Lawmakers Seek To Allow Federal Funding for Assisted Suicide

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Maggie Hroncich

Maggie Hroncich wrote an article on a proposed bill to permit federal funding for assisted suicide that was published in the New York Sun. Hroncich reported that Democrat Members of Congress have introduced a HR 8137 to reverse the 1997 Assisted Suicide Funding Restriction Act and replace it with the Patient Access to End of Life Care Act. The language of the bill is not yet available but the new act would permit federal funding for assisted suicide. Hroncich reports:

For nearly 30 years — since Oregon became the first state to legalize physician-assisted death — Congress has prevented federal funding such as Medicare from being used by patients to pay for the practice. A bill proposed by Democratic lawmakers seeks to change that.

In 1997, Congress passed the Assisted Suicide Funding Restriction Act, which prohibits using federal funds to provide for any health care services that assisted in someone’s death, including “assisting in the suicide, euthanasia, or mercy killing of any individual.”

The sponsors of the bill, Democratic Representatives Brittany Pettersen and Scott Peters released a draft discussion which states:

“Medical aid-in-dying, an authorized medical practice, is not euthanasia, mercy killing, or assisted suicide,” a draft discussion of the new “Patient Access to End of Life Care Act’’ obtained by the Sun reads.

In other words Petterson and Peters intend to get funding approved for assisted suicide by redefining assisted suicide as not being assisted suicide.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is opposing the Patient Access to End of Life Care Act. Hroncich reports:

Yet, an online petition with hundreds of signatures is already forming against the proposal, noting that it “would force Americans to pay for assisted suicide (medically approved killing by poison) with their tax dollars.”

“I oppose assisted suicide and I vehemently oppose paying for medically approved killing,” the petition on Canada’s Euthanasia Prevention Coaltion writes of the American legislation. “Thank you in advance for upholding my conscience rights by not approving the use of tax dollars for killing.”

The Canadian group is outspoken in warning America not to follow its path, arguing that legalizing medically-assisted death opens a door that can’t be shut.

Petition: I oppose US federal funding for assisted suicide (Link).

New York assisted suicide bill may be debated this year.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dan Clark reported for the Times Union that assisted suicide remains on the docket in New York. Clark's article: A month left in NY's legislative session. Here's what Clark states is on deck states:

Legislation is also up for consideration that would allow terminally ill patients to be prescribed medication they could use to end their life before their illness takes them.

It’s a bill that’s struggled to gain support in the Legislature, but that may change because of a key endorsement of the legislation this year.

The Medical Society of the State of New York had opposed the bill, but reversed that position in April after an internal vote.

“(The Medical Society) supports legislation such as the Medical Aid in Dying Act and supports physicians’ choice to opt-in or decline to engage in the processes and procedures as outlined in any proposed medical aid in dying legislation,” the group said.

Advocates for the bill have been a consistent presence at the Capitol this year, usually on Tuesdays. They approach lawmakers and try to convince them to sign on to the bill.

Opponents of the legislation refer to the practice as “assisted suicide,” though some have different reasons for why they’re against it.

Some religious groups, for example, are morally against it. Some disability advocates, but not all, see it as a slippery slope that could lead to similar legislation aimed at people with chronic conditions.

The assisted suicide lobby has invested resources into getting the New York assisted suicide bill debated. We are ready to oppose the assisted suicide bill.

Contact New York representatives to oppose assisted suicide (Link).

More information on this topic:

• The assisted suicide lobby wants to legalize assisted suicide in your state and then expand the law later (Link).
• Disability leaders on New York's capital urge lawmakers to reject assisted suicide (Link).
  
• Vermont assisted suicide deaths more than quadruple (Link).

Canada is euthanizing its poor and disabled.

Euthanasia for poverty is horrifying, profane, the outcome of a failed social welfare system and it is indefensible. 

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

David Moscrop wrote an excellent article that was published by Jacobin Magazine on May 2, 2024. Jacobin is an ideologically left magazine, which is concerned about Canada killing people with disabilities and the poor by euthanasia, known as MAiD. The article begins with this quote:

Canada boasts one of the world’s highest assisted-death rates, supposedly enabling the terminally ill to die with dignity. However, this suicide program increasingly resembles a dystopian replacement for care services, exchanging social welfare for euthanasia.

Normand Meunier

Moscrop tells the story of Normand Meunier, the quadriplegic man in Québec who died by euthanasia after suffering from horrific neglect. Moscrop writes:

For want of a mattress, a man is dead. That’s the story, in sum, of a quadriplegic man who chose to end his life in January through medically assisted death. Normand Meunier’s story, as reported by the CBC, began with a visit to a Quebec hospital due to a respiratory virus. Meunier subsequently developed a painful bedsore after being left without access to a mattress to accommodate his needs. Thereafter, he applied to Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program.

As Rachel Watts writes in her report, Meunier spent ninety-five hours on a stretcher in the emergency room — just hours short of four days. The bedsore he developed “eventually worsened to the point where bone and muscle were exposed and visible — making his recovery and prognosis bleak.” The man who “didn’t want to be a burden” chose to die at home. An internal investigation into the matter is underway.

