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The Hadamar Euthanasia Centre ((ドイツ語:NS-Tötungsanstalt Hadamar)) was located at a psychiatric hospital in the German town of Hadamar near Limburg in Hesse from 1941 to 1945. Beginning in 1939, the Nazis used this site as one of six for the T-4 Euthanasia Programme, which performed mass sterilizations and mass murder of "undesirable" members of German society, specifically those with physical and mental disabilities. In total, an estimated 200,000 people were killed at these facilities, including thousands of children. These actions were in keeping with the eugenics ideas about racial purity developed by German researchers. While officially ended in 1941, the programme lasted until the German surrender in 1945. Nearly 15,000 German citizens were transported to the hospital and died there, most killed in a gas chamber.〔(Lifton (1986): p.102 )''〕 In addition, hundreds of forced labourers from Poland and other countries occupied by the Nazis were killed there. Hadamar and its hospital fell within the American occupation zone after the war. From October 8–15, 1945, United States forces conducted the Hadamar Trial, the first mass atrocity trial in the years following World War II. They prosecuted doctors and staff on charges of murdering citizens of allied countries, namely, forced labourers from Poland and other countries. The US had jurisdiction for these crimes under international law. Several people were convicted and executed for these crimes. After the German courts were reconstructed under the occupation, in 1946 a doctor and nurse were prosecuted by Germans for the murders of nearly 15,000 German citizens at the hospital. Both were convicted. The hospital continues to operate. It holds a memorial to the euthanasia murders, as well as an exhibit about the Nazi programme. ==Operations== Since the late 19th century, doctors and scientists had been developing theories of racial purity based on eugenics, a concept popular at the time that developed from several disciplines including social history, biology, anthropology and genetics. As Weindling (1989) explained, there had been several movements in Germany since the end of World War I concerned with the 'degeneration' of German racial purity that culminated with the founding in 1927 of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. Although there had been demands since the early 1920s for legislation on sterilisation and euthanasia, these were rejected because it was believed that positive eugenics was more representative of the Weimar political structures and the nation's social needs. This approach ended in 1933 after the ascent of the Nazis in Germany.〔 Beginning in 1939, the Nazis set up the T-4 Euthanasia Programme at Hadamar hospital, which housed a psychiatric facility, as one of six to implement the programme. Developed by Viktor Brack, it began with mass sterilizations of children deemed "unfit" to reproduce. After that, the hospital staff exterminated children determined to be unfit and the programme was later expanded to adults. In the eight months of the first phase of the killing operations (January to August 1941), 10,072 men, women and children were asphyxiated with carbon monoxide in a gas chamber as part of the Nazi "euthanasia" programme. 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. Despite the hospital's precautions to cover up the T-4 programme, the local population were fully aware. The people executed in the Hadamar hospital were brought in by train and bus, apparently vanishing behind the site's high fencing. Since the crematorium ovens were more often than not fed with two corpses at a time, the cremation process was less than perfect. This often resulted in the aforementioned thick, acrid smog hanging over the town. According to a letter sent by Bishop Hilfrich of Limburg to the Reich Justice Minister in 1941, local children taunted each other with the words "You're not very clever; you will go to Hadamar and into the ovens"〔Nuremburg Trial Documents USA-717 *615-PS| Letter from the Bishop of Limburg to the Reich Minister of Justice, 13 August 1941, concerning the annihilation of the "unfit to live" in the institution of Hadamar|"Du bist nicht recht gescheit, du kommst nach Hadamar in den backofen"〕 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: kill; kill & remove brain for research; kill & extract gold teeth.〔Patrizia Barbera: ''Todgeweihte kamen in Postbussen zur Hinrichtung'', in ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,'' page 55, 21 October 2008. (for-pay archive at http://faz.net/)〕 As people learned of these activities, there came growing opposition. Hitler officially announced in 1941 that the "euthanasia" activities had been curtailed. After a brief period of suspension, however, the euthanasia staff renewed the killing of 'undesirables' in 1942. Resident physicians and staff, headed by nurse Irmgard Huber, directly killed 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 foreign Waffen-SS soldiers deemed psychologically incurable. The medical personnel and staff at Hadamar killed almost all of these people by lethal drug overdoses; others died of deliberate neglect. Though the war ended in Germany on 8 May 1945, the Nazi extermination institutions continued to kill disabled patients - or allow them to die of starvation. The last known patient to die at Hadamar was a four-year-old mentally handicapped boy, who was killed on 29 May 1945.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=Nazis, Eugenics, and the T-4 Program (1920-1950) )〕 In early April 1945, the US 2nd Infantry Division captured the German town of Hadamar and American officials began to learn about the murders at the hospital. The Hadamar psychiatric hospital is in operation today as an asylum and treatment centre. It also houses a memorial to the dead and an exhibition regarding the mass murders of the Programme. Exhibit boards are installed outside the bus garage; it and the hospital itself have been designated as cultural monuments. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hadamar Euthanasia Centre」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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