Unethical Euthenasia

Imagine awaking to the Gestapo in your home, ransacking your belongings, and loading you into a cattle car with an unknown destination. Repeatedly hosing you down, spitting in your face, and mocking you they strip you of your clothing, shave your hair, and deny you all rights. Standing in a line for the showers, you are cold, hungry, and humiliated. Now imagine you have the brain capacity of an infant, an IQ less than sixty, and a crippled body. That is what the T-4 program was and the brutal effects it had on its victims during Nazi occupied Germany in the late thirties/early forties. The use of euthanasia in every sense was unethical and immoral.

Designed to eliminate the incurably ill, the T-4 program required the cooperation of German doctors who not only supervised the killings of thousands of handicapped victims, but also took part in their deaths. In the beginning of World War II these doctors refused to take part in such an explicit crime, but nearing the end they became a large part of the population of those who believed it was the moral thing to do. They were the leaders, the murderers, the unethical outcasts of society. Or were they outcasts at all? Guided by the prin

In the modern world we see physician assisted suicides and excuses from murderers that they were doing a favor for society, and we let it go. We do not stop and say to ourselves that they are wrong, we accept it. We do not openly embrace it, but none the less we accept it. Even today the ridicule, mocking, and discrimination of the mentally and physically handicapped goes unnoticed. We need to take a stand because if we do not who will? If we do not then we will become just like those during Hitler’s rule who rationalized and compromised the truth enough to commit such crimes. Elie Weisel once said, “For the dead and the living we must bear witness.” He is right. We are the only witness for those who cannot stand up for themselves. If we do not stand up for those who have feelings they cannot express, and those who do not understand how the world works, we will be just the same as those doctors, nurses, and SS men who unethically administered poison to those who did not know the difference. As members of society we have that moral obligation. Our feelings can be hurt. We understand and move on. But for those special people in the world suffering from handicaps, they live with the pain their entire lives. Imagine that.

Many will tell you German doctors were left with no other options, but the harsh reality is they chose to go along with it and stopped refusing. They gave in to those orders not because their lives were at stake, but because it was easier to just do the job. They eventually became t

Some topics in this essay:
Jews Gypsies, Euthanasia Imagine, T-4 Program, Elie Weisel, War II, Bernburg Hadamar, Euthanasia Program, Reich Chancellory, Germans Russians, physically handicapped, t-4 program, mentally physically handicapped, master race, humans moral, flaw character, mentally physically, german doctors, moral obligation, euthanasia program, nurses ss,