I find it interesting that the article states that Meunier chose to die by euthanasia when in fact he was put into an untenable situation. Moscrop then reinforces the concerns of the disability community:

Disability and other advocates have been warning us for years that MAiD puts people at risk. They warned that the risk of people choosing death — because it’s easier than fighting to survive in a system that impoverishes people, and disproportionately does so to those who are disabled — is real. Underinvestment in medical care will push people up to and beyond the brink, which means some will choose to die instead of “burden” their loved ones or society at large. They were right.

Moscrop comments on how euthanasia is the outcome of a failed social welfare state:

A libertarian ethos partially underwrote the fact that not many people blinked when MAiD was initially rolled out. Taking a more expansive view of rights, many of those not swayed by rote libertarianism were convinced that concerns over bodily autonomy and compassion were reason enough to adopt MAiD. However, in the absence of a robust welfare state, and in the face of structural poverty and discrimination, particularly toward disabled people, there is no world in which the MAiD program can be understood to be “progressive.”

Indeed, last year, Jeremy Appel argued that MAiD was “beginning to look like a dystopian end run around the cost of providing social welfare.” Initially supportive, he changed his mind on MAiD as he considered that the decisions people make are not strictly speaking individual but are instead collectively shaped and sometimes “the product of social circumstances, which are outside of their control.” When we don’t care for one another, what do we end up with?

“I’ve come to realize,” wrote Appel, “that euthanasia in Canada represents the cynical endgame of social provisioning with the brutal logic of late-stage capitalism — we’ll starve you of the funding you need to live a dignified life [. . .] and if you don’t like it, why don’t you just kill yourself?”

Moscrop then comments on that euthanasia for psychiatric reasons has been delayed in Canada based on the lack of mental health care. He refers to the reality as grotesque and writes that this is the stuff of nightmarish science fiction. Moscrop comments on the broken social welfare system in Canada.

In Canada’s most populous province, Ontario, a recipient of disability support receives about $1,300 a month — a pittance they’re meant to stretch to cover food, shelter, and other basic needs. Ontario Works — the province’s welfare program — pays a current maximum of $733 a month. Meanwhile, rental costs for a one bedroom apartment routinely push toward an average of $2,000 a month in many cities. In April, in Toronto, a one bedroom apartment averaged almost $2,500 a month.

Moscrop challenges a statement by euthanasia activists James Downer and Susan MacDonald who stated:

[d]espite fears that availability of MAiD for people with terminal illness would lead to requests for MAiD driven by socioeconomic deprivation or poor service availability (e.g., palliative care), available evidence consistently indicates that MAiD is most commonly received by people of high socioeconomic status and lower support needs, and those with high involvement of palliative care.

Moscrop replies:

By their own admission, the data on this matter is imperfect. But even if it were, the fact that “most” patients who choose MAiD are better off socioeconomically is beside the point. Some are not — and those “some” are important. That includes a man living with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis who, in 2019, chose medically assisted death because he couldn’t find adequate medical care that would also allow him to be with his son. It also includes a man whose application listed only “hearing loss,” and whose brother says he was “basically put to death.” This story came a year after experts raised the concern that the country’s MAiD regime was in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In 2022, Global News said the quiet part out loud: poverty is driving disabled Canadians to consider MAiD. Those “some” who are driven to assisted death because of poverty or an inability to access adequate care deserve to live with dignity and with the resources they need to live as they wish. They should never, ever feel the pressure to choose to die because our social welfare institutions are starved and our health care system has been vandalized through years of austerity and poor management.

Moscrop then states that Canada has the resources to prevent endemic poverty and provide adequate care, that poor people being euthanized by the state is profane.

Trudo Lemmens

Moscrop then refers to a recent article by professor Trudo Lemmens who is a critic of Canada's euthanasia law.

In a February piece for the Globe and Mail, University of Toronto law professor Trudo Lemmens wrote, “The results of our MAiD regime’s promotion of access to death as a benefit, and the trivialization of death as a harm to be protected against, are increasingly clear.” In critiquing MAiD’s second track, which allows physician-assisted death for those who do not face “a reasonably foreseeable death,” Lemmens points out that within two years of its adoption, “‘track two’ MAiD providers had ended already the lives of close to seven hundred disabled people, most of whom likely had years of life left.”

In raising concerns about expanding MAiD to cover mental illness, Lemmens added that “there are growing concerns that inadequate social and mental health care, and a failure to provide housing supports, push people to request MAiD,” noting that “[a]dding mental illness as a basis for MAiD will only increase the number of people exposed to higher risks of premature death.”

Gabrielle Peters

Moscrop continues by referring to a commentary from disability leader Gabrielle Peters.

In 2021, Gabrielle Peters warned in Maclean’s that extending MAiD to cover those who weren’t facing an immediately foreseeable death was “dangerous, unsettling and deeply flawed.” She traced the various ways in which a broader MAiD law could lead to people choosing to die in the face of austerity, adding an intersectional lens that is often missing from our discussions and debates over the issue.

She warned that we were failing to consider “how poverty and racism intersect with disability to create greater risk of harm, more institutional bias and barriers, additional layers of othering and dehumanization, and fewer resources for addressing any of these.” And now here we are. We should have listened more carefully.

Moscrop ends his article by suggesting that euthanasia may be OK based on personal choice but it is indefensible when it is based on poverty.

