[Music] Shields: The economic
situation in Germany following World War I and the
Versailles Treaty led to the
wholesale implementation of Hitler's policies. They started
killing children first and then a bit later on
started killing adults. It's not surprising that
the nurses in the Nazi era
got caught up in all of this. The propaganda was everywhere,
about killing people who were considered "life
unworthy of life". "Useless feeders" was the term
they used. The nurses were the ones who
held the children while they were being killed. They gave them the overdoses
of drugs. They were the ones who put
them out on the verandas to die of hypothermia. The nurses were the ones who
withheld the feeding so the children would die of
starvation. [Music] Narrator: After World War I
ended in 1918, Germany went through severe economic
hardships, and the nation saw the rise of different
political factions and ideals. One group that emerged was
Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Party. Shields: Of course, there was
rampant inflation, there was great poverty, and
social disadvantage because of the reparations which had to
be paid back after the Treaty of Versailles. Steinberger: Money was
devaluated, and they saw a strong leader
that was restoring order. Narrator: By 1933 Adolf Hitler
and the Nazi Party had taken control of Germany, and this
began a period of racial hygiene laws, persecution and
death camps. Hitler wanted to create the
Master Race and eliminate Jews and other people he considered
inferior to the Aryan race. Innocent children and
concentration camp prisoners suffered through horrific
medical experiments. All of this was accomplished
with the assistance of German doctors and nurses. [Music] The basis for Hitler's plan of
racial hygiene was a concept called Eugenics, which
is the pseudo-science of developing a superior race. Shields: Before Hitler came to
power, across the world the whole theory of eugenics was
something that many nations had embraced. Benedict: Eugenics is the
belief that through selective breeding whether it's cows,
sheep, people, whatever through selective breeding
positive eugenics is the ability to breed offspring
that will carry the best traits. Shields: This theory of
Eugenics, how people should be allowed to breed, to the
benefit of the human race and those who weren't fit and
healthy, should not be allowed to have children. Benedict: ...caught on in
England, the United States, Japan, Scandinavia. Germany was not at the
forefront of this. Dr. Grodin: The Nazis actually
learned much of their eugenics initially from the U.S. Narrator: Some of these
eugenic health care policies were developed in the United
States in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. These U.S. policies were
emulated by Germany and incorporated into the governing
philosophy of applied biology. Grodin: There laws in the book
in Virginia that said you could sterilize people. The Nazis took their 1933
sterilization law and mimicked it after the U.S. law. In fact, there was a time in
which there were letters in the U.S. journals saying,
"Look at the Nazis have gotten ahead of us, we
better catch up." Shields: And so of course when
Hitler came along with his racial theories, he realized
that this Eugenics was a really good idea, and he
manipulated it to fit his racial theories, all mixed in
with the Jews, the Gypsies, everybody else who was
considered racially inferior. Narrator: All of this would
lead to an appalling era in world history called the
Holocaust, a period of persecution and mass murder. Steinberger: The Holocaust has
been defined as the 12 year period, from Hitler's rise to
power in 1933, until the end of the war, 1945. It was a government planned,
government supported mass extermination or mass killing. And while it was targeted
towards Jewish people, there were many other groups of
individuals that suffered during the Holocaust. Narrator: Hitler convinced the
German people that the Jews were their enemy and the cause
of their problems. He then created an atmosphere
of racial intolerance and hatred of people deemed to be
racially inferior. Benedict: So, every genocide,
whether it's Rwanda, the Holocaust, begins with "we"
versus "them". So, Hitler used the Jews, and
later other people, as scapegoats for all that was
wrong in Germany, particularly the economic woes. So, he set up the "we" versus
"them". He institutionalized that. [Music] Narrator: In 1933 the Nazi
government passed the Nuremberg Laws for the
protection of hereditary health. This legalized involuntary
sterilization. Grodin: Hitler found a perfect
meshing of his Nazi ideology with the eugenic Nazi medicine
or Racial Hygiene Movement. Narrator: Germany's
sterilization laws led to the involuntary sterilization by
doctors of about 400,000 Germans Nazi doctors sterilized
citizens against their will, "euthanized" 200,000 disabled
German children and adults, and created the gas chambers
and crematoria that were used for the mass murder of six
million Jews, Poles, and Gypsies. Without the full support of
physicians, scientists, and nurses, the Holocaust, as it
unfolded, could never have happened. Benedict: In the U.S. there were
laws that could require that people be sterilized
against their will. Narrator: Sterilization laws
