Lessons of August

The Catholic Thing

By Francis X. Maier This was a memorable August in our family for two reasons. Here's the first: We witnessed something miraculous. Or at least preternatural. One of our nation's two major political parties had its quadrennial convention. And its nominee for president was transformed, overnight, from an aggressive, cackling clown-harpy to an inspiring national leader - a kind of reverse lycanthropy where the Wolfman turns into a female version of the likable Lon Chaney Jr. (In the just-released, "based on a true story" media adaptation of the event and its aftermath, Donald Trump plays Dracula.) Here's the second reason: My wife and I have a son, Daniel, with Down syndrome, and three of our 11 grandchildren have disabilities. Why is that relevant? I'll explain. Exactly 85 years ago this August, the Charitable Foundation for Institutional Care began its work in Berlin. It took as its headquarters a villa that had been seized from a Jewish family located at Tiergartenstrasse No. 4. That address became the command center for the Third Reich's forced euthanasia program, Action T4. The foundation and its program were disguised at first as a positive medical service for the afflicted. The reality was rather different. T4 had two very practical goals: to purify the gene pool by eliminating the mentally and physically defective, and to save the state money otherwise wasted on a target population seen as unworthy of life. The program began with infants. But it quickly grew to include the chronically infirm and disabled. At first, patients were starved to death or injected with poison. Later they were gassed as groups, in special rooms and mobile vans for better efficiency. At the start of T4, its directors thought that 70,000 patients would need to be terminated. And official records show that exactly that number were killed because T4 lasted just two years. Why a meager two years? It turned out that many Germans were willing to see their Jewish neighbors destroyed. But they were far more uneasy with the "mercy killing" of their own handicapped children. As a result, public resistance forced the regime to (officially) cancel Action T4 in late 1941. But in practice, the program didn't end. It went on until 1945 as a routine medical procedure in many German hospitals. The final toll of the forced euthanasia program was close to 300,000 murdered innocents. And, of course, T4 functioned as a dry run for the Holocaust. Scores of doctors and other medical personnel simply transferred from T4 to the death camps, where they continued their experiments and killings. It would be easy to blame T4 on a gang of political thugs. It would also be wrong. The German medical and scientific professions began pushing for forced euthanasia as early as 1900. The Third Reich merely operationalized what was already the dominant view of the experts. The T4 program was run and staffed, and the patients were murdered, not by SS goons but by willing doctors and nurses. And they used poisons and techniques developed by willing scientists and technicians who knew exactly what they were doing. All of this happened in a sophisticated nation of high culture. And maybe the most distressing fact about the whole T4 nightmare is that many of Germany's long-term care centers for the disabled were explicitly Christian. They were affiliated with Protestant and Catholic communities. The directors of those centers knew what was happening with T4. In other words, they knew better. But nearly all of them folded under regime pressure. They surrendered their patients. So, what does any of this have to do with our realities in 2024? It's a good question. Our son Dan has public services that were unimaginable 60 years ago. Our laws today are far more sensitive to the needs of the intellectually and physically challenged. Media portrayals of disability are much more positive than they were just a couple of decades ago. The Special Olympics movement for persons with disabilities is...