While MAiD may be defensible as a means for individuals to exercise personal choice in how they live and how they die when facing illness and pain, it is plainly indefensible when state-induced austerity and mismanagement leads to people choosing to end their lives that have been made unnecessarily miserable. In short, we are killing people for being poor and disabled, which is horrifying.

It thus falls to proponents of MAiD to show how such deaths can be avoided, just as it falls to policymakers to build or rebuild institutions that ensure no one ever opts to end their life for lack of resources or support, which we could provide in abundance if we choose to.

I agree with most of Moscrop's comments but I disagree with his statement that euthanasia is possibly defensible as a means of individuals exercising personal choice. Even though people with disabilities experience social devaluation in Canada, they may be still exercising personal choice when they ask to be killed.

The problem with modern writers is that they miss the fact that euthanasia is about killing people. Even if Canada had a greater level of equality, there would be people who ask to be killed based on their poverty or their concerns about homelessness.

The real concern is that Canada has given medical professionals the right in law to kill their patients. This is about people killing people.

Nonetheless Moscrop is right that euthanasia based on poverty or disability is rarely based on personal choice and autonomy, it is horrifying, it is profane, it is the outcome of a failed social welfare system and it is indefensible.

People need health care free from MAiD (euthanasia).

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Gabrielle Peters

I was going through my emails and found this excellent article that was published on April 26 in Policy Options by Gabrielle Peters, a disabled writer, policy analyst and the co-founder of Disability Filibuster. X: @mssinenomine

Peters is writing from a disability perspective as to why we need MAiD free health care options in Canada. Peters explains:

Some health-care providers see MAiD-free spaces as working environments that allow them to respect their conscience and adhere to their professional understanding of doing no harm.

Disabled patients, however, have expressed different reasons for wanting MAiD-free health-care settings.

Peters continues:

To start with, we should have the right to receive medical care in places and from people who do not contemplate or participate in killing disabled people as part of a care plan.

Who wants to look up at a doctor from a hospital bed and wonder if they have just deliberately ended the life of someone with a similar condition? Or to overhear conversations in hallways, waiting rooms, nursing stations or on the other side of a curtain, about how a lethal injection preserved a relative’s dignity before she – gasp – became incontinent, like me.

Peters explains that faith based facilities (for now) are the only MAiD-free spaces. She then comments on the reality of ableism:

Many disabled people can remember a time in their lives when they would or could have agreed to MAiD had it been suggested to them. The reason for this unfortunate common bond is ableism.

A brief and widely adopted definition of ableism Fiona Kumari Campbell explains it as “a network of beliefs, processes and practices that produces a particular kind of self and body…that is projected as perfect and species-typical, and therefore essential and fully human.”

As a result, disability “is cast as a diminished state of being human.” It is a short journey from believing disability makes you less human to thinking that it is better to be dead than disabled.

Ableism in Canada is structural, codified, and acts as the rebar in our economy, politics, and culture. It defines and designs access to resources, services, public space, education, housing, health and health care, employment, and fundamental human rights.

Ableism affects how others perceive and treat us and how we perceive ourselves and our experiences. In this way ableism informs how our suffering is interpreted, making causal links that are not supported by evidence.

Peters then quotes from Professor Heidi Janz who commented on medical ableism:

Medical ableism is often presented as “common sense” instead of bias, University of Alberta professor Heidi Janz says. Part of what allows it to remain unexamined is it exists within a larger contested framework referred to as the medical model of disability. In this model, disability is defined as deficiency, tragedy, and the opposite of health. Suffering is assumed and, because disability is understood entirely as a problem with an individual’s body, knowledge, power, and authority are placed within the medical field.

The result of this is our entire humanity is compressed into our diagnoses. There is no examination of the inherent political oppression or the bias in treatment because the medical model assumes the inequity disabled people experience is a logical result of being disabled.

This also incidentally is one of the many reasons MAiD assessors are ill-equipped to identify social suffering and solutions.

Peters writes about how health-care professionals have power over people with disabilities since the doctor are often the gate-keeper to the services and that people need. Peters continues:

That signature is shaped by their perception of us, which is shaped by how well we align with their judgment of us as a “good patient.” In recent years, medicine has moved away from the use of the word compliant to describe whether patients follow medical advice. Now they talk about adherence. But whichever word they use, the power imbalance remains, and patients and family are hesitant to ask questions or raise concerns. As well, in most interactions, patients have just 11 seconds to speak before a physician interrupts them, research has shown.

Physicians conflate disability with suffering. Some bioethicists have likened disabled people to “happy slaves” for daring to suggest that disability is not a synonym for misery. Physicians consistently rate disabled people’s quality of life lower than disabled people themselves do. This is called the disability paradox.

Peters then explains why the euthanasia lobby have had such influence:

The deluge of emotionally charged MAiD coverage is driven primarily by stories crafted or at least aided by the public relations and lobby efforts by proponents. As part of its recent campaign, Dying with Dignity, a national organization that campaigns for the expansion and liberalization of MAiD, emailed supporters urging them to submit opinion pieces to media organizations and offered the help of its communications team.

The CEO of Dying with Dignity has met with senators and members of Parliament in official lobbying capacity 41 times in the last 12 months. The charity also employs lobbyists at Blackbird Communications.

