Hans Bodo Gorgass

Hans Bodo Gorgaß (born June 19, 1909 in Leipzig , † October 10, 1993 in Bielefeld ) was the head doctor in the National Socialist German Reich in the Kalmenhof educational institution in Idstein and, as part of the National Socialist "euthanasia" program, gassing doctor in the Nazi killing institution Hadamar .

Origin and studies

Hans Bodo Gorgaß was born on June 19, 1909 in Leipzig as the son of a Reichsbahn official and studied medicine there from 1929 to 1935 . From August to October 1933 and from March to April 1934 as well as from August to October 1934 he worked as an intern in various departments - such as the psychiatry and mental hospital - at the Leipzig University Clinic.

Contrary to what Gorgass claimed after the war, he obviously did not receive a doctorate in medicine. His first dissertation project on " infantilism " from 1935 with Hans Bürger-Prinz in Leipzig he could not complete for financial reasons. At the insistence of the Hessen-Nassau district association as his future employer, Gorgaß asked Karl Kleist in Frankfurt am Main to investigate the "further fate [s] of the Hebephrenics, who from 1920-1925 in the Frankfurt / Main mental hospital as a new topic were “, give. By the time he left the Nassau district association, the work was not completed and may not have been completed later either, as Gorgass's dissertation could not be verified after the war.

Gorgaß had already joined the SA in July 1933 and worked there as a Sanitätsobersturmführer. On May 1, 1937, he joined the NSDAP .

Doctor in Hessian institutions

From February 1, 1936, Gorgaß found employment as a medical intern in the Eichberg state sanatorium, which is part of the Hessen-Nassau district association . On February 1, 1937, he received his license to practice medicine at the Weilmünster state hospital . Gorgaß was employed in the same function from March 1 to July 1937 at the Eichberg State Hospitals, where he also worked as an assistant doctor from August 1, 1937 to September 1938 .

Like his colleague Friedrich Mennecke , who had come to Eichberg a month before him, Gorgass did not make a good impression on Wilhelm Hinsen , the director of the Eichberg state hospital at the time . In later statements, Hinsen particularly denounced the official and off-duty lack of discipline of the SS or SA young doctors: “Let’s say, my younger colleagues were quite unsound; there was a lot of drinking. ” So it happened that they arrived at the institution, shouting loudly.

On October 1, 1938, at the age of 29, Gorgass was appointed head doctor at the Kalmenhof Sanatorium in Idstein . Since it was a private facility for the disabled, he had to resign from the service of the Hessen-Nassau district association. He took an apartment in Königshofen near Niedernhausen and on December 1, 1939, married the nurse Käthe Sch., Who continued to work in the Eichberg state hospital until March 1940. Formally, Gorgaß remained head of the Kalmenhof institution until July 1945. His assistant Mathilde Weber took over the medical management during his absence; This also applies to the “ children's department ” set up around the turn of 1941/42 , in which the so-called “Reich Committee children” were killed as part of the children's “euthanasia” .

In December 1939 Gorgass was drafted into the Wehrmacht and took part in the French campaign , among other things . As "uk" (indispensable), he was released on 10 April 1941 by military service and from the hospital department heads of his former employer, the District Association Hesse-Nassau, Minister Fritz Bernotat , in the office of the leader of Berlin sent. The head of the main office II there, Oberdienstleiter Viktor Brack , described to Gorgaß his intended new use as a doctor within the framework of the National Socialist “euthanasia” program ( called “ Aktion T4 ” in post-war parlance ). In future he was to gass the selected sick in specially set up killing centers. To legitimize action, reference was made to a law that, although not yet published, was presented alongside a written instruction from Hitler of September 1, 1939 as a completely sufficient basis for the killing of the sick. Gorgass, whose parents had both been to psychiatry on several occasions , raised no concerns and made himself available. His meeting with Carl Schneider from the University of Heidelberg , whom he met during his visit to his institution in August 1939 and regarded as his model psychiatrist, certainly contributed to this decision . Schneider later counted among those responsible for Action T4.

According to a list from the T4 central office, Gorgass was a member of the T4 organization from May 1, 1941 to April 30, 1942 under the heading "Doctors in the institutions".

