Dr Asperger Aided in Nazi Killings, Study Says

[RSW]

I was somewhat surprised to read that Hans Asperger, the doctor whom Asperger's Syndrome (also known as Asperger's and Autism) is named after due to his pioneering work in the field, has been implicated in the Holocaust, including sending children to a euthanasia center to be murdered as "life unworthy of life."

These more recent conclusions stand in contrast to Dr Asperger's post-war assertions that he strove to protect his patients from the Nazis and their nightmarish programs of "racial hygiene" during the Third Reich. An exhaustive new report titled Hans Asperger, National Socialism, and "race hygiene" in Nazi Era Vienna was published today; the report relies on previously unexplored archival documents, contemporary materials and extensive research. The report is available in English at this link:

Hans Asperger, National Socialism, and “race hygiene” in Nazi-era Vienna | Molecular Autism | Full Text

It is easy to assume that there is nothing new to focus on regarding the Third Reich period because it has already been reported on to such a detailed degree. And then a report such as this regarding Dr Asperger emerges, revealing his hidden history as a thoroughly Nazi corrupted practitioner in the field of medicine.

[BrodieBartfast]

As someone who has the condition personally, this was a rather horrifying thing to learn. Although I can't say I'm surprised to hear that Hans Asperger was complicit in the Aktion T4 programme, it shows that history is far more nebulous and muddled than most people realise.

If I had grown up in Germany at that particular time, I may very well have ended up amongst those 'dying of pneumonia'. I do wonder if the name of the condition will now be changed. Honestly, I hope that's the case.

B.B.

[Gunny Hartmann]

"If I had grown up in Germany at that particular time, I may very well have ended up amongst those 'dying of pneumonia'. I do wonder if the name of the condition will now be changed. Honestly, I hope that's the case."

I'll second that!.....

[Anderson]

Another example of how in the post war period many Nazis who committed war crimes were able to escape justice. Sometime this was with the complicity of the Allied nations as the Soviet Union was then the new threat. Monsters like Klaus Barbie were initially recruited by US Intelligence services. Many of these types later worked for West German intelligence services. In West Germany in the 1950's the enthusiasm to pursue people with a Nazi past was low. Especially as most of the judiciary in place then were still old Third Reich appointees. So it's is not very surprising someone like Asperger escaped notice and was able to bury his past. There must have been people in the German medical profession in the 1950's and 1960's who well knew of his wartime activities.

[RSW]

As someone who has the condition personally, this was a rather horrifying thing to learn. Although I can't say I'm surprised to hear that Hans Asperger was complicit in the Aktion T4 programme, it shows that history is far more nebulous and muddled than most people realise.

If I had grown up in Germany at that particular time, I may very well have ended up amongst those 'dying of pneumonia'. I do wonder if the name of the condition will now be changed. Honestly, I hope that's the case.

B.B.

Yikes! My apologies. This must have been an especially difficult thing to learn.

Diabetes runs in my family and I also have it. So if my immediate relatives had been alive during that time, perhaps they would have been classified as unable to marry (as it was on both sides). In that case I would never have been born (or worse if I had been). Diabetes can also skip generations (I do not know if it has ever been discovered why that is) before it appears again. The idea of "negative eugenics" which includes things like forced sterilizations and removal (murder) of the affected individuals is not even a cure for genetic diseases; instead it is a ruthless sort of madness that in the end, doesn't work. While I hope that there is a cure for such things as hereditary diseases in the future, victimizing and murdering innocent people is not the way to go.

Something emphasized in the report is that medicine went from treating individuals to treating the racial community as a whole. So anything judged as threatening the racial community of the Volk had to be destroyed one way or another. I think of the physicians I have known over the years, trying to imagine them willingly carrying out what when on during the Third Reich. And I can't. But I understand that medicine was one of the most Nazi influenced of all groups during that period. Amazingly sad how systematically corrupted it all became. Revolting.

Some details of the Am Spiegelgrund "children's ward" where murders in Vienna were carried out is part of a web site I came across, maintained in the victim's memories. Among them is a 4 year-old girl named Annemarie Danner. Her diagnosis was "useless" and she was killed there in 1942. Some photos of her also appear on this page, having been found in her medical records:

10 Diagnosis: "Useless" | gedenkstattesteinhof.at

I hope that this history is never allowed to repeat itself...

[CBH]

This pre-war program was the being of what would become the holocaust, something not widely known, but what is these days.
Thank you for sharing, anything that puts the spotlight on these crimes is a good thing, in a world with no grasp of the past.

[RSW]

The subject of this thread is not something I like to dwell on. And I do not mean to stray too far off topic. However, I did come across one final subject that may be of interest to the readers here, and was a shock when I found it. It is perhaps the logical conclusion of a system bent on eliminating those it classified as useless eaters (among other tainted "inferiors" and "subhumans").

One of Dr Asperger's Austrian Third Reich colleagues was another physician named Emil Gelny. Dr Gelny personally euthanized/murdered hundreds of patients by various means, including an electroshock apparatus that he modified specifically for this purpose; Dr Gelny even gave demonstrations to other colleagues using the device on live patients, evidently to further encourage its use.

During the war, Dr Gelny reportedly even murdered some Wehrmacht soldiers that were his patients! I am not an expert on this sort of history and had never heard of such a thing happening before. However, I do not believe that killing soldiers in this manner (euthanasia) was ever sanctioned by the Nazi government. But Dr Gelny did it anyway, on numerous occasions and perhaps on his own judgment. By his own judgment or not though and as abhorrent as this is, under the values of this twisted system I believe that what Dr Gelny did makes logical sense. Because when ones usefulness was at an end, what difference did it make any longer how they arrived at that point in their lives? Even being soldiers did not save them.

Dr Gelny's murderous activities continued very late into the war, even into April 1945 when the war was clearly lost. I believe the only thing that stopped him was Red Army occupying the medical facilities that Dr Gelny was associated with. However, on April 8-9, 1945, one of Dr Gelny's murder victims was a Wehrmacht soldier that was about to be released; the soldier's wife had even made arrangements to pick him up at the hospital.[1]

Emil Gelny survived the war, fleeing to Syria and finally, Iraq where he resumed his medical practice. He died in Baghdad in 1961.[2]

[1] Page 32 et al, "From 'Action T4' to 'Decentralized Euthanasia' in Lower Austria: The Psychiatric Hospitals of Gugging, Mauer-Öhling and Ybbs," Herwig Czech, http://www.memorialgugging.at/pdf/Czech_Gugging_e.pdf

[2] Emil Gelny – Wikipedia