In a public-relations war, money can create even more imbalance than it does in a courtroom.

Peters explains her concerns with suicide contagion.

But much of the media coverage of MAiD runs counter to the World Health Organization’s guidelines for responsible reporting on suicide. The WHO warns against spreading suicide contagion through prominent placement of stories about suicide, by normalizing it or presenting it as a constructive solution to problems, and by explicitly describing the method used.

Perhaps a lot of the coverage of MAiD ignores contagion protocols because MAiD is a euphemism for assisted suicide or euthanasia.

Peters then comments on the concept of the "forced transfer":

A former executive director of Dying with Dignity said in a 2019 statement of claim that it was her “creative-thinking” that is responsible for the “ground-breaking” term. The statement was part of an Ontario lawsuit in which the public-relations value of the term was highlighted, noting it has been adopted “nationally and internationally by academics, clinicians, lawyers, and others in the right to die movement.”

Patients are transferred every day to access care, equipment or expertise that is not available where they are.

And it is striking that the term “forced transfer” is selectively applied to MAiD and not, for example, patients forced to move to long-term care facilities not of their choosing, on threat of being billed $400/day by the government if they refuse.

Peters comments on the reality of her deterioration of care.

In 2009, before MAiD was legalized, I was living in North Vancouver. Since the onset of my rare neuromuscular disease several years prior I had been seen by an assortment of specialists at three different hospitals. Approximately two years of that time was spent in search of diagnosis for the multiple and worsening symptoms. At first, I thought I was just run down following a virus, but a turning point was when I had to be helped out of the community centre pool by a lifeguard because I couldn’t catch my breath a quarter of the way into my first lap. Over time, I transitioned from trail runner to using a cane, then walker and eventually a wheelchair. Simultaneously I transformed from being perceived as normal but sick to disabled and “unfixable” – and fat because of the corticosteroids.

No longer able to work and unable to access benefits due to eligibility criteria that declared me a dependent of the boyfriend I had been living with, my economic situation deteriorated.

Soon, my care changed, too. Nurses stopped complimenting me on my shoes, asking about my work, and telling me not to give up. The new answer to every question was a shrug and “you’re disabled.” It took three trips to two different hospitals and a tense standoff to finally be diagnosed and treated for deep-vein thrombosis and a pulmonary embolism following an intravenous immunoglobulin treatment (IVIG).

Meanwhile my condition created a smorgasbord of symptoms and managing one would sometimes worsen or create another. There were complications, “atypical presentations,” systemic infections, superbugs, and an ever-growing list of prescriptions sometimes accompanied by allergic reactions and serious side effects. I was a “high-cost health-care user.” The term is used to describe the five per cent of health-care users who are said to account for nearly two-thirds of health-care costs.

I sensed a growing defeatism among those providing me with care. But I was certain that the danger was at least partially a result of the health-care system’s siloed and almost exclusive focus on the latest acute crisis made worse by under-funding and embedded bias.

Peters explains her experience with treatment and care at St Paul's hospital in Vancouver that led to her improved health. There was a hospital employee who pressured her to accept non-treatment as a "treatment" proposal but after dealing with that employee she did find good care at St. Paul's. She then writes:

Many, if not most, disabled people would prefer the additional option of secular MAiD-free spaces. But Catherine Frazee, whose quote starts this article, has articulated the view of a great many disabled people who fervently want safety from MAiD.

Affirming support for the belief of “better dead than disabled” in health care is dangerous and cruel. Canada has made disabled people a killable class, and hardly anyone has considered the impact this would have on us. This country must maintain MAiD-free health-care spaces.

More articles concerning Gabrielle Peters:

• Disability activists pushing back against euthanasia (Link).
• Canada is not as advertised. MAiD is eugenics (Link).
• Canada. How death care is pushing out healthcare (Link).

The Hadamar T-4 euthanasia centre killed approximately 15,000 people.

Hadamar May 5, 2024

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I spoke at a conference in Germany on May 4, 2024. Since I was going to Germany I decided to go for few days to visit some of the T-4 euthanasia killing centres.

On May 1, I first visited the Grafeneck euthanasia memorial since it was the first of the T-4 euthanasia euthanasia centres. Approximately 10,000 people were killed at Grafeneck. On May 2, I visited the Hartheim castle euthanasia memorial where 18,269 people were killed under the T-4 euthanasia program and at least 30,000 people in total were gassed to death.

On Sunday May 5 I visited the Hadamar euthanasia memorial where at least 10,000 people were killed under the T-4 euthanasia program and approximately 15,000 were killed in total. Canada had approximately 16,000 euthanasia deaths in 2023. I have been reading more about the T-4 euthanasia program because history seems to be repeating itself.

Hadamar May 5, 2024

I will republish from the Hadamar killing centre website which states:

At the end of 1940, the building of the Hadamar State Sanatorium (Landesheilanstalt Hadamar) was converted into a killing centre. The contracting authority behind this was the organisation responsible for the centrally controlled “adult euthanasia” programme, which was later referred to as the “T4” programme (Aktion T4). The headquarters of this organization was located on the Berlin street address of Tiergartenstraße 4 – hence “T4”.