were widespread in the U.S., most notably in Indiana and
North Carolina. But other states including
California and Virginia allowed sterilization, even
into the 1970s. In fact, in the early 20th
century, the U.S. led the world in compulsory
sterilizations. Grodin: A very famous law was
passed in Virginia that said it was okay to sterilize the
retarded. And it was brought before the
Supreme Court, and [Chief Justice] Oliver Wendell
Holmes said "three generations of imbeciles is enough". Saying it was okay to
sterilize. Reis: But [in the U.S.] it
didn't go further. But in Germany it became the
leading ideology, then it was implemented into action. Narrator: Hitler promised the
German people they were creating the Master Race. Starck: I think the Master
Race would have been the Nazis' view of a strong blonde,
blue eyed, healthy person who had no genetic defects and who
was pure Aryan. [Chanting] Narrator: In the 1920s and 30s
Germany's medical community was considered the best in the
world. Grodin: You weren't a real
doctor in the U.S. unless you went to Germany to
study, and when you came back and said, "You know, I studied
in Germany." Starck: I think with that came
some arrogance and some feeling that, "we are so
superior to everybody else". Steinberger: I studied
medicine in Germany. I know some of the best
teaching of anatomy, physiology in medicine, came
from Germany. Germany was very advanced, not
only in the medical field, but Germany was the best
civilization among the European countries. Grodin: It was the height of
technology, the height of science, and how was it
possible that these people became murderers? Narrator: The majority of
nurses were not members of the Nazi Party, however, to have a
job in Germany a nurse had to belong to one of several
nursing organizations. There were five organizations
for nurses. Among these, the National
Socialist Nurses and the Red Cross Nurses swore an oath of
allegiance to Hitler. Additionally, the Protestant
Nurses' organization said that it "greets National Socialism
with an open heart." Starck: surprisingly more
physicians, percentage-wise, joined the Nazi party than the
population in general. And I think physicians were
very taken with the fact that we can use our science to
improve the human race. Narrator: Many physicians and
nurses enthusiastically supported the Nazi regime and
were involved in all aspects of the Holocaust. Reis: About 40 percent of
German physicians were in the Nazi party while the lawyers
and teachers and the other white collar professions
joined in much lesser numbers. If you didn't join the Nazi
party, there was no retribution. Narrator: Using inflammatory
propaganda, Hitler and the Nazis began a campaign against
the Jews. Steinberger: I know that my
father used to say that bad things are happening to Jewish
people in Germany. They are being discriminated
against. Jewish children can no longer
go to their regular school. People cannot keep their jobs
at the university or, or other professions. Steinberger: Hitler said
follow me, never mind God, never mind religion, just
follow me, do what I am asking you to do. Reis: Since the regime was
totalitarian and they were very good at public campaigns
and propaganda, and they had enough scientists and
physicians that were already marching to the drum. Steinberger: Propaganda is an
extremely powerful way to convince people to their way
of thinking. Narrator: Germany's medical
establishment began to support the Nazi Party, except for
Jewish doctors, who were ostracized. [Music] Reis: The official journal of
the German Medical Association started to have a swastika on
their journal. They got rid of all the Jewish
physicians, authors, people in office of all the different
associations or societies very quick. In five or six years, they got
them out of all the academic and professional
establishment. Narrator: After years of
strong Nazi propaganda Germany's doctors and nurses
began to accept the belief that racial hygiene would be
good for the nation. Steinberger: Social Darwinism
said, we need to eliminate these inferior people that were
handicapped, that were maybe mentally disturbed. We want a healthy, thriving
society. Reis: In Germany, the
proponents of the eugenic movement were the most
prominent, the most powerful, the establishment. The legal system became
Nazified immediately. Grodin: Well of course It
required lawyers, it required doctors, it required
bureaucrats, it required administrators, but many
of the nurses were ones who carried out the injections. But for a long time nurses
were the agents of the physicians and the
physicians in the Nazi period were agents of the State. So that's very important because
physicians were no longer asked to care for patients but
to care for the State, the Volk, the German Volk. So, what was good for the
state was what was important, not what was good for an
individual patient. Shields: Obedience was still a
very much a part of the way nurses were taught, and the
way we thought. So it's not surprising that
the nurses in the Nazi era got caught up in all this. Narrator: Euthanasia programs
were established in Nazi Germany in which children and
adults were killed if they were considered unfit for life
and were a burden on the state. The true meaning of euthanasia