In the Nazi euthanasia center at Hadamar

For his "induction", Gorgaß was sent to the Nazi killing center in Hartheim near Linz , where its director Rudolf Lonauer familiarized him with the "craft" of killing sick people using carbon monoxide in a gas chamber . The role of the judiciary at that time is exemplified by a statement that Gorgass made as a witness in the proceedings against the second gassing doctor Georg Renno from Hartheim :

“The attorney general from Linz was also in Hartheim at the time, who visited the facility. On the occasion he praised the hard work of the institution for the benefit of the people. "

Another "training" station was the Sonnenstein Nazi killing center in Pirna . With the director of this institution, Horst Schumann , he and Friedrich Berner , the future first gassing doctor in Hadamar and thus his superior, took part in a selection of prisoners as part of " Operation 14f13 " in the Buchenwald concentration camp , who were then gassed in Sonnenstein . Gorgass later confirmed that none of the selected prisoners was mentally ill, so it was by no means a question of medical selection criteria, but ultimately of purely useful considerations with regard to the prisoners' ability to work.

From June 18, 1941, Gorgaß was the second gassing doctor alongside director Friedrich Berner at the Nazi killing center in Hadamar , where he worked under the cover name “Dr. Kramer ”appeared in correspondence. Both doctors took over from their predecessors, Ernst Baumhard and Günther Hennecke , who had worked in Hadamar from January 13, 1941 and, after differences with the T4 organizer Viktor Brack, joined the Navy in the summer of 1941.

In the Frankfurt trial of 1947 against the staff of the Hadamar killing center, Gorgaß reported on his work as a gassing doctor, which he himself described as "executioner's service" :

“The buses were mostly loaded with same-sex people, they came in and were stripped and taken to the office to be photographed, then shown to the clerk who did the identification. The photography was done for documentary reasons. Too much has actually been said scientifically. Without elaborating on the cases, it may have been just to have a collection of pictures of the insane . They were measured, weighed. They passed the clerk who had to determine whether the information given in the medical history and on the photocopy was correct. Questionable cases that the clerk could not easily resolve, he then passed on to me [...] Some of them could say the name. In most cases, a schizophrenic can still say his name. Here and there the clerk asked for the date of birth, but it was difficult to tell. The clerk sat in the same room. I leafed through the medical history, had the photocopy with me, looked at it, checked the symptoms, the diagnosis, etc. [...] Our task was to check the correctness of the diagnosis and the typical features and to note our report on the registration form [... ] You could tell at first glance what was wrong with the patient's reaction to a greeting or a question. The medical history was presented to the doctor at the same time as the photocopy of the registration form and the prepared file cards of the institution. However, as far as I can remember, it was never necessary to study the medical history in detail. An examination usually only took 1 to 2 minutes. It was the doctor's task, in addition to a control and any supplementation of the findings, also to note for the registry office which cause of death should be entered. "

Gorgass was a staunch supporter of "euthanasia in the broader sense" and therefore had no problems with his job as a gassing doctor.

The murderous everyday life in the killing centers shaped the medical and non-medical staff to a considerable extent, also in Hadamar. Ideological influence and dulling through routine led to rawness towards the victims, who were increasingly no longer seen as human beings, but as objects. A particularly disgusting high point of this inhuman and cynical treatment of the sick was the “anniversary celebration” on the occasion of the 10,000. Gassed dead in Hadamar in August 1941. The entire workforce celebrated this event with music and free beer after Director Berner and the head of administration had given appropriate speeches.

For his work in Hadamar, Gorgass was rewarded as a psychiatrist by a specialist certification obtained by the T4 organization.

Gorgaß was also a participant in the a few weeks after the first phase of the National Socialist "euthanasia" program was stopped on August 24, 1941 in the Sonnenstein killing center on 27/28. November 1941 conference. The T4 organizer Viktor Brack explained the future goals and their further use to the employees delegated from all the gasification plants. According to Gorgass, Brack's "action" was not declared over; this would rather go on in a different form. Much of the T4 personnel was for the " action Reinhard " in Lublin district of -general used for the destruction mainly Polish Jews, while a part of the medical staff as reviewers for the "Action 14f13" and the second phase of the "euthanasia" program ( "Decentralized" or "drug euthanasia") was used. Gorgass was transferred to the Eichberg State Hospital on January 6, 1942, together with eleven nurses, six nurses and two typists. He left the T4 organization on April 30, 1942. The Hadamer T4 staff was withdrawn for an "eastern mission".

According to the so-called “Hartheim Document”, statistics from the T4 organization, 10,072 people were killed in Hadamar between January 1941 and the end of August 1941. With an average of 1,439 deaths per month, the highest number of deaths of all six gassing plants was achieved here. The period in which Gorgass was in Hadamar alone accounted for 4,170 victims.

