Das Denkmal der grauen Busse Traveling monument of the grey Gekrat buses
Action 14f13, also called Sonderbehandlung (special treatment) 14f13 and Aktion 14f13, was a campaign by Nazi Germany to murder Nazi concentration camp prisoners. As part of the campaign, also called invalid or prisoner euthanasia, the sick, the elderly and those prisoners who were no longer deemed fit for work were separated from the rest of the prisoners during a selection process, after which they were murdered.[1] The Nazi campaign was in operation from 1941 to 1944 and later covered other groups of concentration camp prisoners.[2]
Heinrich Himmler and Bouhler transferred technology and techniques used by Aktion T4 personnel to concentration camps and later to Einsatzgruppen and death camps, to efficiently murder unwanted prisoners and inconspicuously dispose of the bodies. Aktion T4 was officially terminated by Hitler on August 24, 1941 but it was continued by many of the physicians who had been involved, until Nazi Germany was defeated in 1945.[6]
Bouhler instructed OberdienstleiterViktor Brack, the head of Hauptamt II (Main Office II) of the Hitler's Chancellery (Kanzlei des Führers) to implement the new order. Brack was already in charge of the various front operations of T4. The scheme operated under the Concentration Camps Inspector and the Reichsführer-SS under the name "Sonderbehandlung 14f13". The combination of numbers and letters was derived from the SS record-keeping system, 14 for the Concentration Camps Inspector, f for the German word deaths (Todesfälle) and 13 for the cause of death, in this case murder by poison gas in the T4 killing centers.[note 1] "Sonderbehandlung" ("special action"–literally "special handling") was the euphemistic term for execution or killing.
Selections, first phase
Buchenwald inmates on 16 April 1945, the day that the camp was liberated
After the operation began in April 1941, a panel of doctors began visiting concentration camps to select sick and incapacitated prisoners for "elimination". This panel included those already experienced from Aktion T4, such as professors Werner Heyde and Hermann Paul Nitsche and doctors Friedrich Mennecke, Curt Schmalenbach, Horst Schumann, Otto Hebold, Rudolf Lonauer, Robert Müller, Theodor Steinmeyer, Gerhard Wischer, Viktor Ratka and Hans Bodo Gorgaß. To speed up the process, camp commandants made a preliminary selection list, as they had done in the T4 operation. This left just a few questions to be answered, such as personal information, date of admission to the camp, diagnosis of incurable disease, war injuries, criminal referral based on the German penal code and any previous offenses. Names of ballastexistenzen (dead weight prisoners) were to be compiled and presented to the medical doctors for withdrawal from service, which included any prisoner who had been unable to work for a long time or was substantially incapacitated and would not be able to return to work.
Paul Nitsche, a Nazi psychiatrist who was executed in 1948 by the Allies, partly due to his role in selecting prisoners for extermination
Prisoners in the preliminary selection had to report to the medical panel but there was no proper medical examination; the prisoners were questioned about their participation in World War I and about any war medals they might have received. Based on personnel and medical records, the panel decided how to classify each of the prisoners. The final assessment was made using the information in the reporting form and was limited to the decision as to whether or not the prisoner would be steered toward "special treatment" 14f13. The report form and results were sent for documentary registration at the T4 central office in Berlin.
Prisoners being considered for the preliminary selection were sometimes encouraged by the camp administration to come forward if they felt sick or unable to work. They were led to believe they would go to a "recovery camp", where they would have light duties. Many prisoners believed the lie and readily volunteered but, after they were gassed at the killing centers, the victims' belongings were sent back to the camp warehouse for sorting. Prisoners learned the true reason for the selection and even prisoners with serious illnesses stopped reporting to the infirmary.
The first known selection took place in April 1941 at Sachsenhausen concentration camp. By the summer, at least 400 prisoners from Sachsenhausen had been murdered. During the same period, 450 prisoners from Buchenwald and 575 prisoners from Auschwitz were gassed at the Sonnenstein Killing Facility; Hartheim Killing Facility was used to murder 1,000 prisoners from Mauthausen concentration camp. Between September and November 1941, 3,000 prisoners from Dachau and several thousand people from Mauthausen and neighboring Gusen concentration camp, were gassed at Hartheim. Prisoners from the Flossenbürg, Neuengamme and Ravensbrück camps were also selected and murdered. After November, another 1,000 prisoners from Buchenwald, 850 from Ravensbrück and 214 from Groß-Rosen, were gassed at Sonnenstein Castle and Bernburg. From March to April 1942, some 1,600 women were selected at Ravensbrück and gassed at Bernburg.
The jury courtroom in 1947 during the Dresden Doctors' Trial for the crimes committed at Sonnenstein Killing Facility
The "medical reviews" are described in an excerpt from letters written by Dr. Friedrich Mennecke; during a selection at Buchenwald, Mennecke wrote to his wife;
Weimar, Nov. 25, '41 8:58 a.m.
