History of the II World War

The Dictionary of the Polish Language defines “euthanasia” as “causing death of a terminally ill person in an act of compassion”. The entry differentiates between passive euthanasia, which denotes “discontinuation of life-sustaining intensive treatment” from the active one, understood as “causing death of the suffering individual, e.g. by administration of poison” . In the German dictionaries and encyclopaedias of the early 20th century, euthanasia was defined as “assuagement of death, a procedure whereby the physician attempts to make the imminent death possibly light and painless” , it also meant “dignified departure; in medical practice, the physician assists demise by administering appropriate agents” . The purpose, as the 1930 Der Große Brockhaus clarifies, “is to induce a state of tranquillity/blissfulness/calmness in the final moments” . However, the entry in the 1934-1937 edition of the same encyclopaedia defines euthanasia differently, as “curtailment of a life that is unworthy of living (lebensunwertes Leben)”, which was performed for the sake of the patient, ending the suffering of the incurably or chronically ill, or for the benefit of the society, in that idiotic children (idiotische Kinder) were thus disposed of .
Such a redefinition of the term corresponded with the notions entertained by the German medical milieu of the interwar period, which became increasingly radical in the 1930s. On a broader scale, it was in tune with the Nazi conception of building a strong, vigorous and healthy nation where the chronically ill or the mentally disabled had no place. Since 1939 onwards, that policy was implemented by an organized and institutionalized machine; the rules concerning “euthanasia” of handicapped children, drafted in June 1939, followed by a circular issued to midwifes in August that year by the Reichs Ministry of the Interior, which required them to report births of disabled children, contributed to setting it in motion. The population of adult patients was also devoured by the machinery eliminating “worthless” individuals from the society. Karl Brandt and Philipp Bouhler, empowered by Adolf Hitler under the order of September 20th/21st, 1939 (antedated to September 1st) to extend the competences of physicians who were to select the incurably ill and condemn them to death, engineered the so-called Aktion T4 (the name originated with the address of its headquarters, Tiergartenstrasse 4 in Berlin) – mass killings of the chronically ill and the mentally disabled. Although the letter mentions that the ill were to be given merciful death, which might have suggested humanistic, even humanitarian rationale which motivated the originators of T4 and the involved practitioners, the true aim was neither to alleviate the sufferings nor ensure dignified passing; it was planned extermination of those whom the Nazis saw as an unnecessary burden for the German nation.
For this reason, when referring to the murders committed on patients of psychiatric institutions, this publication does not employ the term euthanasia but pseudo-euthanasia or, alternatively, “euthanasia”. This is intended to underscore the fact that the meaning of euthanasia, an act intended to bring relief to the patient and enable them to die in dignity, is jarringly at odds with actions undertaken by the Nazis during the Third Reich to eliminate people who were considered a superfluous encumbrance from the German national community. There is no doubt that in moral terms, there is a colossal difference between the situation when an individual themselves (or his immediate family) take the decision to end their life due to serious, terminal condition and when that person is murdered for ideological reason, without one’s consent or without any knowledge on the part of the family. This moral aspect is present throughout the monograph. At the same time, the authors of particular chapters attempt to show a broad political, legal, economic and intellectual context of Nazi actions undertaken with regard to the chronically ill and the mentally disabled.
Our attention focused not only on the procedures and the course of pseudo-euthanasia in the six sites designated by the Nazis to participate in the Action T4 proper, but also on murders of patients in institutions across the Wartheland (Land of the Warta), to which literature of the subject refers as wild or random euthanasia. Although methods of exterminating patients which had been brought there resembled (or even imitated) measures developed in the T4 facilities in the Reich, the underlying reasons were different: first, hospitals were to be cleared of patients and their buildings and equipment seized; subsequently, appropriate conditions had to be created and procedures implemented to enable organized killings of people from different countries who suffered from unrecoverable illnesses or were pronounced socially dysfunctional. Thus, the ultimate objective was not a renewal of the Aryan race through extermination of members of the German community who failed to meet the mark of being healthy, strong, vigorous, hard-working and disciplined citizens of the Third Reich, but elimination of people from the conquered territories (as well as Germany itself), who had to be disposed of to reduce expenditure, or in view of their low productivity as well as inferior racial and national origin. From a political and strategic viewpoint, it was also important to acquire medical outposts in the incorporated territories (with suitable facilities repurposed for the army or turned into hospitals for German patients only) . In the Wartheland, victims were gassed, initially at Fort VII in Poznań and then in specially adapted vehicles. Altogether, approximately 4,500 patients from psychiatric institutions in Owińska, Gniezno, Kościan, Warta, Łódź (Kochanówka) and the Clinic of Neurology and Psychiatry in Poznań were killed in the region.
Given this broad historical context, we sought to draw more attention to the hospital in Gniezno. It was one of the sites which during World War II was converted into a camp serving to exterminate large numbers of people. Next to Warta, it was the only one to function until the end of hostilities. The “Dziekanka”, which operated under the name of Tiegenhof until 1945, was a place of suffering, fear (experienced not only by patients but also by low-level personnel) and inconceivable abuse of medical ethics. However, that part of the history of Gniezno is most often deliberately overlooked, in a sense becoming obscured and erased. Also, at the hospital itself, there is a small room where a visitor may find several pieces of equipment and archival material from the period, as well as a library where letters of the victims’ families and the scantily preserved documents are kept. Neither is often visited by young people, history teachers and tour guides. This monograph attempts to bring back the memory of people who had been brought from various regions in occupied Poland and from across Europe to places such as Tiegenhof, because Nazi ideology found their lives to be unworthy of any protection, solicitude or respect.
This monograph is the outcome of a Polish-German project entitled Action T4 in Greater Poland: Pseudo-Euthanasia at the Dziekanka Hospital in Gniezno, financed by the Polish-German Foundation for Science. The partners involved in the project were the Department of Contemporary Culture and Multimedia, AMU Institute of European Culture, Poland, and the Hadamar Memorial (Gedenkstätte Hadamar), Germany.