Just because it happened, doesn't mean it was inevitable

Photo description

Group portrait of the nursing staff of the Hadamar Institute at the entrance to the main building. The Hadamar Institute was one of six hospitals in which the Nazi "euthanasia" program was carried out.  The "euthanasia" campaign, called Operation T-4, was code-named after the address of the confiscated Jewish villa at Tiergartenstrasse 4 in Berlin, which held the program’s central administrative offices.  At least 250,000 mentally or physically disabled persons were gassed, shot to death, or killed by lethal injection.  Many of them had been sterilized beforehand.  Persons considered suffering from supposed hereditary diseases included those with mental illness, retardation, physical deformity, epilepsy, blindness, deafness, and severe alcoholism.

Relationship to guideline

The Holocaust was not inevitable; it took place because individuals, groups, and nations made decisions to act or not to act. The nurses, like the ones in this picture, made choices to participate in the Nazi’s so-called campaign to further racial purity.  Medical personnel were responsible for choosing who would die and for the starvation, lethal injection, or gassing of the patients.   On the other hand, between 1939 and 1941, groups of people protested publicly against the killings, and the actions of these individuals caused Hitler to officially stop Operation T-4 in August 1941.  The killings continued in greater secrecy, but the protests and the image of the hospital personnel illustrate the decisions people at all levels made during the Holocaust.

Guidelines 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14