EXECUTION OF UNFIT

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 127, Issue 127, 9 July 1941, Page 6

EXECUTION OF UNFIT

| NAZI METHOD AGED AND INFIRM Out of the fastness of Germany has come the story of an act as terrible in /its cruelty as any known of Hitler's regime!. The sole outward evidence lies buried, in a back page of the Aicta Apostolicae Sedis, the official monthly publication of the Vatican, in which Pope Pius XII decrees thf policies which his bishops are to follow. It is a decree signed by the Notary of the Supreme Sacred Congregation, of the Holy Office; it is entitled "Concerning the Direct Killing of the Innocent Done by Order of Public Authority." The decree is in the form of a question sont to the Pope by an unnamed bishop. It reads: "It was asked of this Supreme Sacred Congregation: 'Whether, by order of public authority, it is licit directly to kill those who, although they have committed no crime deserving death, yet, because of mental or physical defects, are< no longer able to benefit the nation, and are considered i rather to burden the nation and to [ obstruct its energy and strength'." The bishop was a German bishop. He asked whether it was right for thousands of infirm and aged Germans to be put to death by Adolf ' Hitler becausci they were no longer of service in Hitler's war economy. "In the Negative." The decree continues: '"In a general session of the Supreme Sacred : Congregation held on Wednesday, l November 27, 1941, the Eminent and Most Reverend Cardinals appointed to safeguard faith and morals, hav- ' jng heard the 'votum' of the Reverend Doctors Consul tors, ordered that it must be replied: " 'In the negative,' since it is contrary to natural and divine positive law." This: decree Pope Pius approved and ordered to be published. In this article there are presented for the< first tiVje the facts which lie behind the decree. They have been brought to me by a dignitary of the Church whose name must necessarily be withheld. The facts are these:. In September, October- and November of 1940, 85,000 blind, incurably ill or aged Germans were put to death by the Gestapo. They were put to death a3 I casualty as the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty; to Animals chlor.oforms old and helplessi dogs. They were not killed for mercy. They were killed because they could no longer manufacture guns in re, turn for the food which they consumed; because the German hospitals were needed for wounded soldiers; because their death was the ultimate, logic of the National Socialist doctrine of racial superiority ind the survival of the physically fit.

This direct killing of the innocent i done by order of public authority was not discovered at once, There is a big hospital near Uracil in Wurtemburg. In September the priests of Urach noticed that the elderly people in the hospital were dying in increasing numbers, and dying on certain days. These priests discovered that sysmetatic euthanasia was being practised in this hospital. The old and incurably ill were; being killed off by the injection of small quantities of poison into their veins. The noison was one which causes death and cannot be detected. Later, according to the accounts of these priests, the Gestapo found that poisoning was unnecessarily expensive. Gas chambers were used, the priests reported, until the Nazis found an even simpler method which invohT-d no cost at all. Ar bubbles ( were injected into I he veins of these chosen to die, and death was instantaneous when the bubbles reached the heart. , Relatives of the victims were v.ev"r to'/] of course. They merely received a small box containing the victims* ashes. i\ T or could the truth escane easily from Gesrmariv. The Public. Health Serv'c* at Washington learned only that tubercular

patients, in Germany were given death sentneces when the Avar broke out, in the form of compulsory labour in munition factories, which their weakened bodies could not stand. Catholics Prosecuted. From the pulpits in Germany Catholic priests began to unveil this appalling sto.l:3'. They delivered sermons protesting ugainst euthanasia and sterilisation, and they were strengthened in their stand on December 16 bj r the decree of the Vatican which has been quoted, and which warned that euthansia was contrary to the laws of the Church. The reply of the Nazis was immediate and drastic.; More than 300 CiaHholic priests !\vere imprisoned in concentration camps, and the publication of the decree in the churches of Germany was forbidden.