Adolf Hitler, Führer and Chancellor of the German Reich, had instructed Karl Brandt, his accompanying doctor, and Philipp Bouhler, head of the Führer’s Chancellery, to carry out the murders. Both men were at the forefront of the “T4” programme.

The psychiatric hospitals in the German Reich, often referred to as state sanatoriums or convalescent and care homes, first received registration forms, so-called “Meldebögen”, from the health administration of the Reich Ministry of the Interior, in which they had to report on patients.

On the basis of these registration forms, so-called “Gutachter”, often professors of psychiatry and heads of institutions, were called on as experts to assess the patients and then decided between life and death. Those who were no longer able to work or had been long-term institutional patients or had not heard from relatives in a long time had little chance of survival.

Bus at Hadamar

It was in these killing centres, which had been set up for this specific purpose, that these persons were murdered at the beginning of 1940. The Hadamar killing centre was the sixth and last murder site that was set up during the “T4” programme. The 13th of January 1941 marks the beginning of these murders. These individuals were first moved to “intermediate institutions” where they awaited transport to the Hadamar killing centre.

The “intermediate institutions” leading to Hadamar were located in Herborn, Weilmünster, Idstein (Kalmenhof), Eltville (Eichberg) in what is today the state of Hesse, Galkhausen (now North Rhine-Westphalia), Andernach, Schauen (now Rhineland-Palatinate) as well as Wiesloch and Weinsberg (now Baden-Württemberg). It was from Düsseldorf-Grafenberg (now North Rhine-Westphalia) and Heppenheim (now Hesse) in particular that patients who were considered Jews according to Nazi racial policy were forcibly taken to Hadamar.

Hadamar gas chamber.

As was done in the other killing centres, a gas chamber and cremation furnaces were set up in the former Hadamar State Sanatorium. The institution was managed by two doctors. During the year of 1941, the killing centre employed a total of about 100 people, including nurses, kitchen staff and administrative personnel.

Since January 1941, patients had regularly arrived at the Hadamar killing centre on buses operated by the transport company that was in itself a subdivision of the “T4” organisation. These persons then disembarked the bus inside the wooden bus garage that had been built specifically for this purpose. They were then led inside the main building and made to undress in a large hall. Afterwards, administrative staff members checked personal information and one of the killing doctors determined the cause of death that would later appear in the falsified documents.

Hadamar smoke.

It was in the gas chamber in the basement that the persons were then murdered using carbon monoxide. Afterwards, special staff members of the institution incinerated the bodies in the crematorium. Rising above the killing centre, the smoke that ensued from the incineration process could be seen from afar; and, as people of that time reported, one could also smell it.

The relatives of those murdered received so called “comfort letters” typed by secretaries which included false information about the circumstances of death, the time of death and, sometimes, the place of death. If relatives so requested, they were sent urns. However, these urns did not contain the ashes of their murdered family member.

By the time the “T4” programme was halted on 24 August 1941, over 10,000 patients had been murdered in Hadamar.

Wikipedia reports what happened at Hadamar in this manner:

The clinic in Hadamar, which housed a psychiatric facility, was the last of six facilities set up to implement the programme, with murders commencing in January 1941.  During the first phase of operations (January to August 1941), 10,072 men, women and children were murdered with carbon monoxide in a gas chamber as part of the Nazi "euthanasia" programme.  The gas was obtained in standard cylinders supplied by the chemicals company IG Farben.

Thick smoke from the hospital crematorium billowed over Hadamar in the summer of 1941, during which the staff celebrated the cremation of their 10,000th patient with beer and wine. Up to 100 victims arrived in post-buses every day. They were told to disrobe for a "medical examination". Sent before a physician, each was recorded as having one of 60 fatal diseases, as "incurables" were to be given a "mercy death". The doctor identified each person with different-coloured sticking plasters for one of three categories: murder; murder & remove brain for research; murder & extract gold teeth.

Families of the victims were sent "comfort letters" with falsified causes of death. Families could also request a funerary urn, but the ashes were not from their family member.

Wikipedia explains how the killing continued after the "completion" of the T-4 phase:

After nearly a year of suspension, the murder of 'undesirables' resumed in August 1942, in what has been termed the "decentralized euthanasia" phase of Aktion T4, where "euthanasia" killings were committed without centralized coordination from Berlin. Resident physicians and staff, headed by nurse Irmgard Huber, directly murdered the majority of these victims, among whom were German patients with disabilities, mentally-disoriented elderly persons from bombed-out areas, "half Jewish" children from welfare institutions, psychologically- and physically-disabled forced labourers and their children, German soldiers, and Waffen SS soldiers deemed psychologically incurable. Because the gas chamber had been deconstructed, the medical personnel and staff at Hadamar murdered almost all of these people by lethal drug overdoses or deliberate neglect and malnutrition.

Though the war ended in Germany on 8 May 1945, the Nazi extermination institutions continued to murder disabled patients by drugs or depriving them of food. The last known patient murdered at Hadamar was a four-year-old mentally handicapped boy, killed on 29 May 1945.

During the second "decentralized" phase of Aktion T4, an estimated 4,500 victims were murdered at Hadamar.

