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.
Assisted suicide describes the process by which a person, with the help of others, takes drugs to end their life. It has been referred to as physician-assisted suicide (PAS), assisted suicide, assisted dying or medical aid in dying.
Hans Heinze, sometimes referred to as Euthanasie-Heinze, was a Nazi German psychiatrist and eugenicist.
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.
Euthanasia in the Netherlands is regulated by the "Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide Act" which was passed in 2001 and took effect in 2002. It states that euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are not punishable if the attending physician acts in accordance with criteria of due care. These criteria concern the patient's request, the patient's suffering, the information provided to the patient, the absence of reasonable alternatives, consultation of another physician and the applied method of ending life. To demonstrate their compliance, the Act requires physicians to consult another, independant colleague before the euthanasia and to send a report after the euthanasia to a review committee.
The Grafeneck Euthanasia Centre housed in Grafeneck Castle was one of Nazi Germany's killing centres as part of their forced euthanasia programme. Today, it is a memorial site dedicated to the victims of the state-authorised programme also referred to since as Action T4. At least 10,500 mentally and physically disabled people, predominantly from Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, were systematically killed during 1940. It was one of the first places in Nazi Germany where people were killed in large numbers in a gas chamber using carbon monoxide. This was the beginning of the Euthanasia Programme. Grafeneck was also the central office of the "Charitable Ambulance Transport GmbH" (Gekrat), which was headed by Reinhold Vorberg and responsible for the transport of T4.
Active euthanasia is illegal in Switzerland, but supplying the means for dying is legal, as long as the action which directly causes death is performed by the one wishing to die. Assisted suicide in the country has been legal since 1941, and Switzerland was the first country in the world to permit any kind of assisted dying. In 2014, a total of 752 assisted suicides were performed, compared to 1,029 non-assisted suicides ; most of the assisted suicides concerned elderly people suffering from a terminal disease. In what critics have termed suicide tourism, Swiss euthanasia organisations have been widely used by foreigners. As of 2008, German citizens were 60 percent of the total number of suicides assisted by the organisation Dignitas.
Critics of euthanasia sometimes claim that legalizing any form of the practice will lead to a slippery slope effect, resulting eventually in non-voluntary or even involuntary euthanasia. The slippery slope argument has been present in the euthanasia debate since at least the 1930s.
The Sonnenstein Euthanasia Clinic was a Nazi killing centre located in the former fortress of Sonnenstein Castle near Pirna in eastern Germany, where a hospital had been established in 1811.
The Hartheim killing centre was a killing facility involved in the German Nazi programme known as Aktion T4, in which German citizens deemed mentally or physically unfit were systematically murdered with poison gas. Often, these patients were transferred from other killing facilities such as the Am Spiegelgrund clinic in Vienna. This was initially a programme of "involuntary euthanasia" permitted under the law ostensibly to enable the lawful and painless killing of incurably ill patients; these murders continued even after the law was rescinded in 1942. Other victims included Jews, Communists and those considered undesirable by the state. Concentration camp inmates who were unfit for work, or otherwise deemed troublesome, were also executed here. The facility was housed in Hartheim Castle in the municipality of Alkoven, near Linz, Austria, which now is a memorial site and documentation centre.
The Nazi Euthanasia Centre at Bernburg operated from 21 November 1940 to 30 July 1943 in a separate wing of the State Sanatorium and Mental Hospital in Bernburg on the River Saale in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It was one of several euthanasia centres run by the Nazis under their official "Euthanasia Programme", later referred to after the war as Action T4. A total of 9,384 sick and handicapped people from 33 welfare institutions and nursing homes as well as around 5,000 prisoners from six concentration camps were killed there in a gas chamber using carbon monoxide gas.
Child euthanasia was the name given to the organized killing of severely mentally and physically disabled children and young people up to 16 years old during the Nazi era in over 30 so-called "special children's wards". At least 5,000 children were victims of the program, which was a precursor to the subsequent murder of children in the concentration camps. This was among the most notable Nazi crimes against children.
Richard von Hegener was a primary organizer of the Nazi German "euthanasia" program within Hitler's Chancellery. After the war, he gave evidence against other participants in the program.
The Euthanasia trials were legal proceedings against the main perpetrators and accomplices involved in the "euthanasia" murders of the Nazi era in Germany.
Marieke Vervoort was a Belgian Paralympic athlete with reflex sympathetic dystrophy. She won several medals at the Paralympics, and she received worldwide attention in 2016 when she revealed that she was considering euthanasia.
Noa Pothoven was a Dutch mental health activist and author. Her death at the age of 17 sparked global controversy due to public statements she made about her wish to die, her activism concerning youth mental health care, and foreign media reports that incorrectly attributed her eventual death to active euthanasia. Many foreign news outlets wrongfully stated Pothoven was euthanised under the Dutch 2001 Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide Act.
A gender identity clinic is a type of specialist clinic providing services relating to transgender health care.
Organ donation after medical assistance in dying is the donation of organs after death that is medically assisted (MAiD). Both are expressions of human autonomy. The governments of the countries where MAiD is permitted have introduced detailed regulations for this procedure. Combining these procedures requires a combination of the separate regulations applying to each procedure. Popular demand has furthered the development of the combined procedure, known in English-speaking countries as "organ and tissue donation and transplantation after medical assistance in dying " and in Europe as "organ donation after euthanasia (ODE)". By 2020 MAiD by intravenous injection had been legalized in 8 countries and occurred more than 17,000 times including more than 220 ODE procedures.
Euthanasia for mental illness involves a physician intentionally ending the life of a patient who has requested euthanasia due to a psychiatric condition. The practice is legal in Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Spain and Colombia. In Canada, legislation authorizing the procedure was passed, but has since been repeatedly postponed.
