Euthanasia trials

The Euthanasia trials (German: Euthanasie-Prozesse) were legal proceedings against the main perpetrators and accomplices involved in the euthanasia killings of the Nazi era in Germany.

The first euthanasia trial was held by the United States in October 1945 to prosecute doctors and nurses at the Hadamar Euthanasia Centre for killing Polish and Russian workers sick with tuberculosis in summer 1944. Euthanasia was a tangential issue at the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial, held by the United States from December 1946 to August 1947, as only four of its twenty-three defendants were charged with participation in the euthanasia programme: Karl Brandt, Viktor Brack, Waldemar Hoven, and Kurt Blome. Brandt, Brack, and Hoven were convicted, sentenced to death, and executed; Blome was acquitted.

There was a euthanasia trial held in the Soviet occupation zone in Dresden in June 1947 to prosecute those who had worked at the Sonnenstein Euthanasia Centre in Pirna. There were 15 defendants, including Paul Nitsche, the director of the T4 Medical Office (German: Medizinische Abteilung). Four of the defendants, including Nitsche, were sentenced to death and executed.

The U.S. Hadamar trial, officially titled U.S. v. Alfons Klein et al., was held between October 8 and October 15, 1945. The defendants were former workers at the Hadamar Euthanasia Centre in Hadamar, Hesse-Nassau. The euthanasia center in Hadamar was a mental hospital before World War II began in Europe in 1939. Starting in September 1939, it served both as a mental hospital and as a hospital for German soldiers and POWs. At the end of 1940 it was selected to replace the Grafeneck Euthanasia Centre, which was closed in December 1940. Over the next nine months at least 10,000 mentally disabled Germans were gassed at Hadamar. The euthanasia killings of mental patients temporarily stopped in August 1941, and the gas chambers were dismantled. Killing the mentally disabled resumed in August 1942 and resulted in 3,000 to 3,500 additional deaths, though now narcotic overdoses were used instead of gassing. At this time, Hadamar began killing mentally disabled German children and healthy half-Jewish children (German: Mischlingkinder); the facility also began killing concentration camp prisoners as part of Action 14f13. In the summer of 1944 Hadamar became a killing center for hundreds of conscripted Polish and Russian workers who had tuberculosis. It was occupied by American troops on March 26, 1945.

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