Elephant Hotel
First there were 40 forms to finish filling out from a 1st portion Aryan, on which my two other colleagues had already worked yesterday. Of these 40, I worked on about 15. ... Then came the "examination" of the pat.[ients], in other words, an introduction to the particulars & comparison with the notations in the files. We were not yet finished with these by noon because both my colleagues only worked in theory yesterday, so that I "post-examined" the ones who Schmalenbach (& I myself, this morning) had prepared & Müller, his. At 12:00 we first took a lunch break. ... Then we examined some more until around 4:00 p.m., in fact, I had 105 pat[ients], Müller 78 pat[ients], so that at the end, as 1st installment, 183 forms were done. As 2nd portion, now came a total of 1200 Jews, who will be entirely not first "examined", but rather with them, it's sufficient to pull from the files the reasons for arrest (often very extensive!) and transfer them to the forms. So, it's a purely theoretical job that takes us to Monday, certainly including benefit, perhaps even longer. Of this 2nd portion (Jews), today we did: I, 17; Müller 15. 5:00 sharp, we called it a day and went to dinner. ... The next few days will also go Just as I have described today, above – with exactly the same routine and the same work. After the Jews come about 300 Aryans as 3rd portion, who again will have to be "examined".
After the doctors' commissions had invalided the concentration camps' prisoners, the camp administration had to provide them on request. They were transported either by the "Gekrat" or the Reichsbahn to one of the killing centers. The prisoners were examined for gold teeth by a prison doctor and labelled appropriately before being led into a gas chamber, where they were murdered with carbon monoxide.[citation needed] After any gold teeth were removed,[citation needed] for dispatch to a central office in Berlin, the corpses were incinerated in the crematorium; some corpses were examined further before incineration.
The murder was carried out by the same staff, using the same means as used previously with the mentally ill in Aktion T4. A few administrative details were changed, in that the murders were recorded by members of the respective camp administration; they informed relatives of the deaths, claiming illness as the cause. A detailed description was given by Vinzenz Nohel to the LinzKriminalpolizei in September 1945, who were investigating Nazi war crimes that had taken place nearby. Nohe, who had worked as a "burner" in the crematorium at the Hartheim Killing Facility, was convicted at the Dachau-Mauthausen Trial in 1946 and sentenced to death, for the murder of sick and incapacitated concentration camp prisoners and was executed in 1947.[9]
Scope of selections
Selections increasingly included political or other persecuted peoples, Jews and so-called asoziale. Pursuant to the general guidelines of the Bavarian police of August 1, 1936, those to be taken into Schutzhaft ("protective custody") were "gypsies, vagrants, tramps, the "work-shy", idlers, beggars, prostitutes, troublemakers, career criminals, rowdies, traffic violators, psychopaths and the mentally ill."[10]
It has been made known via a report from a camp commandant, that of the 51 prisoners retired for Sonderbehandlung 14f13, after a while, 42 of these prisoners again became "capable of work" and consequently didn't need to be sent. From this, it is evident that the selection of prisoners is not proceeding according to the stated regulations. The examinations panel may only choose such prisoners who match the regulations and above all, are no longer able to work.... In order to administer the work set up at concentration camps, the prisoner workforce must be retained at the camp. The camp commandants of the concentration camps are asked to focus particular attention to this.
A year later, the deteriorating war situation required further restrictions on selections, to ensure that every able-bodied worker could be put to work in the war economy. On April 27, 1943, Glücks presented a new circular decree with instructions to retire only those prisoners who were mentally ill or disabled.
The Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police has decided that in the future, only mentally ill prisoners may be retired by the doctors' panel assembled for Action 14f13. All other incapacitated prisoners unable to work (those sick with tuberculosis, bed-ridden cripples, etc.) are categorically excluded from this operation. Bed-ridden prisoners shall be groomed for corresponding work that they can perform from bed. In future, the order of the Reichsführer-SS is to be heeded closely. The fuel requirements for this purpose are therefore dropped.
After these guidelines were issued, only the Hartheim Killing Facility was needed and those at Bernburg and Sonnenstein were closed, bringing the first phase of Aktion 14f13 to an end.
Second phase
According to a command from April 11, 1944, new guidelines were issued and began the second phase of Aktion 14f13 in which no forms were filled and selections were not made by a doctors' panel.[citation needed] The selection of the victims became the responsibility of camp administrations, usually the camp doctor. This did not exclude the physically ill, who were no longer fit for work, from being murdered, which was done at the camp or by transferring the prisoners to a camp that had a gas chamber, such as Mauthausen, Sachsenhausen or Auschwitz. Those being gassed at Hartheim included forced laborers from eastern Europe, who were unfit for work, Soviet prisoners of war and Hungarian Jews, as well as concentration camp inmates. The last prisoner transport to Hartheim was on December 11, 1944, ending the operation. The gas chambers at Hartheim were dismantled and traces of their use were removed, as much as possible and the castle was used as an orphanage.