would be the mercy killing of a person with their permission
or their request, however, this was not the case in Nazi
Germany. These killings were without
consent. They were murders. In the 1920s, German lawyer
Karl Binding and German psychiatrist, Alfred Hoche
co-authored the book "The Permission to Destroy Life
Unworthy of Life." This book greatly influenced
Hitler's thinking about euthanasia. Shields: Everybody had that
propaganda thrown at them, it was common, it was everywhere. It espoused the idea that
people who were in some way deficient should be killed so
they didn't carry on the defective genes, and so that they weren't a burden
on the State. So the nurses, just as everybody
else in society, were susceptible to this. The nurses were working in
hospitals where children with disabilities, people with
mental illnesses, a whole range of conditions were cared
for. They weren't coerced into
becoming part of these programs. Reis: Once you accept
humans can be dehumanized, eventually you can engage in
exterminating. This was a gradual and very
powerful and unfortunately very effective process that
took place in Germany. Narrator: The Nazi euthanasia
program first started in 1939 as a means to eliminate
handicapped children. Benedict: You have families,
who because of all the propaganda, are believing that
to have a child with negative traits is a bad thing. It's bad for the health of
Germany. Shields: They were killing
children with disabilities, children with down syndrome,
children with cardiac anomalies, children with
cerebral palsy, children who didn't develop normally, who
were considered to be "useless feeders", that was the term used Benedict: Public health nurses
would go to the families, promise them, "If you will
give your child to us your child will get the best care." And so the people were falsely
led to believe that and relinquished their children. Benedict: The nurses were
involved in the killing of children by giving them
overdoses, by taking them outside knowing that it was
going to contribute to their death. Shields: I got very interested
in this when I found out that nurses actively killed their
patients. And I became intrigued into
how they could come to believe that killing was a legitimate
part of their caring role, which they did. The propaganda around the
whole idea of killing people for the good of the state was
profound, even down to children doing exercises in
their school books on how much it costs to keep people with a
disability, for example. Narrator: Mid-wives and
physicians were mandated by German law to report any
infant born with a birth defect and the infant would be
placed in an institution. Mid-wives were paid for each
birth that they reported. Shields: Mid-wives were
licensed. They had to go through a similar
training period as nursing. And many of them were
independent practitioners. So not long after the child
was put into a home, he or she would then be moved to another
institution further away. Of course there was no
consent, no nothing. These killings were done
without the parents' approval, more or less, in the main. Grodin: The nurses and
mid-wives who were involved in the carrying out, maybe not even
the ideology, but were actually the doers of the
euthanasia program. Euthanasia is really a
euphemism for murder because these were not terminally ill
patients. These were children that were
taken and murdered, mostly children who had handicap or
mental retardation. Benedict: I think one deciding
point is in Germany the notion that the health of the public
is more important than the health of the individual. So, consequently to remove an
unhealthy element was seen as good. Narrator: In September 1939, a
decision was made to develop an adult euthanasia program
for patients in psychiatric facilities. Hitler picked the date to
coincide with Germany's invasion of Poland. Benedict: To expand it to
include adults the only way we're going to make this
acceptable is to say we need these hospital beds for the
war wounded. Why should the state pay to
keep totally disabled people alive when our young guys who
are sent to the front need to come back home and have care? Narrator: The name of this
killing organization was T-4. Eventually six killing centers
were established. Medical staffs were ordered to
fill out questionnaires to evaluate whether their
patients should live or die. Patients were placed in gas
chambers that looked like showers. [Door slamming shut] Then lethal carbon monoxide
was pumped into the chambers killing the patients. Grodin: You have to justify and
rationalize what you're doing because you're doing it,
but they actually believed it, and they actually believed
that what they were doing was saving the Volk from its
contamination, from the infection, that there was a
disease, and the disease was the handicapped and the
infirm, and that they needed to be cured through killing. Healing through killing. Benedict: They were told they
were being transferred. The nurses packed their
clothes, their lunch, rode with them on the buses. The hospitals, these six, had
specially constructed, kinda breezeways that the buses
would go through so the patients could be unloaded
into the hospital, without being viewed by the community. Narrator: However, it didn't