Links to more articles on this topic:

• The Hartheim castle T-4 euthanasia centre killed 30,000 people (Link).
• Grafeneck T-4 euthanasia complex killed more than 10,000 people (Link).
• Berlin memorial to the victims murdered by the T-4 Euthanasia Program (Link).
• Healthcare sector supported the Nazi euthanasia program (Link).
• Infant euthanasia. Is history repeating itself? (Link).

Hartheim Castle T-4 euthanasia centre killed 30,000 people.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Hartheim castle May 2

I will be speaking at a conference in Germany on Saturday, so I decided to go to Germany for few days to visit some of the T-4 euthanasia killing centre. I decided to first visit the Grafeneck euthanasia memorial because it was the first of the T-4 euthanasia euthanasia sites. Approximately 10,000 people were killed at Grafeneck

Today I visited the Hartheim castle euthanasia memorial. 18,269 people were killed under the T-4 euthanasia program and at least 30,000 people in total were gassed to death at Hartheim. I have been reading more about the T-4 euthanasia program because history seems to be repeating itself.

The Hartheim castle is an historic property that became a home for people with mental disabilities after it was donated by the Prince of Starhemberg to the Upper Austrian State Welfare Society in 1898. The German government took over the property in 1939 to convert it into a killing centre.

I am republishing much of the wikipedia information about the Hartheim killing centre. Here is a link to great information about the Hartheim Castle (Link).

The Hartheim killing centre (German: NS-Tötungsanstalt Hartheim, ... was a killing facility involved in the Nazi programme known as Aktion T4, in which German citizens deemed mentally or physically unfit were systematically murdered with poison gas. Often, these patients were transferred from other killing facilities such as the Am Spiegelgrund clinic in Vienna. ... Other victims included Jews, Communists and those considered undesirable by the state. Concentration camp inmates who were unfit for work, or otherwise deemed troublesome, were also executed here. The facility was housed in Hartheim Castle in the municipality of Alkoven, near Linz, Austria, which now is a memorial site and documentation centre. (This paragraph was edited because wikipedia was wrong).

Hartheim and T-4 statistics

In June 1945, during investigations by US Forces into the former gassing facility at Hartheim, the American investigating officer Charles Dameron broke open a steel safe in which the Hartheim statistics were found. This was a 39-page document produced for the internal purposes of the Nazi "euthanasia" programme (Aktion T4), and contained monthly statistics of the gassing of mentally and physically handicapped patients (called "disinfection" in the document) carried out in the six killing centres on the territory of the Reich. In 1968 and 1970 an ex-employee of the establishment revealed, as a witness, that he had to compile the material at the end of 1942.  The Hartheim statistics included a page on which it was calculated that "disinfecting 70,273 people with a life expectation of 10 years" had saved food in the value of 141,775,573.80 Reichsmarks.

Victims of the first extermination phase in Hartheim

Hartheim gas chamber

According to the Hartheim statistics, a total of 18,269 people were murdered in the gas chamber at Hartheim in the period of 16 months between May 1940 and September 1941:

1940: May, 633, June, 982, July, 1449, August, 1740, September, 1123, October, 1400, November, 1396, December, 947.
1941: January, 943, February, 1178, March, 974, April, 1123, May, 1106, June, 1364, July, 735, August, 1176.

Hartheim bus.

These statistics only cover the first extermination phase of the Nazi's euthanasia programme, Action T4, which was brought to an end by Hitler's order dated 24 August 1941 after protests by the Roman Catholic Church. (specifically Bishop von Galen)

In all it is estimated that a total of 30,000 people were murdered at Hartheim. Among those killed were sick and disabled persons as well as prisoners from concentration camps. The killings were carried out by carbon monoxide poisoning.

14f13 "Special Treatment"

Just three days after the formal end of Action T4, a lorry arrived at Hartheim with 70 Jewish inmates from Mauthausen concentration camp who were subsequently executed there.  The Hartheim killing centre achieved a special notoriety, not just because it was where the largest number of patients were gassed, but because as part of Action 14f13 Hartheim was also the institution in which the most concentration camp prisoners were executed. Their numbers are estimated at 12,000. 

Some of the prisoners at Mauthausen who were no longer capable of working, especially in the quarries, and politically undesirable prisoners were brought to Hartheim to be executed. In the papers these transfers were disguised with terms like "recreation leave". The entries under "sickness" included "German-haters", "communist" or "Polish fanatic". From 1944 on, the prisoners were no longer selected by T4 doctors; the objective was simply to gain space in the Mauthausen camp quickly.  Other transports came from the concentration camp of Gusen, and probably also from Ravensbrück during 1944, made up of women inmates who were predominantly tuberculosis sufferers and those deemed mentally infirm.

Execution Doctors

Rudolf Lonauer

The Action T4 organisers, Viktor Brack and Karl Brandt, ordered that the execution of the sick had to be carried out by medical doctors because Hitler's memorandum of authorisation of 1 September 1939 only referred to doctors. The operation of the gas tap was thus the responsibility of doctors in the death centres. However, during the course of the programme, the gas valves were occasionally operated by others in the absence of the doctors or for other reasons. Also, many doctors used pseudonyms rather than their real names in the documents.

