Real Nazis then and now.

Some time ago, I commented on the existence of people today whose beliefs and actions are, practically speaking, no different than the German National Socialists and the Soviet Communists of 20th century infamy. I was prompted to do this by the treatment of Terri Schiavo and the propensity of many in public life to use these terms incorrectly. One of the most egregious examples of the latter occurred yesterday when Senator Dick of Illinois compared air conditioned, lemon pepper chicken eating, bath taking, Koran reading, not executed moslem terrorists to the 100 million or so murder victims of the Nazis, Soviets, Pol Pot, and other less accomplished killers of the late, lamented century.

(BTW, have you noticed how nobody ever mentions Mao? Is it because there are plenty of Chinese in the world and nobody would miss sixty million or so? Maybe we do not want to offend the commies who still infest and enslave China. It could be simple racism. Perhaps yellow skins count for less than white ones. This would also help explain Clinton's indifference to the human slaughter in Rwanda. The First Black President ignores the last black genocide of the Century of Mass Murder.)

I promised to find some information on the similarities between yesterday's Nazis and today's. (Who, ironically, are most likely to accuse others of naziism. Wait, that's not irony! That's standard operating procedure.)

Start here with the murder of the sick, infirm, crippled, retarded, and unwanted.

Wartime, Adolf Hitler suggested, "was the best time for the elimination of the incurably ill."

More than 200,000 handicapped people were murdered between 1940 and 1945.
The T-4 program became the model for the mass murder of Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and others in camps equipped with gas chambers that the Nazis would open in 1941 and 1942. The program also served as a training ground for SS members who manned these camps.



Now read about Mae Magouirk's case:

Hospice Patients Alliance has contacted the attorney in the Mae Magouirk case, who is working through the court system. We are not directly involved in the legal proceedings of this case. It has been reported that Mae Magouirk has a living will specifying that she does want treatment, is not ready to have her life ended (she wishes to live), and would not wish to be dehydrated within a hospice! It is striking that the court has chosen to ignore the express wishes of Mae Magouirk in her living will, and appointed as guardian, a granddaughter determined to assure the death of Mae Magouirk. This "wielding of hospice" to end the lives of the vulnerable elderly is a complete violation of Mae's rights as a US citizen and resident of Georgia. The hospice, though apparently following the orders of a court-appointed guardian, has no obligation to participate in the imposed death of a nonterminal patient. In fact, accepting a nonterminal patient into hospice is a violation of the federal regulations governing hospice.And the resolution of the case, if it is to come in time to save Mae, will come through the courts since the granddaughter has been awarded guardianship by the courts, which trumps any power of attorney for health care that other family members have had all along!

Here it comes.

We at Hospice Patients Alliance have not been able to verify whether the facts reported are disputed by the other side in the case, but we do receive regular reports of family members "wielding" hospice (like a gun) to kill off a family member, often when there is money involved or because the individual with power of attorney believes the patient is "better off dead." Those who wish to cause the death of a family member through hospice know that some hospices are more than willing to terminally sedate a patient, inappropriately, and never allow the patient to recover from that terminal sedation, thereby causing their death through dehydration and circulatory collapse. There are easily thousands of similar cases going unreported, all over the USA, whether in hospices or nursing homes using hospices. The misuse of hospice to end the life of a vulnerable person, against their wishes is an abominable violation of everything hospice stands for and is illegal. We hope that the perpetrator of any crime is prosecuted to the full extent of the law. However, where there have been obvious so-called "mercy killings" in the past, the courts have let the killers off with a slap on the wrist. Our nation is fast entering into a full-blown implemenation of the Nazis' policies of killing the mentally incapacitated, the disabled, the very elderly and chronically ill. The courts, and especially those courts involved in guardianship hearings, are regularly not recognizing the Constitutionally guaranteed principle that citizens have a right to live, free of coercion, and free to live until death comes in its own natural timing.