take long for the communities near these hospitals to
realize what was going on. Benedict: People would see the
buses. The buses were very unique,
painted gray, the windows were painted over, and so forth. The buses would arrive and
within a very short period of time this acrid smoke would be
billowing out of the chimneys. Benedict: Each hospital had a
department to write condolence letters to the families. And there were mix-ups. They would write and say,
"We're sorry to tell you your Uncle Hans died of
appendicitis," and maybe he'd already had his appendix
removed. Benedict: People were becoming
quite knowledgeable about what was going on. Even children would taunt
other children, saying "They're going to put you on
the gray bus. You're going to go up the
chimney." Narrator: As knowledge of the
gassing of patients became widespread, the decision was
made to end the T-4 "euthanasia" program in
August, 1941. This, however, did not end the
killing of patients. The children's euthanasia
program continued unabated until the end of the war. [Music] Narrator: After the end
of the T-4 program, physicians were granted permission to
provide a merciful death to any person they deemed to be
suffering. These killings which took
place at many hospitals throughout the Third Reich
were known as "wild euthanasia" or decentralized
"euthanasia" and were carried out on an individual basis
rather than by gassing. Patients, usually selected by
physicians but killed by nurses, were administered
overdoses of sedatives. More people died in "wild
euthanasia" than in T-4. Why did the nurses follow
orders to kill? Shields: We do know that the
doctors were the ones who signed the certificates that
said whether the child was to live or die. It was the nurses who carried
out the killings. The doctors didn't necessarily
carry out the killings themselves. They may have dictated who was
to die, but it was the nurses who carried out the killings. There are episodes where the
nurses decided themselves to take things into their own
hands and kill the patients because they knew they were
going to die anyway. so "He was suffering, so I'll
do it now. He is going to die anyway so I
might as well do it quicker." Benedict: There is the most
mesmerizing quote from one of the nurses who talks about,
"How lovingly we held them in our arms while we got them to
drink this medication. We didn't want them to suffer
more than necessary." While, they were killing them. Narrator: More than 70-years
later, the question of how Germany's nurses became
involved in these killings still intrigues historians. Starck: Well it is of course a
multi-faceted phenomenon, I think, what happened there. But it is a very good example
of you start one thing and then it leads to something a
little worse and a little worse. So at first if they were asked
to hold a patient while somebody else did an injection
or whatever. They could do that, and they
could say to themselves, "I'm not the one taking any action
here." And then from there it's a
shorter step to, "Well, you give the injection." Shields: For some nurses, I
can see that they could easily fall into the trap of thinking
that this was the right thing to do. To me though, the whole issue
is interesting because there's a line as a nurse that you
cross. Starck: And I think also in that
era nurses were very subservient and very obedient
and whatever the doctor said they should do, they felt they
had to obey and do that, or fear the consequences. Narrator: And similar to their
obedience to physicians, nurses were also educated to
be obedient to senior nurses who, at times, also ordered
killings. Starck: Nurses were involved
in actually the killings themselves either through
active means or through passive means letting patients
starve or exposing them to hazards where they would get
pneumonia and other things and die. Narrator: In 1939, World War
II began when the Germans attacked and invaded
neighboring Poland. Steinberger: Our building was
actually also hit... Narrator: Polish survivor Anna
Steinberger recalls the bombing. Steinberger: And I could see
the flames on the roof of the building. I asked my mom, "What is going
on, do I go to school?" And she says, "No school
today, just go hide in the cellar." Narrator: Polish Jews were
rounded up into ghettos and later moved to other
institutions for medical experiments. Narrator: A decision was made
by the Nazis in January of 1942 at the Wannsee Conference
to go further with the Final Solution and move the Jews
into death camps. Benedict: There were four
camps that were specifically created as death camps. Belzec,
Chelmno, Treblinka, and Sobibor. There were two additional
concentration camps that developed a killing portion. That would be Majdanek and
Auschwitz. Narrator: Some skilled workers
were kept alive to work in the camps. Reis: The infrastructure and
the know-how and the personnel of the six T-4 centers were
actually transferred to Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka
and they have been the first gas chambers. Grodin: And then some of the
same doctors and nurses who were involved in the
euthanasia program took the gas chambers down and
reassembled them in east in the Poland at the
concentration camps where doctors selected at the ramps