The following execution doctors worked in Hartheim: Head: Rudolf Lonauer: 1 April 1940 to April 1945. Deputy head: Georg Renno: May 1940 to February 1945

Move of headquarters from Berlin to Hartheim and Weissenbach am Attersee

Hartheim euthanasia staff

In August 1943, due to allied bombing of Berlin, the head office for the National Socialist Euthanasia Programme was moved from Tiergartenstrasse 4, Berlin, to the Ostmark region, which was then humorously described as the air raid shelter of the Reich. The statistic and documents by Paul Nitsche, correspondence, notices and reports were taken to Hartheim (office department, accounts office) and the Schoberstein Recreation Centre near Weißenbach am Attersee (medical department).

References can be found on wikipedia (Link)

Links to more articles on this topic:

• Grafeneck T-4 euthanasia complex killed more than 10,000 people (Link).
• Berlin memorial to the victims murdered by the T-4 Euthanasia Program (Link).
• Healthcare sector supported the Nazi euthanasia program (Link).
• Infant euthanasia. Is history repeating itself? (Link).

Grafeneck T-4 euthanasia centre killed more than 10,000 people

Grafeneck gate
May 1, 2024

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I will be speaking at a conference in Germany on Saturday, so I decided to go to Germany for few days to visit some of the T-4 euthanasia memorials. I decided to first visit the Grafeneck  euthanasia memorial since it was the first of the T-4 euthanasia euthanasia centres. Approximately 10,654 people were gassed to death at Grafeneck. I have been reading more about the T-4 euthanasia program because history is repeating itself.

In September 2023, while speaking at a conference in Berlin I went to the Euthanasia Memorial located at Tiergartenstraße 4, which was the headquarters of the T-4 euthanasia program that killed at least 70,000 people, beginning in Grafeneck (Article).

I have reproduced the information from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum about Grafeneck:

Grafeneck Castle (Link to information).

Grafeneck Castle (Schloss Grafeneck) was built near the city of Tübingen in southwestern Germany around 1560. It was originally a hunting lodge for the dukes of Württemberg. Later modernized, the complex was privatized in 1904. In 1928, it came into the possession of the Samaritan Foundation (Samariterstiftung), a charitable arm of the German Lutheran Church. The foundation established a care facility for male patients with disabilities at Grafeneck in 1929.

Establishing the Killing Center at Grafeneck

When T4 operatives began to identify sites to serve as killing centers for the adult euthanasia program, they first chose the Grafeneck complex. The isolated location of the castle in the hills of the Swabian Alb appealed to their need for secrecy. The surrounding forest shielded the site from public view and only two entrances led to the facility. On October 6, 1939, high ranking T4 officials confiscated Grafeneck “for the purposes of the Reich.” Soon thereafter, caretakers at Grafeneck, as well as the facility’s 110 male patients, were removed from the complex.

By late October, T4 operatives arrived to convert the care facility into a killing center. On the castle grounds they erected a wooden barracks with beds. A construction team transformed the old coach house behind the castle into a makeshift gas chamber.

The castle itself housed the facility’s administrative offices. It also included a special registry office which issued the victims’ death certificates without attracting the attention of local officials. The death certificates were issued with falsified causes and dates of death.

Makeshift gas chamber

In October 1939, the Nazis transformed Grafeneck Castle from a care facility into the first centralized killing center within Aktion T4 (the Nazi Euthanasia Program). The goal of this program was to kill patients with mental and physical disabilities living in institutional settings. In the Nazi view, the T4 program was meant to cleanse the “Aryan” race of people considered both genetically defective and a financial burden to society. By killing patients who had disabilities in Germany, the Nazis aimed to restore the racial "integrity" of the nation.

T4 Personnel at Grafeneck

Bus unloading at Grafeneck

On January 6, 1940, T4 personnel who were recruited for the secret killing operation arrived at the facility. At their head was Grafeneck’s new medical director, physician Horst Schumann. In late May or early June 1940, Schumann was transferred to the T4 killing center at Sonnenstein, near Dresden. At Grafeneck, Dr. Ernst Baumhard replaced Schumann as medical director.

Approximately 100 Grafeneck personnel worked under Schumann’s, and later Baumhard’s, direction. These included physicians, nurses, transport personnel, administrative staff, police, and security officials. They also included the so-called Brenner (“burners” or “stokers”) who cremated victims’ corpses in the crematoria.

Grafeneck Victims

Grafeneck victim
Theodor K.

Grafeneck was the first functioning T4 killing center. Its operations commenced on January 18, 1940. Twenty-five male patients arrived from the Eglfing-Haar facility in Munich that day. Dr. Schumann personally escorted them to the old coach house. There, Schumann gassed them in the newly constructed gas chamber. From this date until December 1940, personnel killed patients by means of gassing on an almost daily basis, excluding Sundays and holidays.

Throughout the year, transport personnel collected disabled patients targeted by euthanasia authorities. The patients were transferred by bus from their home institutions to Grafeneck. Within hours of their arrival, they were ushered into the gas chamber. The gas chamber was disguised as a shower installation. The patients were gassed with pure, chemically produced carbon monoxide gas. The physician viewed the victims through a small window in the gas chamber door. After confirming they were dead, he summoned the facility’s stokers. The personnel removed the bodies and incinerated them in three crematory ovens.

The first people killed at Grafeneck came from the southwest region of Germany. Most were patients at institutions located in the states of Baden and Württemberg. But Grafeneck's geographic reach expanded as patients were brought there from further afield, including from Bavaria, Hessen, and North Rhine Westphalia.