The number of people murdered under Aktion 14f13 is not certain but scholarly literature puts the figure at between 15,000 and 20,000 people for the period ending in 1943.[14]
Aktion T4 was a campaign of mass murder by involuntary euthanasia in Nazi Germany. The term was first used in post-war trials against doctors who had been involved in the killings. The name T4 is an abbreviation of Tiergartenstraße 4, a street address of the Chancellery department set up in early 1940, in the Berlin borough of Tiergarten, which recruited and paid personnel associated with Aktion T4. Certain German physicians were authorised to select patients "deemed incurably sick, after most critical medical examination" and then administer to them a "mercy death". In October 1939, Adolf Hitler signed a "euthanasia note", backdated to 1 September 1939, which authorised his physician Karl Brandt and Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler to begin the killing.
Franz Paul Stangl was an Austrian police officer and commandant of the Nazi extermination camps Sobibor and Treblinka in World War II.
Viktor Hermann Brack was a member of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and a convicted Nazi war criminal and one of the prominent organisers of the involuntary euthanasia programme Aktion T4; this Nazi initiative resulted in the systematic murder of 275,000 to 300,000 disabled people. He held various positions of responsibility in Hitler's Chancellery in Berlin. Following his role in the T4 programme, Brack was one of the men identified as responsible for the gassing of Jews in extermination camps, having conferred with Odilo Globočnik about its use in the practical implementation of the Final Solution. Brack was sentenced to death in 1947 in the Doctors' Trial and executed by hanging in 1948.
Christian Wirth was a German SS officer and leading Holocaust perpetrator who was one of the primary architects of the program to exterminate the Jewish people of Poland, known as Operation Reinhard. His nicknames included Christian the Cruel, Stuka, and The Wild Christian due to the extremity of his behaviour among the SS and Trawniki guards and to the camp inmates and victims.
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Schloss Hartheim, also known as Hartheim Castle, is a castle at Alkoven in Upper Austria, some 14 kilometres (9 mi) from Linz, Austria. It was built by Jakob von Aspen in 1600, and it is a prominent Renaissance castle in the country.
Horst Schumann was an SS-Sturmbannführer (major) and medical doctor who conducted sterilization and castration experiments at Auschwitz and was particularly interested in the mass sterilization of Jews by means of X-rays.
Philipp Bouhler was a German senior Nazi Party functionary who was both a Reichsleiter and Chief of the Chancellery of the Führer of the NSDAP. He was also the SS official responsible for the Aktion T4 euthanasia program that killed more than 250,000 disabled adults and children in Nazi Germany, as well as co-initiator of Aktion 14f13, also called Sonderbehandlung, that killed 15,000–20,000 concentration camp prisoners.
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References
Informational notes
↑ Natural deaths were recorded with the code 14f1, suicide or death by accident with 14f2; 14f3 meant shot while trying to escape. The execution of Soviet prisoners of war in concentration camps were recorded as "14f14" and the forced sterilization of prisoners was recorded as "14h7".
↑ "T4 program" Encyclopædia Britannica official website. Retrieved May 17, 2010
↑ Peter Chroust (Editor), Friedrich Mennecke. Innenansichten eines medizinischen Täters im Nationalsozialismus. Eine Edition seiner Briefe 1935-1947, Vol. 1, (Forschungsberichte des Hamburger Instituts für Sozialforschung, Vol. 2.1) Second edition, Hamburg (1988) ISBN978-3-926736-01-7, Document 87. Quotation marks are from the original.
Walter Grode, Die "Sonderbehandlung 14f13" in den Konzentrationslagern des Dritten Reiches. Ein Beitrag zur Dynamik faschistischer Vernichtungspolitik, Lang, Frankfurt am Main (1987) ISBN978-3-8204-0153-0
Stanislaw Klodzinski, Die "Aktion 14f13". Der Transport von 575 Häftlingen von Auschwitz in das "Sanatorium Dresden" in Götz Aly (Editor), Aktion T4 1939 – 45. Die "Euthanasie"-Zentrale in der Tiergartenstraße 4, Edition Hentrich, Berlin (1987) ISBN978-3-926175-66-3
Jean-Marie Winkler, Gazage de concentrationnaires au château de Hartheim. L'action 14f13 en Autriche annexée. Nouvelles recherches sur la comptabilité de la mort, éditions Tirésias - Michel Reynaud, Paris, 2010 ISBN978-2-915293-61-6
Burleigh, M. (1997). Ethics and Extermination: Reflections on Nazi Genocide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-0-521-58211-7.
Burleigh, M. (2001) [2000]. "Medicalized Mass Murder". The Third Reich: A New History (pbk. Paned.). London: Macmillan. pp.382–404. ISBN978-0-330-48757-3.
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