and were involved in supervising the gassings and
killings. So physicians were involved in
all aspects. [Music] Narrator: Ravensbr ck,
located in Germany, was a camp for women. Shields: Most of the women
were Polish, there were some Jews there, but most of the
women were dissenters or women who had caused trouble to the
Nazis when the Nazis occupied Poland. Narrator: Ravensbr ck was
located close to one of the largest and most important
hospitals in Germany where a lot of research was going on. Shields: Reinhard Heydrich was
the Nazi protector of Czechoslovakia, who in 1942
was killed by a bomb. He died from infection of the
wounds that he got. He died several days later. Narrator: Hitler demanded that
doctors should find a cure for these deadly infections. Shields: And so Ravensbr ck,
which was close by, had all these women there that they
used as lab rats, basically. The women were operated on by
the surgeons from this hospital. They had things like wounds
created in their legs that were filled up with saw dust,
dirt, ground glass to see what would happen to the wound, how
wounds developed, how bone became infected. Shields: Some of these women
were sent to the gas chambers afterwards. They were killed. Some of the women died of
course from the experiments. And some of the women survived
to give testimony in the trials. But nurses were definitely
involved in those experiments. Narrator: Many German
physicians and nurses participated in medical
experiments related to racial hygiene in the concentration
camps and hospitals. One of the worst was Dr. Josef
Mengele, a member of the S.S. Kor: Then the cattle doors
opened and we stepped down on a little strip of land called
the selection platform. We had no idea where we are. All we really knew that we did
not arrive in Hungary but we were taken to Germany which
meant to us that the end was near because there were a lot
of rumors for four years under Hungarian occupation that Jews
were being taken to Germany and murdered... Narrator: Eva Mozes Kor is a
survivor of the notorious Auschwitz where she and her
twin sister, Miriam, suffered under Dr. Josef Mengele and
his experiments on twins. Kor: There were four of us in
the family, children and parents. My mother grabbed my twin
sister and me by the hand because we were her youngest
children and she was hoping that as long as she could hold
on to us that she could protect us. Everything was moving very
fast. I was on that little strip of
land called the selection platform not longer than 10
minutes and in my childish curiosity I looked around
trying to figure out what that place was when I realized that
my father and two older sisters disappeared in the
crowd and I never saw them again. So as we were holding on to
mother a Nazi was running, yelling in German "twins,
twins." We did not volunteer any
information because we had no idea what was that place. We were very extremely
troubled, confused and exhausted and he noticed us,
approached us because we were dress alike and we look alike
and he demanded to know from my mother if we were twins. And my mother didn't know what
to say she asked if that was good and the Nazi nodded yes
and my mother said yes. Then another Nazi came pulled
my mother in one direction we were pulled in the opposite
direction. As I look back, I remember my
mother's arms stretched out in despair as she was pulled
away. I never got to say goodbye to
her but of course I didn't really realize it this would
be the last time we would see her. And all they took no longer
than about 30 minutes. Miriam and I were alone. We had no idea what would
happen to us and all that was done to us for no other reason
except that we were Jewish and we really didn't understand
why that was a crime. Then they lined us up for
registration and tattooing. And when my turn came I
decided to give them as much trouble as a 10-year-old
could. Four people, two women
prisoners and two Nazis restrained me. They pinned me on a bench
while they heated a gadget that it looked like a writing pen
with a needle at the end, and then when the needle got
really hot they dipped it into ink and they burn into my left
arm the capital letter A-7063. Narrator: The twins were
housed in barracks according to age and sex. Kor: We became part of a group
of little girls Auschwitz in our transport of a certain set
of little girls aged 2 to age 16 that is the way they housed
us in our barrack according to age and sex. After roll call we will go
back to the barrack for Dr. Mengele's daily inspection. He would always come in
dressed in his shiny uniform, gleaming black boots, white
gloves, and a baton in his hand and he would count us. He
wanted to know... Narrator: After breakfast the
twins would be readied for experiments. Kor: We would walk to
Auschwitz One and placed naked in a barrack maybe 20, 30 set
of twins for six to eight hours. Every part of my body was
measured, compared to charts, compared to my twin sister. Those experiments were
not dangerous but they were unbelievably demeaning and
even in Auschwitz I couldn't cope to cope with it for six
to eight hours. The only way that I could is
by blocking it out of my mind so even today I have very
limited information on those long hours. Narrator: Three days a week
