Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Holocaust Almanac: Estimates of "euthanasia" victims
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Nizkor Project, Canada
Keywords: 14f13,euthanasia,T4,Hartheim,Renno,Ziereis

Archive/File: places/germany/euthanasia/14f13.03
Last-modified: 1993/11/09

   T4 - The camouflage organization created for the medical killing of 
   adults was known as the Reich Work Group of Sanatoriums and Nursing 
   Homes (Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft Heil- und Pflegeanstalten, or RAG).  
   It operated from the Berlin Chancellery, at Tiergarten 4, hence 
   the "T4" code name.

"Of the number of people killed in the T4 and the 14f13 projects, the
following statistics are usually given: adult mental patients from
institutions, 80,000 to 100,000; children in institutions, 5,000; special
action against Jews in institutions, 1,000; concentration camp inmates
transported to killing centers (14f13), 20,000 (Klee estimated that at the
end of 1941, some 93,521 `beds' had been emptied for other uses [70,000
patients gassed, plus over 20,000 dead through starvation and medication]
-- in other words approximately one-third of the places for the mentally
ill.)<27> But these figures may well be too low; twice these numbers of
people may have perished. The fact is that we do not know and shall
probably never know. Elements of deception, imposed chaos, and the
destruction of many records make anything like an accurate estimate
impossible.

The same is true concerning the total number of people murdered at specific
killing centers. Hartheim victims of both ordinary `euthanasia' and 14f13
are variously estimated from 20,000 (by Dr. Georg Renno, Lonauer's
successor as director), to 400,000 (by Franz Ziereis, the former commandant
of Mauthausen, on his deathbed); 30,000 is believed to be the best
estimate.<28> While these figures may seem unimpressive when placed next to
the millions killed in the Final Solution, they represent the murder of
shockingly large numbers of people -- all in places characterized as
hospitals."

<27> Klee, "Euthanasie" pp. 340-41; Lothar Gruchmann, "Euthanasie und
     Justiz im Dritten Reich," Vierteljahrshefte fuer Zeitgeshichte 20
     (1972):244
<28> Florian Zehethofer, "Das Euthanasieproblem im Dritten Reich am Beispel
     Schloss Harthein (1938-1945)," Oberoesterreichische Heimatsblaetter 32
     (1978):58-60

Extracted from--------------------------------------------------- 
THE NAZI DOCTORS: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide.
Lifton, Robert Jay,       London: Papermac, 1986 (Reprinted 1990)
-----------------------------------------------------------p. 142

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