Operation 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, Ravensbrück, Groß-Rosen and 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.

In spring 1941, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler met with Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler, head of the Hitler Chancellery to discuss his desire to relieve concentration camps of excess ballast, sick prisoners and those no longer able to work. Bouhler was Hitler's agent for implementation of Aktion T4 the 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 by Aktion T4 personnel to concentration camps and later to Einsatzgruppen and death camps, to kill efficiently unwanted prisoners and inconspicuously dispose of the bodies. Aktion T4 was officially terminated by Hitler on August 24, 1941 but 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 the new order. Brack was already in charge of the various front operations of T4. The scheme operated under the Concentration Camps Inspector and the Reichsführer-SS under the name "Sonderbehandlung 14f13". The combination of numbers and letters was derived from the SS record-keeping system, 14 for the Concentration Camps Inspector, f for the German word deaths (Todesfälle) and 13 for the means of killing, in this case gassing in the T4 killing centers. "Sonderbehandlung" ("special action"—literally "special handling") was the euphemistic term for execution or killing.