the children would be taken to a blood lab. Kor: There they would tie both
of my arms to restrict the blood flow, take a lot blood
from my left arm at the same time they would give me a
minimum of five injections into my right arm. The content of those
injections we didn't know then nor do I know today. To the best of my knowledge
they were germs, diseases and drugs because the German
pharmaceutical company was very heavily involved in the
experiments in Auschwitz. After one of those injections
I became very ill with a very high fever. A fact I desperately tried to
hide. The rumor in the camp was that
anyone taken to the hospital never came back so I did not
want to be taken to the hospital. My fever was high, both of my
legs and arms were swollen and very, very painful and I had
huge red patches throughout my body the size of a small apple
or an egg. Narrator: According to the
Auschwitz Museum at least 1,500 sets of twins were used
by Mengele in his experiments. Less than 200 survived. Some died as a result of the
conditions in the camp but the majority died as a result of
the experiments. Shields: They were truly
monsters. The stuff that happened was horrendous. There is no way, ethical
justification for much of what for most of what they did under
the name of medical science. It was done totally without
informed consent. The people used as lab rats
had no choice they were often killed immediately afterwards. They had the most horrendous
things done to them. Narrator: In the sterilization
experiments performed at Auschwitz, it was often the
nurses who would select and prepare the patients for the
experiments. Starck: Then they assisted
whatever the physician needed, the nurse assistant to do and
kept it secret from the patients as to what was going
to happen, giving false reassurance that everything is
going to be alright. We are taking
good care of you. Narrator: At Dachau, a variety
of unethical medical experiments were made using
the prisoners as guinea pigs. Starck: Some of the cruelties
are almost unbelievable. Spitz: They had a purpose for
each one of these. Usually to benefit downed
German pilots in freezing water or some other
battlefield result. Narrator: Author, Vivien Spitz
was an eyewitness court reporter for the Nuremberg war
crimes trial of Nazi doctors. She refers to her book
"Doctors from Hell" as she recalls the trial testimony
she reported. Spitz: The victims were
German, Czech, and Polish gypsies who were deprived the
food and given only brackish yellow sea water for days
resulting in, of course, excruciating pain and foaming
at the mouth and in most cases, madness. Starck: Many of these patients
died, many of these patients died. Steinberger: They did
experimentations where they would, keep people in freezing
temperatures until they were almost dead, revive them and
then expose them again. Grodin: Lowered the
temperature, raised the temperature until they froze
and died. And then they took them
directly to the autopsy table in what they call terminal
experiments. And so they did low pressure
studies where they took concentration camp prisoners and
put them into especially designed rooms where they
sucked out the oxygen, let in the oxygen until
their lungs exploded and they died in terminal
experiments. There were studies of bone and
muscle and infectious diseases. They were trying out new
antibiotics so they took concentration camp prisoners
and cut open and filleted and infected their legs and wounds
to create simulated wounds. Reis: We know that the
sterilization program, the mercy killing program, and the
unlawful atrocious human experimentation programs were
masterminded, planned, suggested, implemented by
physicians. Narrator: Dr. Josef Mengele
was able to escape from Germany after the war and
avoided apprehension by authorities. Spitz: Josef Mengele was the
worst that we never got. Mengele's family was very
wealthy manufacturers in Bavaria. And they managed to hide him
until they could get him out of Germany. Narrator: Dr. Mengele lived in
South America until 1979 when he reportedly drowned while
swimming at a resort in Brazil. Music Narrator: Finally, in
May 1945, the war in Europe ended when the Germans
surrendered to the Allies, and the guns were silent. After the war, the Allies
conducted the famous Nuremberg Trials and the world became
aware of the atrocities of the Nazi doctors and nurses. Shields: We don't know the
figures of the nurses who were involved because they were the
workforce in these hospitals. Narrator: Although nurses were
not named as defendants in the medical trials at Nuremberg,
the results of some of their actions during the war were
brought to light. For example, the horrific
experiments done on young Polish women at Ravensbr ck
and the killing of the disabled persons in the
so-called "euthanasia" programs were made public. Nurses, however, were not
exonerated for their crimes. Many stood trial later on and
several were hanged for their actions, including two male
nurses from the Hadamar euthanasia site. Numerous subsequent trials of
nurses resulted in prison sentences. At other trials, nurses were
acquitted, despite admitting their guilt. Starck: There was a trial for
the nurses and I think they were 14 in all and none of
them were convicted. Benedict: The first trial of
