Le rapport Poitrot

Abstract

In May 1945, Dr. Robert Poitrot, Director of the Ben Rechid Psychiatric Hospital in Morocco, entered Wurttemburg with the First French Army, which would go on to occupy southwestern Germany. Poitrot, a military doctor, was responsible for conducting a study over six months on the events that took place in Wurttemburg and Baden during the National Socialist regime. At the beginning of the French occupation, the German psychiatrists were in a state of disbelief. Most of them had collaborated with the Nazis on the extermination of their patients between 1939 and 1941, often out of ignorance and then out of a feeling of obligation. They were prepared to confess, something that changed several months later when they stopped volunteering objective confessions. They not only confessed to Dr. Poitrot but also gave him damning documents that allowed for a detailed reconstruction of Aktion T4 in the two states of Baden and Wurttemburg. In December 1945, Dr. Poitrot submitted his report, which he presented as a Study by the Directorate for Public Health and Social Welfare in French Occupied Territory. This report was published by Tubingen National Press in 1949. A summary of the report has been translated into German under the title Die Ermordeten waren schuldig (The Murdered were guilty) by the publishing house Schroder in Baden-Baden.While writing his report, Dr. Poitrot only had access to the information he collected in the field, which didn’t allow him to trace T4 back to its central organisation. However, the report is remarkable for the information it provides on the nature of psychiatric care during the National Socialist regime in a specific region, namely Baden and Wurttemburg. This is where Grafeneck, the first extermination centre in Reich territory, was opened in March 1940.