Carolyn Reeb's List: Social Studies 10

• Text to Text | ‘The Book Thief’ and ‘Auschwitz Shifts From Memorializing to Teaching’

• requests from the families of newborn or very young children with severe deformities and brain damage for the grant of a “mercy killing” (Gnadentod)
• `Knauer’ child, who had been born on 20 February 1939, blind, with one leg and part of one arm missing, and who was described as an “idiot.”
• Brandt testified at his post-war Nürnberg trial he had been instructed that if the facts provided by the child’s father proved to be correct, he was to inform the physicians in Hitler’s name that ““euthanasia”” could be carried out – which it was, on 25 July 1939.
• . When we objected that this would mean condemning our patients to a slow but certain death by starvation, they carefully began to sound out how the Home Mission would react if the state were to contemplate the elimination of certain categories of sick person in wartime, given that food supplies, once imports dried up, would no longer suffice to feed the entire population.”
• survey carried out in the 1920s of the parents of severely handicapped children
• “A number of parents expressed the view: `If only you had done it (i.e., ““euthanasia””) and then  told us that our child had died from an illness.’ There is a lesson for us there. We need not suppose that we cannot carry out any salutary measure without the consent of the sovereign people.”
• 80% of the relatives of those murdered by the programme were in agreement with the decision, 10% spoke out against it, and 10%
• “Reich Leade
• The ultimate authority for the ““euthanasia”” operation was Hauptamt II (Main Office II) of the KdF

  • Stop here for first half of reading in SS10 -Reeb

7 more annotations...

• The IMT indicted the defendants on charges of crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The IMT defined crimes against humanity as "murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation...or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds." A fourth charge of conspiracy was added both to cover crimes committed under domestic Nazi law before the start of World War II and so that subsequent tribunals would have jurisdiction to prosecute any individual belonging to a proven criminal organization. Therefore the IMT also indicted several Nazi organizations deemed to be criminal, namely: the Reich Cabinet, the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, the Elite Guard (SS), the Security Service (SD), the Secret State Police (Gestapo), the Stormtroopers (SA), and the General Staff and High Command of the German Armed Forces.