the first nurse and the first physician was in 1946, and it
was the nurse and physician at Meseritz. And interestingly, both of
them received the death sentence and were hanged. The nurses who were tried in
1965 there were 15 nurses from Meseritz to be tried. One killed herself the night
before the trial, so 14 nurses were tried. And the reasons they gave
were, "I thought I was relieving people from their
suffering." "These people had no life at
all." "I needed to keep my job." Starck: I think probably loss
of memory and other things that had changed during that
time, the nurses were not held accountable. And they used the defense too
that, "I was only following orders." Grodin: Just following orders
was not going to be an acceptable defense to murder
or genocide. One of the things that came
out of Nuremberg was the notion that everybody is
responsible for their own actions. Benedict: But the baffling
thing to me is still the trial in 1965 of the 14 Meseritz
nurses. They had had 20 years to think
about what they had done. Those nurses did not deny what
they did. One of them said, "Yes, I
probably killed 210 people." Now the nurses from Spiegelgrund
were tried after the war. Anna Katschenka is
one of them and received several years in prison. [Music] Narrator: Not all of the
nurses under the Third Reich were compliant with the Nazi
ideology. One Austrian SS nurse, Maria
Stromberger, showed great compassion toward prisoners at
Auschwitz. Benedict: She had heard some
of the things that were going on at Auschwitz and just could
not believe it because she said, "We're a good and moral
people, we wouldn't do this." So, she went and said,
"Transfer me to Auschwitz, I want to work there." So her goal was to work caring
for the inmates. Eventually she gained their
trust and would smuggle out letters, documents,
photographs. She smuggled in ammunition. She saved the lives
of many of them. Narrator: Perhaps the most
famous of the trials held at Nuremberg before an
International Military Tribunal was theso called
"Medical Case" or the "Doctors' Trial." Reis: Karl Brandt who was the
chief physician of Hitler said, "I did what's needed to
be done. This was good what we did. We made German people
healthier." So people were convinced that
they are doing something positive in all these
atrocities. Narrator: Twenty-three
physicians and scientists were tried for crimes against
humanity. Grodin: Crimes against
humanity was a new concept which was whether it be war
time, not war time, there are certain things beyond the pale
that we are going to hold people accountable. So genocide was a classic
example of a crime against humanity and so the
doctors went on trial. Narrator: Today many of
these killing centers are memorials
open to the public. But in spite of the bucolic
setting, they were centers of inhumane experiments, mass
murder and extermination. Many of these institutions
remain working psychiatric hospitals even today. Benedict: It looked like
a college campus. It was beautiful. Starck: I've been to prisons,
death camps in both Germany and Austria. It's not quite the same
because the place is more or less clean and of course
empty. And so you have to stand there
and be there to kind of think how would it have been when it
was so crowded and so dirty, and they didn't have water to
drink. One of the patients I'm
familiar with drank water from the floor and died from an
infection. And it's just hard to be in
those places and realize the conditions that were there. [Music] Narrator: Spiegelgrund is still
a large, active hospital in Vienna. During the Holocaust it
consisted of a children's ward and became infamous for the
euthanasia of the children there. Benedict: The brains of many
of these children were saved for years in the basement
of Spiegelgrund. Starck: I think it is good
that they are open to the public because you read about
it and you can see pictures, but until you are actually
there and standing there, you don't get the emotions and
the, the feeling that you would otherwise. Nurse: Alright it looks like
he might have a rhythm back on the monitor. It's sinus but slow. Narrator: Although current
healthcare in the U.S. is regarded as among the best
in the world, there are elements that should cause us
to reflect upon the similarities to German
medicine in the 1930s. Shields: So it's important
that for us, both as nurses who are looking at history and
nurses working today, that we know about this history. Because unless we know, we
can't stop it happening again, and it will happen again. Narrator: Today, nurses are
involved in the legal euthanasia of patients in
Belgium, Holland and Switzerland. Nurses are also involved in
executions in countries where the death penalty is legal. Shields: My take on it is that
the nurses working in those areas should know the history
so that they themselves can determine whether it's
relevant to what they're doing, and ask themselves the
question, is this an ethical area in which I want to work. Reis: We physicians, nurses
have the power that if we are not careful can be abused. By learning about how this
power was abused in the worst way, we hope that you will
inoculate yourself and be conscious and aware and
reflective. [Music] Kor: How does any person
