compulsory sterilizations ... to the mass murders of an
ever widening euthanasia programme, behind which the
monstrous contours of a Final Solution of the social question
were beginning to emerge."
80 THE JOURNAL OF HOLOCAUST EDUCATION

Although these programmes were shrouded in secrecy, Hitler

ordered the making of propaganda films to persuade the public of
the necessity of eliminating people with disabilities, which were
termed 'hereditary' diseases or genetic defects. The film Victims of
the Past, which made use of special lighting effects to portray
people with disabilities as grotesque monsters who could only
survive at the expense of healthy people was shown all over
Germany,"
Despite the claim that the German population supported the killing
of 'useless' people, everyone involved in the euthanasia programmes
was sworn to secrecy and was required to sign an oath of loyalty and
promise not to talk about the killing programmes. Employees who
talked about the killing 'actions' were reported to the Gestapo and
punished with imprisonment." The euthanasia programme claimed the
lives of more than 250,000 children and adults. 50
The university professors, scientists and physicians who planned
the euthanasia murders were handsomely rewarded with generous
research grants, university appointments and unlimited authority."
Young, newly graduated physicians did the killing on the children's
wards, but they were encouraged and supported by well-known
psychiatrists. Dr Werner Villinger, professor of Psychiatry at the
University of Breslau, was known for his work on the psychological
and social problems of children and youth. His eager participation
persuaded young doctors that there was nothing wrong with killing
children. There were 22 paediatric killing wards in hospitals and
institutions.
The physicians who supervised the killing wards were rewarded
with career advancement, university posts and extra bonuses and
were able to avoid military service. Nurses also received extra
supplementary payments. The physicians and nurses who did the
killing had little experience or knowledge of the children in their
care, but they had almost complete authority over the selection of
child victims. Eager to meet quotas they ignored their own guidelines
and made random arbitrary choices. Parents were never informed
that their child was dying until death was imminent or the child was
already dead. 52
In some jurisdictions, officials from the institutions drove around
the countryside to the smaller homes and picked out frail children
CHILD VICTIMS IN NAZI GERMANY 81
and those with mental handicaps for transfer to the killing
institutions. Dr. Leonard Glassner, from the Austrian institute at
Valduna, jokingly referred to this procedure as 'taking up a
collection on the street'." Infants were routinely murdered despite
the advice of the older psychiatrists who cautioned that diagnoses of
severity made in infancy were questionable." Ernst Wentzler
murdered hundreds of babies in his Berlin clinic. The 'mercy deaths'
were neither quick nor merciful; they were long, drawn-out and
painful. Child victims suffered pneumonia and other debilitating
illnesses before they died." Children as young as three years of age
were killed with adults in the gas chambers that were first built in
psychiatric hospitals."
Children who lived in the hospitals and institutions knew about
the killings. A nurse testified to the awareness of the ten year-old
children on her ward: 'Everyone talked about it, even the children
talked about it. They were all afraid to go to the hospital. They were
fearful that they would not come back. It was a general rumour. The
children played a coffin game. We were astonished that the children
understood. '57

Experiments on Children
Children with cerebral palsy and other neurological conditions or
Downs syndrome were used as subjects of 'scientific' experiments,
their blood and spinal fluids were drawn and replaced with air so
that clear x-rays could be taken of their brains. They were injected
with drugs, sugar and other chemicals to test their reactions. 58 After
the experiments were completed, the children were 'disinfected'
(killed) and their brains and other body organs were removed and
sent to university research laboratories." Dr. Julius Hallevorden, a
neuropathologist, collected brains and boasted of the 'wonderful
material' he had obtained from 'defectives'." (His collection of
children's brains was used until 1990, when they were buried in a
Munich cemetery). Parent permission was never obtained and
parents were not informed of the real cause of their children's
deaths.
82 THE JOURNAL OF HOLOCAUST EDUCATION

