Action 14f13

Aktion 14f13
A so-called "charitable ambulance" Gekrat bus
Also known as	Sonderbehandlung 14f13, Aktion 14f13
Location	Hartheim, Bernburg and Sonnenstein killing centers
Date	1941-1944
Incident type	Deportations to extermination camps
Perpetrators	Heinrich Himmler, Philipp Bouhler, Viktor Brack, Werner Heyde, Horst Schumann, Richard Glücks, Arthur Liebehenschel
Participants	Nazi Germany
Organizations	Concentration Camps Inspectorate, SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt ("Amt D"), Gemeinnützige Krankentransport GmbH", Deutsche Reichsbahn
Camp	Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen, Gusen, Flossenbürg, Neuengamme and Ravensbrück, Groß-Rosen, Dachau
Victims	15,000-20,000
Memorials	Das Denkmal der grauen Busse Traveling monument of the grey Gekrat buses

Action 14f13, also called "Sonderbehandlung ("special treatment") 14f13", and Aktion 14f13, was a campaign by Nazi Germany to murder Nazi concentration camp prisoners. Also called "invalid" or "prisoner euthanasia", the campaign culled the sick, elderly and those deemed no longer fit for work from the rest of the prisoners in a selection process, after which they were killed. The Nazi campaign was in operation from 1941 to 1944 and later covered other groups of concentration camp prisoners, as well.

In spring 1941, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler met with Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler, head of Hitler's Chancellery to discuss his desire to relieve concentration camps of "excess ballast", sick prisoners and those no longer able to work. Bouhler was Adolf Hitler's agent for implementation of the Action T4 "euthanasia" program for the mentally ill, disabled and inmates of hospitals and nursing homes deemed unworthy of inclusion in Nazi society.

Himmler and Bouhler transferred technology and techniques used in the Aktion T4 programme to the concentration camps, and later to Einsatzgruppen and death camps, in the hopes of efficiently killing the unwanted prisoners and inconspicuously disposing of the bodies. In addition, though Aktion T4 was officially shut down by Hitler on August 24, 1941, it was continued by many of the physicians who had been involved until Nazi Germany was defeated in 1945.

Bouhler instructed Oberdienstleiter Viktor Brack, the head of Hauptamt II ("main office" II) of the Hitler's Chancellery (Kanzlei des Führers) to implement this new order. Brack was already in charge of the various front operations of T4.