know what is right from wrong. And I think that I have to
have a conscience, a conscience as the moral
compass that if somebody has no morality then it's very
difficult for them to really understand or judge for their
own knowledge what is wrong and what is right. But if it hurts another human
being I think that it is morally wrong. Spitz: I'm just amazed even
today to ask, someone who is a freshman in high school what
they knew about the Nuremberg Trials and they don't know
what you're talking about. Narrator: Many young people
today are not aware of the Holocaust and its place in
history. Starck: They know that if
something happened what they think is a long time ago, and
it's over, and it's never going to happen again, so why
should we keep bringing it up? Spitz: Those who cannot
remember the past, are condemned to repeat it. And that is exactly
what is happening. Rozmus: I think it is
important for all health care professionals to study what
we've done in the past, and to learn how those particular
doctors and nurses and dentists and other health
professionals got involved in the acts that they got
involved in, because we're dealing with the same issues
today and we always need to be alert. Nurse: Let's hold CPR for a
second. Narrator: Regulatory
procedures in the nursing profession today are more
stringent than in the 1920s and 30s. Rozmus: There is an American
Nurses Association. They have a code of ethics for
nursing that guides the ethical conduct of nursing,
but there is no regulatory back-up for that code. It is simply a guidance. Starck: I think what is
happening today is medical errors where sometimes nurses
and others don't speak up when they see an error that is
possible and that's likely to occur. And they don't speak up for
fear of well, "The doctor must know what he or she is doing. And I don't want to embarrass
myself by saying something that turns out not to be
true." Narrator: Today, medical
experts are facing new technological and social
issues. Grodin: I'm quite concerned
about the physician-assisted suicide movement in the U.S. I think it's easier to get
yourself killed than it is to get healthcare. I'm concerned when you have 40
million people who have access to no healthcare but you offer
them euthanasia, you offer them assisted suicide. Narrator: With these new
developments, could the world see another era of unethical
medical practices and experiments? Steinberger: You know, after
the Holocaust, the motto was, "never again, never again
should a holocaust happen." Starck: I think the lesson we
have learned from the Nazi era and the Holocaust, is that we
are all vulnerable to outside pressures, influences, and that
things can happen that we may not see at the time, that things
are going awry, and that's why we have to all be on our guard
and we have to monitor ourselves. We have to monitor each other
because the health care environment is very
challenging. Rozmus: A couple of takeaways
from what we learned about the nurses in the Holocaust, I
think, the first one is how easy it is to become involved,
especially in the beginning. How easy was it for those
nurses just to take a patient to a special room? They didn't know what the room
was for. They were simply taking a
patient to a special room. How long did it take them to
actually find out that every patient who went to that room
did not come out alive? That could take quite a long
period of time. Once you've started doing
that, then maybe you're asked to help give a patient
medication. So, slowly the nurses could
have gotten involved, and not even known what they were
doing. Reis: Learning about the
Holocaust is a very powerful way to learn empathy and
compassion. Steinberger: Only by educating
people that we must learn to live in peace and harmony with
each other, regardless of color of the skin, or
background or economic situation and so on. Grodin: But the question, of
course, is how did one of the most advanced societies,
advanced in art, music, theatre, writing, medicine. You weren't a real doctor in
the U.S. unless you went to Germany to
study, and when you came back and said, "You know, I studied
in Germany." And so it was the height of
technology, the height of science, and how was it
possible that these people became murderers? Narrator: It is easy to
believe the Holocaust could never be repeated. The factors leading up to it
are not unique to Germany. They are human factors that
are present in every country, every culture, and every
generation. If it could happen in one of
the most advanced societies in human history, it can happen
again anywhere. Steinberger: If it happened in
Germany then it can happen anywhere else. So we must be very, very
vigilant. Narrator: It is up to each of
us to learn from the past and be ready to interrupt the
forces that may try to exploit the few for the benefit of the
majority. Sieg Heil... Sieg Heil... Sieg Heil... Sieg Heil... Sieg Heil... [Music]
FYI - it’s an hour long. Not a quick toilet viewing, but bookmark it for later. Still very interesting.
My grandma was a nurse on HMS Amethyst during the Yangtze incident. My grandpop was a deep sea diver with the navy, my other grandpa was building aircrafts for the RAF and my nana was a civil servant.
As a nurse I can tell you this is horrifying.