Military service and imprisonment

From May 10, 1942 until the end of the war, Gorgaß was again employed as a troop doctor in the Wehrmacht, or from 1944 to February 1945 as head of a reserve hospital in Dossenheim near Heidelberg . From May to August 1945 Gorgass was in captivity. He then put the false name “Dr. Gerber ”and worked in the second half of the year and again in 1946 as a“ private scientist ”at the Heidelberg University Hospital .

process

On April 2, 1946, the Frankfurt am Main public prosecutor brought murder charges against Hadamar's gassing doctors. After a long manhunt, Gorgass was arrested on January 20 or 27, 1947 in Ludwigshafen am Rhein .

In a judgment of March 26, 1947, the Frankfurt am Main regional court ruled that at least 1,000 cases of murder were subject to the death penalty . The judgment was confirmed in the appeal proceedings before the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt am Main . After the Basic Law came into force on May 23, 1949, and the death penalty was abolished, the sentence was converted into a life sentence . This was reduced to 15 years in prison on August 10, 1956. Finally, the Hessian Prime Minister and Justice Minister Georg August Zinn pardoned Gorgass so that he could leave the Butzbach prison in January 1958.

Gorgaß settled in Bielefeld and found employment as a research assistant in a pharmaceutical company. Bodo Gorgaß died in October 1993.

literature

• Working group to research the National Socialist "euthanasia" and forced sterilization (ed.): Tödliches Mitleid. Nazi 'euthanasia' and the present. Klemm & Oels, Münster 2007, ISBN 978-3-932577-53-6 .
• Ernst Klee : "Euthanasia" in the Nazi state. 11th edition. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-24326-2 .
• Ernst Klee: What they did - what they became. Doctors, lawyers and others involved in the murder of the sick or Jews. 12th edition. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-24364-5 .
• Ernst Klee: "Documents on 'euthanasia'". Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-596-24327-0 .
• Ernst Klee: Bodo Gorgaß. In Ernst Klee: The personal dictionary on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Updated edition. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 12.
• Ernst Klee: "Euthanasia" . In: The time. 11/1986.
• Henry Friedlander : The Road to Nazi Genocide. From euthanasia to the final solution. Berlin-Verlag, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-8270-0265-6 .
• Peter Sandner: Administration of the murder of the sick. The Nassau District Association under National Socialism. Giessen 2003, ISBN 3-89806-320-8 .
• Released to Hadamar (= historical series of publications by the State Welfare Association of Hesse. Catalogs, Volume 2). Kassel 1994, ISBN 3-89203-011-1 .
• Christina Vanja , Steffen Haas, Gabriela Deutschle, Wolfgang Eirund, Peter Sandner (eds.): Knowledge and err. Psychiatry history from two centuries - Eberbach and Eichberg (= historical series of publications by the State Welfare Association of Hesse. Sources and studies. Volume 6). Kassel 1999, ISBN 3-89203-040-5 .
• LG Frankfurt am Main, March 21, 1947 . In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German criminal judgments for Nazi homicidal crimes 1945–1966, Vol. I, edited by Adelheid L. Rüter-Ehlermann, CF Rüter . Amsterdam: University Press, 1968, No. 17, pp. 303-379 Killing of the insane by poison gas and poison injection

Individual evidence

1. ^ Sandner, Administration of the Murder of the sick , p. 435.
2. ^ Hinsen testimony in the Hadamar trial on March 10, 1947, Main State Archives Wiesbaden, Department 461 No. 32061, Volume 7, Sheet 289 f. and page 292, quoted from “Wissen und erren” pages 178/179.
3. ↑ Heidelberg documents, “Reviewer” list, facsimile in Klee “Euthanasia in the Nazi State”, pp. 228/229.
4. ↑ Gorgass testimony on January 24, 1972, proceedings against Georg Renno et al. a. Public Prosecutor General Frankfurt / Main, Js 1/69, quoted from Klee “Documents on 'Euthanasia'”, p. 200.
5. ↑ Gorgass testimony on September 13, 1961 before the examining magistrate of the Frankfurt / Main Regional Court (Js 17/59 Public Prosecutor General Frankfurt / Main), quoted from Klee “'Euthanasia' in the Nazi state”, p. 350
6. ↑ Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Wiesbaden, Department 461/32061 Volumes 1 and 2, quoted from “Relocated to Hadamar”, p. 93. For further “simplification” there was a list of 61 false causes of death from which the most obvious could be selected.
7. ^ Statement by Gorgaß in the Hadamarer trial on February 24, 1947, Main State Archives Wiesbaden, Department 461 No. 32061, Volume 6, Page 6, quoted from Sandner "Verwaltung des Krankenmordes", page 436.
8. ^ Statistics in Klee “Documents on 'Euthanasia'”, pp. 232/233.