Children and Young People in the Adult Euthanasia Programme

The 'experts' on the Adult Euthanasia Committee selected their
victims from the questionnaires that directors of hospitals and
institutions were required to file on each patient." A few directors
attempted to protect patients by not filling out the forms, but when
the Reich Committee did not receive the completed questionnaires,
they sent a commission of medical students and secretaries to
complete and collect the questionnaires. Dr. Rudolph Boeck, chief
physician of the Neuenettslau institution protested that the
commission carried out its duties in a manner 'contradictory to all
accepted medical practice' and did not examine even one of the 1800
patients."
Gas chambers were established at designated institutions and the
patients selected for euthanasia (including children) were taken by
bus to transit institutions for temporary stays before being
transported to the killing institutions. Professor Walter Creutz, a
public health official, tried to resist Nazi policies and he and his
colleagues saved lives by labelling patients fit for work, releasing
them to their families or hiding them in the woods on days that the
transport buses were scheduled." After the war, a court in Dusseldorf
found that 3000 to 4000 lives were saved by physicians who gave
false reports on their patients."
Children were transferred from religious homes and asylums to
the killing wards in grey buses with darkened windows. A nun at the
Ursberg Home, for children with mental handicaps, wrote: 'Some of
the patients hung on to the nuns for dear life. It was terrible. They
felt what was happening. It was especially terrible with the girls. They
knew instinctively that there was something bad going on. They cried
and screamed. Even the helpers and the doctors cried. It was
heartbreaking. '65
Every few days the buses arrived at the gates of Hadamar, an
institution named after the small town in which it was located.
Children who lived near Hadamar were overheard to tease one
another with the words: 'You're not quite bright, they'll put you in
the oven at Hadamar.:" The people of Hadamar saw the steady
arrival of the buses and the smoke pouring out of the chimneys; they
could smell the strange odours in the air. Friends and neighbours
CHILD VICTIMS IN NAZI GERMANY 83
sympathised with parents and protested. Peasant women refused to
sell fruit to staff who worked in the institutions."
Government officials claimed that parents willingly consented to
the euthanasia of their children, but parental consent was rarely
obtained. Grief-stricken and frustrated, parents appealed to the
courts and tried to bring legal actions against the hospitals and
institutions. Hitler issued a legal decree in 1941 to prevent parents
from bringing legal actions against institutions."
In response to public protest, the Nazi government attempted to
tighten secrecy and punish protesters. In 1941, the gas chambers
were dismantled and reassembled at Belzec, Majdanek and Treblinka,
but the protests drove the killing operations into deeper secrecy and
killings continued as 'wild euthanasia'. 69 Many killing-ward
physicians were later sent to administer the slaughter in the death
camps." The Nazis extended their extermination policies to the
countries they occupied. Children in Austria, Poland and other
conquered nations did not escape the euthanasia programmes. Only
in Holland did physicians refuse to cooperate and they acted
unanimously."
After the war virtual silence surrounded the slaughter of children.
Most of the physicians and nurses who played major roles in the
euthanasia programmes continued in their positions as if nothing
unusual had taken place. Court records, and accounts of parents and
guardians, fill in the blanks. After the war, thousands of cases were
brought before the German courts and provide the documentation of
what happened."
Corrupt officials and the failure of professional groups to resist
Nazi policies, combined with pseudo-genetic science, created havoc
and were responsible for the genocide of people with disabilities. It is
now believed that between 250,000 and 350,000 people were
murdered, of whom one quarter were children and young people.
Friedlander traced the continuity between the euthanasia
programmes and the Holocaust."
Nazi victimisation of vulnerable people was unique in its
organisation, its mercilessness and its bureaucratic efficiency and
serves as a lasting reminder of the peril of making value judgements
on the worth of human lives.
84 THE JOURNAL OF HOLOCAUST EDUCATION

