A voice speaks across the decades: "There is no such thing as life unworthy of living."

A version of this article also appears in this week's

Western Catholic Reporter newspaper (Canada) (http://www.wcr.ab.ca/columns/markpickup/2007/markpickup111907.shtml)

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency recently published a short article about a new memorial in Berlin dedicated to victims of the Nazi euthanasia programme which claimed close to 100,000 lives of handicapped people in Germany during the Second World War.

Started by Hitler in 1939, the T4 euthanasia programme initially targeted mentally ill people and deformed children up to the age of three years old for lethal injections. What started with abnormal infants gave way to abnormal older children and finally disabled and handicapped adults.

Nazi euthanasia

The Nazi euthanasia programme was based on the idea racial purity and paved the way for the final solution which eventually claimed the lives of 6-million Jews. It was the euthanasia programme that developed gas chambers camouflaged as shower rooms where poison gas was piped in to kill disabled people deemed life unworthy of life.

The first gassing demonstration for Nazi officials overseeing the T4 programme occurred in a disused prison in Brandenburg; twenty Jewish psychiatric patients were gassed. The demonstration was deemed a success. Six killing centers were established where busloads of people with mental illnesses, or physical disabilities or handicaps were shipped for systematic exterminations. One doctor oversaw the gassing of 5,000 disabled people in six month period from March to August 1940.[1]

The euthanasia program never enjoyed legal sanction; it was murder even with under perverted laws of the Third Reich.[2] Although Hitler signed a decree for an adult euthanasia programme against ‘lebensunswertes leben’ – “life unworthy life” or “beings unworthy of existence”, he instructed officials that under no circumstances was the Fuhrer’s Chancellery to be seen as active in the program.[3]

Doctors who participated in the program did so voluntarily. Roughly 45% of them were members of the Nazi Party and many were belonged to the SS. Many of the doctors were exempted from military duty and enjoyed elevated status and perks rare in a wartime economy.

Christian witness

On August 3rd 1941, Catholic Bishop Clemens von Galen risked his life at the Munster Cathedral where he delivered a scathing sermon against the euthanasia programme. He condemned attempts to give legal sanction to killing the disabled and handicapped. He roared across the pulpit, “Once admit the right to kill unproductive persons, then none of us can be sure of his life. A curse on men and the German people if we break the Holy Commandment ‘Thou Shalt not kill’. Woe to us German people if we not only licence this heinous offence but allow it to be committed with impunity.”

Bishop Galen’s sermon sent shock-waves throughout the Nazi leadership! Twenty days later on August 23rd, Hitler officially suspended the T4 programme. The Nazis retaliated by beheading three parish priests who distributed copies of the Bishop’s sermon, but left Bishop von Galen untouched for fear of making him a martyr.[4]

Word of Bishop von Galen’s fiery sermon against the euthanasia programme spread like wildfire. The BBC in England made broadcasts about the sermon. It made the front page in the Daily Telegraph. The RAF dropped copies of the Bishop’s sermon over Germany. Ordinary German soldiers on the frontlines and outposts were sent copies of the sermon by family members. Although Hitler threatened Bishop von Galen, the threat proved idle.

A cunning Nazi film entitled Ich Klage an (I accuse) was produced that year which was shown in theatres in Germany. It portrayed a doctor whose wife suffered from multiple sclerosis. In the warm glow of the family hearth, the doctor gently, ever so lovingly, assists his wife’s suicide, giving her the deliverance she so obviously desires. He faces charges of murder but in turn accuses the state of not helping the disabled die. It was a skilled and clever propaganda film promoting euthanasia by introducing the idea of autonomy and assisted suicide. Many Germans thought Ich Klage an was the Nazi response to Bishop von Galen’s charges.

Pope Pius XII elevated Bishop von Galen to Cardinal after his courageous stand defending the disabled and handicapped in the face of daunting hostility.

His words speak across the decades to North America where the heinous offence of euthanasia is gaining acceptance: "There is no such thing as life unworthy of living."

In December of 2004, three months before the judicial execution of disabled American Terri Schiavo, and his own death, Pope John Paul approved beatification of Cardinal Clemens von Galen.

Cardinal von Galen’s courageous actions serve as a towering example for Christians everywhere to defend the defenseless whose lives are devalued or endangered by euthanasia acceptance.

Mark Pickup

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[1] Michael Burleigh, THE THIRD REICH: A NEW HISTORY, (New York, Hill and Wang, 2000), Michael Burleigh, p.387.
[2] Burleigh, p. 383.
[3] Peter Padfield, HIMMLER: A FULL SCALE BIOGRAPHY OF ONE OF HITLER’S MOST RUTHLESS EXECUTIONERS, (New York, MJF Books, 1990), p. 261.
[4] Taken from, The History Place: World War Two in Europe, (http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/euthanasia.htm), accessed 7 November 2007.