The first victim of Nazi child euthanasia identified & Belgium authorizes child euthanasia

inmemoriam_jpg_w202_hRecent news items coming across the transom had a common theme, but each item was arrived at separately. They were not referenced by one another. So, this is surely just some coincidence. Right?

I’ve written previously about how the Holocaust didn’t just happen. The Nazi’s had a beta-test version called T4.  T4 was an outgrowth of public health measures for healthy babies taken to a macabre logical end: if its healthy babies that are desired, then let’s kill the unhealthy babies. And, that’s precisely what the Nazi’s did. The methods used to kill these innocents would then be instituted on a mass scale in the genocidal campaign against the Jews. As the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum describes it:

The “euthanasia” program represented in many ways a rehearsal for Nazi Germany’s subsequent genocidal policies.

German researchers, in 2003, identified the first child victim of T4. His name was Gerhard Kretschmar. The boy’s father had written to Hitler asking that the parents be allowed to kill their son. Hitler sent his own doctor to examine the 5-month old, who he described as:

 The child had been born blind, seemed to be idiotic, and a leg and parts of the arm were missing.

Gerhard was killed and so began the euthanasia program against those with disabilities in Germany.

Well, on February 13, 2014, the Belgium Parliament authorized child euthanasia. And yesterday, March 3, 2014, Belgium King Phillippe signed the bill into law:

The legislation, which grants children the right to request euthanasia if they are “in great pain” and there is no available treatment, makes Belgium the first country in the world where the age of the child is not taken into consideration. Similar legislation exists in the Netherlands, though only for children over the age of 12. In both countries, children are required to receive the consent of parents, doctors and psychiatrists.

A previously enacted Belgium law allowing for adult euthanasia in the case of “unbearable suffering” has since been used to euthanize a pair of twins who were deaf and going blind, a 44-year old woman with chronic anorexia nervosa, and a 64-year old woman with chronic depression. As one doctor said regarding the twins, “I do not think this was what the legislation meant by ‘unbearable suffering’.”

But, no doubt, these news items are simply coincidental and unrelated. Right?

Comments

  1. This illustrates to me that the “right-to-die” debates, selective termination, and now child euthanasia (it hurts me to even type those words) are all really different pieces of the same debate; whether or not we should end life based on a definition of suffering that includes disability in and of itself.

    • Actions justified as “alleviating suffering” have regularly inflicted suffering. That whole: where the road leads that’s paved with good intentions.

  2. Great too see a Down syndrome advocate in the US talking about this now. The silence from the advocacy groups has been obvious.

  3. daron gardner says

    A measure of any society can be seen and measured in the way it cares for the ,different,When we remove people with differences for any reason,economic ,culture,T4,than we have we removed part of what it means to be human ourselves .

    Has for the corrupt bankers,politicians,businesses,who create a situation of economic decline which lead to poverty 1920s-1930s- and onwards to 2007 ,they are the ones who have created the uncaring society.has people are left to struggle with smaller budgets which lead to sad choices some doctors will have to make has governments have less to spend on health .

    So don’t forget corrupt politicians ,bankers,the real power lays with the people and the time will come, you do create your peril.

  4. Many people love their Down syndrome baby but want the government to feed, shelter, and pay the total cost for their health ailments. This silliness is bankrupting the country. If people desire to keep their retarded children, they should pay for all the costs . I know this sounds bad but Hitler may have been right euthanasing Down syndrome people.

    • Please convince me you’re not just a jerk: share with me the basis for your statement that social welfare programs for the intellectually disabled are “bankrupting the country.” Leading indicators of bankrupting public institutions is not social welfare programs for the disabled, but pensions for public employees, see Illinois.

Trackbacks

  1. […] Nazi program against the disabled was called “T4.” The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum called the program a “rehearsal” for the […]

  2. […] policies spread to Europe.  Taking eugenics theory to its logical end, the Third Reich instituted Action T4, the precursor to the Final Solution. The U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has a traveling exhibit […]

  3. […] policies spread to Europe.  Taking eugenics theory to its logical end, the Third Reich instituted Action T4, the precursor to the Final Solution. The U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has a traveling exhibit […]

  4. […] almost immediately, the fatwa was ruled bad by some because it hearkened back to Akton T4, the Nazi’s beta-test of the Holocaust in which doctors killed children with disabilities, […]

  5. […] why stop with eliminating the next generation? So, they started killing the current generation, starting with the disabled and culminating in the Final Solution, the Holocaust of Eastern European Jews (and […]