NOTES

1. Gcetz Aly, 'Medicine against the useless', in G. Aly, P. Chroust, and C. Pross (eds.)
Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1994), ch.2, pp.22-98; ch. 4, pp.156-237; Michael
Burleigh, Death and Deliverance: Euthanasia in Germany 1900-1945 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994); Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide:
From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina,
1994); D.J.K. Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition and Social Life
in the Third Reich (London: Batsford, 1987).
2. P.L. and E.]. Safford, A History of Childhood Disability (New York: Teachers College
Press, Columbia University, 1996).
3. K.P. Becker, Educational Rehabilitation of the Handicapped in the German Democratic
Republic and in the United States of America: An Overview (New York: Pergamon
Press, 1985), p.91.
4. Safford and Safford, A History of Childhood Disability.
5. K. Britz, 'Gifted Visually Handicapped Children at School' (Paper given at the
Conference of the International Association for the Education of the Visually
Handicapped, Paris, France, 1978).
6. Safford and Safford, A History of Childhood Disability.
7. R. Huebner, The Schools of West Germany: A Study of German Elementary and
Secondary Schools (New York: New York University Press, 1962).
8. Aly, 'Medicine against the Useless', p.186.
9. Becker, Educational Rehabilitation.
10. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance; Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide.
11. W. Doino, jr., 'Newly discovered Nazi film expose murderous logic of euthansia', The
Wanderer (28 Sept. 1995), pp.6-7.
12. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance.
13. Ernst Rudin, 1934, the archive of Racial and Social Biology, cited in Norbert Frei,
National Socialist Rule in Germany: The Fahrer State, 1933-1945 (Oxford: Blackwell,
1993), p.122.
14. Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany; Burleigh, Death and Deliverance.
15. Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany.
16. Huebner, The Schools of West Germany.
17. M. Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945 (Chicago, Illinois:
University of Chicago Press, 1966); Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany.
18. George Mosse, Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in The Third Reich
(New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1966).
19. C. Murphy, Emil Molt and the Beginings of the Waldorf School Movement:
Autobiographical Sketches (Edinburgh, Scotland: Floris Books, 1991), p.166.
20. Becker, Educational Rehabilitation.
21. Aly, 'Medicine against the Useless'; Burleigh, Death and Deliverance.
22. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance.
23. Aly, 'Medicine against the Useless'.
24. B. Lowenfeld, Berthold Lowenfeld on Blindness and Blind People:Selected Papers (New
York: American Foundation for the Blind, 1981).
25. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance.
26. Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany.
CHILD VICTIMS IN NAZI GERMANY 85
27. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance.
28. B. Heimansberg and C]. Schmidt (eds.), The Collective Silence: German Identity and
the Legacy of Shame (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1993).
29. Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide; Burleigh, Death and Deliverance.
30. H.G. Gallagher, By Trust Betrayed: Patients, Physicians and the License to Kill in the
Third Reich (New York: Holt, 1990).
31. Aly, 'Medicine against the Useless'.
32. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance.
33. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance; Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide.
34. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance.
35. Translated from German records, cited in Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung (30 Sept.
1988).
36. Aly, 'Medicine against the Useless'; Burleigh, Death and Deliverance.
37. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance.
38. Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide.
39. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance.
40. Ibid.
41. Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid.
44. E. Kogan, H. Langbein and A. Rueckerl, Nazi Mass Murder: A Documentary History
of the Use of Poison Gas (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993).
45. Aly, 'Medicine against the Useless'.
46. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance; Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide.
47. Frei, National Socialist Rule in Germany, p.122.
48. Doino, 'Newly discovered Nazi film'.
49. Kogan et al., Nazi Mass Murder.
50. Aly, 'Medicine against the Useless'.
51. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance; Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide.
52. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance; Aly, 'Medicine against the Useless'.
53. Kogan et al., Nazi Mass Murder, p.33.
54. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance.
55. Ibid.
56. Aly, 'Medicine against the Useless'.
57. Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, p.170.
58. Ibid.
59. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance.
60. Aly, 'Medicine against the Useless'.
61. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance.
62. Kogan et al., Nazi Mass Murder, p.22.
63. Gallagher, By Trust Betrayed.
64. Kogan et al., Nazi Mass Murder.
65. Gallagher, By Trust Betrayed, pp.1 09-11 O.
66. Mitscherlich and F. Mielke, Doctors of Infamy (New York: Shuman, 1949), p.108.
67. Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide.
68. D. Majer, 'The Judiciary between Adaptation and Conflict Demonstrated by the
Example of Euthanasia' in U. Jokusch and L. Scholz (eds.), Administered Killings at the
Time of National Socialism: Involement, Suppression, Responsibility of Psychiatry and
86 THE JOURNAL OF HOLOCAUST EDUCATION

Judical System (Regensburg, Germany: S. Roderer Verlag, 1994) pp.26-39.

69. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance.
70. Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide.
71. R.E. Cranford, 'The Contemporary Euthanasia Movement and the Nazi Euthanasia
Programs: Are there Meaningful Similarities?', in A.L. Caplan (ed.), When Medicine
Went Mad: Bioethics and the Holocaust (Totowa, N.]. Humana Press, 1992),
pp.201-210.
72. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance.
73. Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide.