Involuntary euthanasia on disabled patients

The involuntary euthanaisa of the Aktion T4, was carried out by gassing, asphyxiation, injections, poisoning, starvation and drug overdoses. The first experiments with gas vans were carried out in March 1940 at the hospital in Kochanowka near Łódź. Soon after, the Nazis conducted further experiments in which they poured carbon monoxide from the exhaust of a truck into a closed room. Many of these exterminations during the Aktion T4, were overseen by psychiatrists Carl Hans Heinze Sennhenn and Werner Villinger. Sennhenn supplied hundreds of brains to Nazi researchers. Werner Villinger conducted experiments on humans before sending them to death. Even before the Holocaust and to carry out the Aktion T4, the first gas chambers were built in Hartheim, where adults in particular were killed with carbon monoxide.

Medical personnel paid to kill

The SS functionaries and hospital staff associated with Aktion T4 in the German Reich were paid from the central office at Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin from the spring of 1940. The SS and police from SS-Sonderkommando Lange responsible for murdering the majority of patients in the annexed territories of Poland since October 1939, took their salaries from the normal police fund, supervised by the administration of the newly formed Wartheland district; the programme in Germany and occupied Poland was overseen by Heinrich Himmler.