Aktion T4

Aktion T4 (German, pronounced [akˈtsi̯oːn teː fiːɐ]) was an involuntary euthanasia program which targeted people with disabilities and the mentally ill in Nazi Germany. The terms "T4" or "Aktion T4" were first used in post-war trials against doctors who had been involved in the killings. The name T4 is an abbreviation of Tiergartenstraße 4, a street address of the Chancellery department set up in early 1940, in the Berlin borough of Tiergarten, which recruited and paid personnel associated with Aktion T4. Certain German physicians were authorised to select patients "deemed incurably sick, after most critical medical examination" and then administer to them a "mercy death" (Gnadentod). In October 1939, Adolf Hitler signed a "euthanasia note", backdated to 1 September 1939, which authorised his physician Karl Brandt and Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler to begin the killing. Although the T4 programme officially ended in August 1941, killings took place from September 1939 until the end of World War II in Europe in 1945. Between 275,000 and 300,000 people were killed in psychiatric hospitals in Germany, Austria, occupied Poland, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now the Czech Republic), and the Soviet Union. The number of victims was originally recorded as 70,273 but this number has been increased by the discovery of victims listed in the archives of the former East Germany. About half of those killed were taken from church-run asylums. In June 1940, Paul Braune and Fritz von Bodelschwingh, who served as directors of sanatoriums, protested against the killings, being members of the Lutheran Confessing Church. The Holy See announced on 2 December 1940 that the policy was contrary to divine law and that "the direct killing of an innocent person because of mental or physical defects is not allowed". Bishop Theophil Wurm of the Lutheran Confessing Church "wrote an open letter...