Central office T4

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Villa Tiergartenstrasse 4 before 1921

Central Office T4 was the name of a cover organization of the Führer Chancellery (KdF), which was entrusted with carrying out the murders of the sick during the Nazi era , and which included all areas and employees who were based outside the KdF at Tiergartenstrasse 4 in Berlin . This organization, divided into six departments, appeared externally in the form of four different front companies. The task was to organize and carry out the adult “euthanasia” (“ Aktion T4 ”) and the “prisoner euthanasia” (“ Aktion 14f13 ”).

background

With adult “euthanasia”, i.e. the systematic registration and killing of selected sick and handicapped people in the Nazi state (after the fall of the Third Reich known as “Aktion T4”), Adolf Hitler did not commission a state institution, but his private law firm. This Fuehrer's office, headed by Philipp Bouhler , was already in charge of the child “euthanasia” that began in the summer of 1939 . For this purpose, a Reich Committee for the scientific recording of serious genetic and genetic illnesses had been established as a cover organization for the implementation of this first stage of the National Socialist “euthanasia” program. Also for reasons of camouflage, which was supposed to prevent that neither state agencies nor the KdF could be directly connected with these killings - also illegal under the law at the time - an external central office was set up for the second stage of the “euthanasia” program which, however, was formally subordinate to Hauptamt II of the KdF under Viktor Brack . From December 1, 1939, it was initially housed in the Columbushaus at Potsdamer Platz 1, and from April 1940 onwards it was set up in an "Aryanized" villa at 4 Tiergartenstrasse in Berlin. This address ultimately gave the name of the “Central Office T4” as well as the later designation of adult “euthanasia” as “Action T4”. In contemporary parlance, however, only the terms “action”, “e-action” or “eu action” were used.

The central office T4 was responsible for registering potential victims using registration forms that all relevant institutions had to fill out for each of their patients, as well as for appointing medical experts . They had to make a decision about the fate of the sick and handicapped on the basis of copies of the registration forms. Finally, suitable killing centers had to be selected and set up.

organization

The central office T4 was divided into six departments. The lawyer Dietrich Allers was the managing director from January 1941 .

  1. The medical department under the direction of Werner Heyde , from December 1941 under Hermann Paul Nitsche , was responsible for the registration of the prison inmates eligible for "euthanasia". She was also responsible for the medical and nursing staff of the six “euthanasia” institutions set up to carry out the mass killings. In the context of this department, Heyde, Nitsche and Herbert Linden from the health department of the Reich Ministry of the Interior acted as " senior experts " in the procedures for recording and selecting prison inmates. The initial assessment was carried out by 40 doctors who had been appointed as " T4 assessors ".
  2. The office department under the lawyer Gerhard Bohne , from summer 1940 under Friedrich Tillmann , director of the welfare orphan care of the city of Cologne, supervised all administrative work that arose in the “euthanasia” institutions after the killings.
  3. The main economic department under Willy Schneider, later Fritz Schmiedel and then Friedrich Lorent , had to manage the personal and material equipment of the central office and the institutions attached to it.
  4. The transport department , headed by Reinhold Vorberg , whose tasks were later largely taken over by Gerhardt Siebert and Friedrich Krauss, carried out the transport of the sick selected for killing from the dispensing or intermediate centers to the killing centers and carried out the associated administrative work . ( Non-profit ambulance transport GmbH )
  5. The personnel department was under the direction of Friedrich Haus with Arnold Oels as his representative and successor as well as a so-called social supervisor, with the task of managing and paying the hired staff.
  6. The inspection department , headed by Gustav Kaufmann, was responsible for the selection and establishment of the “euthanasia” institutions and the recruitment of the staff employed there.

Camouflages

In external communications, especially in correspondence, the central office appeared under different names depending on the area concerned:

  1. As the “Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft Heil- und Pflegeenstalten” (RAG), the central office acted in the registration of the sanatoriums and nursing homes and their inmates as well as in arranging and preparing the transfer of sick people to the killing centers.
  2. As the employer of the non-medical staff employed by it and as the recipient of the funds made available by the party fund of the “T4 Organization”, the central office acted under the name “Charitable Foundation for Institutional Care” (foundation) .
  3. The " Gemeinnützige Krankentransport GmbH " (Gekrat) was founded in order to create the appearance of a special legal entity for all matters related to the killing transports, in particular so as not to have the driver's office appear as the vehicle owner. As a lawyer in the office department, Gerhard Bohne had drawn up the relevant articles of association. He arranged for this front company to be recognized as a "non-profit company" and to be entered in the commercial register of the Berlin District Court in order to prevent financial claims and audits. The managing directors were the head of sub-department IIc of the Fuehrer's office, Reinhold Vorberg and Hermann Schwenninger.
  4. At the suggestion of Allers, the “Central Clearing House for Hospitals and Nursing Agencies” was created, which was also subordinate to it and, among other things, had the task of communicating different care rates, as they could result from the transfer of the victims to the intermediate and killing institutions, with the payers balance.

In order to disguise any connection between the central office and the Führer’s office from the public, leading members of Hauptamt II of this office used code names insofar as they appeared for the central office. The head of Hauptamt II, Oberdienstleiter Viktor Brack , had the code name "Jennerwein", his representative Werner Blankenburg called himself "Brenner" and the head of Section IIc, Reinhold Vorberg , chose the code name "Hintertal" by reversing his real name.

See also

literature

  • Götz Aly (ed.): Aktion T4 1939–1945. The "euthanasia" headquarters at Tiergartenstrasse 4 . Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1989²; ISBN 3-926175-66-4 .
  • Ernst Klee : "Euthanasia" in the Nazi state. The "destruction of life unworthy of life" . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1983; ISBN 3-10-039303-1 .
  • Ernst Klee (Ed.): Documents on "Euthanasia" . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-596-24327-0 .
  • Ernst Klee: "What they did - What they became" , Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-596-24364-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Representation based on the reasoning of the judgment of the Frankfurt a. M. of December 20, 1968 in the criminal case against Allers and Vorberg