Here is some history from P.J. King:


Present day death proponents of the "right-to-die" movement disavow any analogy between what they are selling and what happened in Nazi Germany in the 1930's. And, if one does not examine the facts too closely, there appears to be none. After all, Hitler was bent on exterminating the Jews, even though he destroyed a few thousand others before he found his focus. His was a dictatorship, not a democratic nation. His agenda was political, not moral. He fed on hate, not compassion. And one could add to the list.
However, if we look back to German society of the twenties and thirties, we find a civilized culture not so unlike our own. As a nation, Germany took pride in its art, its culture, and its science. People engaged in business, went shopping, enjoyed their families, followed the news. Genocide did not seem a likely development. But the seeds had already sprouted, though few foresaw into what kind of twisting vines they would soon grow.
In 1920 was published a book titled The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life, by Alfred Hoche, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at the University of Freiburg, and Karl Binding, a professor of law from the University of Leipzig. They argued in their book that patients who ask for "death assistance" should, under very carefully controlled conditions, be able to obtain it from a physician. The conditions were spelled out, and included the submission of the request to a panel of three experts, the right of the patient to withdraw his request at any time, and the legal protection of the physicians who would help him terminate his life. Binding and Hoche explained how death assistance was congruent with the highest medical ethics and was essentially a compassionate solution to a painful problem.
Death assistance, according to the authors, was not to be limited to those who were able or even willing to ask for it. They would have such mercy extended as well to "empty shells of human beings" such as those with brain damage, some psychiatric conditions, and mental retardation, if by scientific criteria the "impossibility of improvement of a mentally dead person" could be proven. The benefits to society would be great, they said, as money previously devoted to the care of "meaningless life" would be channeled to those who most needed it, the socially and physically fit. Germans needed only to learn to evaluate the relative value of life in different individuals.
An opinion poll conducted in 1920 revealed that 73% of the parents and guardians of severely disabled children surveyed would approve of allowing physicians to end the lives of disabled children such as their own. Newspapers, journal articles, and movies joined in shaping the opinion of the German public. The Ministry of Justice described the proposal as one that would make it "possible for physicians to end the tortures of incurable patients, upon request, in the interests of true humanity" (reported in the N.Y. Times, 10/8/33, p. 1, col. 2). And the savings would redound to the German people if money was no longer thrown away on the disabled, the incurable, and "those on the threshold of old age."
A 1936 novel written by Helmut Unger, M.D., further assisted the German people in accepting the unthinkable. Dr. Unger told the story of a physician whose wife was disabled by multiple sclerosis. She asks him to help her die, and he complies. At his trial he pleads with the jurors to understand his honorable motive: "Would you, if you were a cripple, want to vegetate forever?" The jury acquit him in the novel. The book was subsequently made into a movie which, according to research by the SS Security Service, was "favorably received and discussed," even though some Germans were concerned about possible abuses.
With the public now assenting, the question turned from "whether" to "by whom" and "under what circumstances."
The first known case of the application of this now-acceptable proposal concerned "Baby Knauer." The child's father requested of Adolph Hitler himself that his son be allowed death because he was blind, retarded, and missing an arm and a leg. Surely, in his condition, he would be better off dead. Hitler turned the case over to his personal physician, Karl Brandt, and in 1938 the request was granted.

Note the timeline. It did not take long for the killing to start, probably because German society was corrupt and decadent. It had begun to stray from its Christian roots before the modern German nation was created.

The part played by physicians in these murders is especially chilling. Note how old Hippocrates takes another hit.

In the meantime, no law had been passed permitting euthanasia. Rather, at the end of 1939, Hitler signed this letter:
"Reichleader Bouhler and Dr. Med. Brandt are responsibly commissioned to extend the authority of physicians to be designated by name so that a mercy death may be granted to patients who, according to human judgment, are incurably ill according to the most critical evaluation of the state of their disease."
Interestingly, physicians were not ordered to participate, but merely permitted to if they so wished. It was to be a private matter between the doctor and his patient (or the family if the patient was unable to speak for himself).
Brandt, testifying at his trial in Nuremburg after the war, insisted:
"The underlying motive was the desire to help individuals who could not help themselves and were thus prolonging their lives in torment. ... To quote Hippocrates today is to proclaim that invalids and persons in great pain should never be given poison. But any modern doctor who makes so rhetorical a declaration without qualification is either a liar or a hypocrite. ... I never intended anything more than or believed I was doing anything but abbreviating the tortured existence of such unhappy creatures."
Brandt's only regret was that the dead patients' relatives may have been caused pain. Yet he justified even that: "I am convinced that today they have overcome their distress and personally believe that the dead members of their families were given a happy release from their sufferings." (A. Mitcherlich & F. Mielke, The Death Doctors, pp. 264-265.)

If you don't believe me or the few sources I have cited from the internet, go to the horse's mouth. If you can read German, the Nazis' files on their euthanasia campaign can be found here, thanks to the efficiency of the East German secret police.