Abstract
Nazi Germany’s “children’s euthanasia” was a unique program in the history of mankind, seeking to realize a social Darwinist vision of a society by means of the systematic murder of disabled children and youths. Perpetrators extinguished “unworthy life” during childhood and adolescence by establishing killing stations, misleadingly labeled Kinderfachabteilungen (“special children’s wards”), in existing medical or other care facilities. Part of a research project on Nazi “euthanasia” crimes and their victims, this paper uses a comparative historical perspective to trace memories of the crimes and the memorialization of their victims at the sites of two of these wards (Eichberg and Kalmenhof in Hesse, Germany). It also discusses the implications of the findings for theorizing mnemonic practices and analyzing ways in which memorials and other sites of memory deal with past trauma and atrocity.
Highlights
Nazi Germany’s “children’s euthanasia” was a unique program in the history of mankind, seeking to realize a social Darwinist vision of a society by means of the systematic murder of disabled children and youths
Children, and youths, the National Socialist “children’s euthanasia” program was a unique phenomenon in the history of humankind, as the systematic murder of disabled children was the means for realizing a social Darwinist utopia
Congenital illnesses, and malformations were to be reported to local public health offices, which passed on this information to a fictitious “Reich Committee for the Scientific Registration of Severe Hereditary Ailments”
Summary
The “special children’s ward” at the State Hospital Eichberg, near the town of Eltville (in the vicinity of Wiesbaden) was established in March or early April 1941 and existed until March 1945, when American troops came to occupy the region. Mennecke, who worked for the “T4” program (the gas murder of hospitalized, mostly adult psychiatric patients) as an evaluator of registration forms on the basis of which patients were selected for murder. His deputy, Dr Walter Schmidt, was in charge of the “special children’s ward.”. More than 500 children and youths died at the Eichberg institution during the time the “special children’s ward” existed. To accommodate the ward an existing building was repurposed as a barrack for children It housed younger children, while children who were more than nine years old were placed among adult patients in other stations [19]. Located on the perimeter of the state hospital, the barrack was later razed and no physical remnants of it remain
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