End of Operations at Grafeneck

Horst Schumann

In December 1940, the killings at Grafeneck came to an abrupt end as the clandestine activities at the castle began to attract public attention. In response to public pressure, euthanasia officials hastily deactivated the killing center. The last gassing of patients and the cremation of their remains took place on December 12–13, 1940.

According to internal statistics kept by the T4 program, 9,839 patients were killed at the Grafeneck facility. During a trial in 1949, however, West German authorities established that the number of victims was higher than wartime records showed, with 10,654 persons murdered at the facility.

Grafeneck Staff at T4 and Operation Reinhard Killing Centers

Shortly before Grafeneck closed, most of the facility’s staff transferred to the newly established Hadamar T4 facility near Frankfurt in Hessen.

Both Grafeneck medical directors, Schumann and Baumgard, continued their murderous work at other killing centers. Schumann had already been transferred to the T4 killing center at Sonnenstein in late May or early June 1940. He later conducted brutal sterilization experiments at the Auschwitz camp complex. And when the Grafeneck facility closed, Baumhard and his deputy, Dr. Günther Hennecke, transferred to the Hadamar T4 killing center.

Kurt Franz

In addition, several T4 operatives at Grafeneck later served as German personnel in the killing centers of Operation Reinhard (Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka). These included: Kurt Franz, the last commandant of Treblinka; Lorenz Hackholz, a gassing specialist; and German guards Willi Mentz, August Miete, and Heinrich Unverhau. Johann Niemann, who worked as a stoker at Grafeneck, eventually became the deputy commandant of Sobibor.

Postwar Justice

The perpetrators of the “euthanasia” killings at Grafeneck were not immediately called to account for their crimes. After the German surrender in May 1945, the Allied occupation left euthanasia offenses—a German-on-German crime—to newly reconstructed German courts. In the early postwar years, West German courts pursued such cases diligently. Defendants who were found guilty incurred stiff sentences.

By 1948, however, concerns about the Cold War encouraged a comprehensive clemency policy for Nazi crimes. For example, approximately 100 T4 operatives collaborated to murder thousands of patients at Grafeneck. Only eight of these perpetrators were tried. Their proceedings were held in Tübingen from June 8 until July 5, 1949. Further, only three of the eight defendants were convicted. Their sentences ranged from one and a half to five years. The chief perpetrators escaped justice entirely.

After resigning from the T4 organization during World War II, gassing physicians Ernst Baumhard and Günther Hennecke joined the German navy. Both died in battle in 1943.

Grafeneck’s first T4 physician, Horst Schumann, who later served at Auschwitz, evaded capture by West German authorities. Schumann fled to Africa where he operated a leper colony in Sudan. In 1966, he was extradited from Ghana. Schumann appeared before a German court in September 1970. However, proceedings were halted in March 1971. Due to his ill health, Schumann was released from remand prison in July 1972. He died in 1983.

Links to more articles on this topic: 

• Berlin memorial to the victims murdered by the T-4 Euthanasia Program (Link).
• Healthcare sector supported the Nazi euthanasia program (Link).
• Infant euthanasia. Is history repeating itself? (Link).

Petition: I oppose US federal funding for assisted suicide

Sign and share our petition opposing The Patient Access to End-of-Life Care Act (HB 8137) (petition link)

Our petition states:

Dear Representative Jeffries and Representative Scalise,

I oppose The Patient Access to End-of-Life Care Act (HB 8137) that would force Americans to pay for assisted suicide (medically approved killing by poison) with their tax dollars.

I oppose assisted suicide and I vehemently oppose paying for medically approved killing.

Thank you in advance for upholding my conscience rights by not approving the use of tax dollars for killing.

Sign and share our petition opposing The Patient Access to End-of-Life Care Act (petition link) 

US federal law currently prohibits the use of appropriated funds for assisted suicide.

The assisted suicide lobby announced in their fundraising email on April 29, 2024 that they are spearheading a bill to force American to pay for assisted suicide (Medically approved killing by poison) with federal tax dollars. The fundraising letter states:

The Patient Access to End-of-Life Care Act would end a ban on federal funding to help terminally ill people pay for medical aid in dying where it is currently authorized or will be authorized in the future.

The Patient Access to End-of-Life Act is sponsored by Representatives Brittany Pettersen (D-CO) and Scott Peters (D-CA) and would essentially replace the Assisted Suicide Funding Restriction Act of 1997 which prohibited the use of appropriated funds for: 

1. causing or assisting in suicide, euthanasia, or mercy killing;
2. compelling any person or entity to provide or fund any item, benefit, program, or service for such purpose; or 
3. asserting or advocating a legal right to cause or assist such actions.

The act is titled: The Patient Access to End-of-Life Care Act because the assisted suicide lobby intends to promote the funding of medically approved killing in conjunction with other end-of-life care, such as palliative care.

Based on the current political configuration, it is unlikely that this bill will pass, but it indicates the direction of the assisted suicide lobby and it makes the issue of medically assisted killing, which has essentially been a state by state issue, into a federal issue.

Oppose the Patient Access to End-of-Life Care Act. Don't let your tax dollars be used to kill people.