| “Euthanasia”: Direct Medical
Killing |
| |
[intro…] duced by Gerhard Wagner at a Berlin film
showcase and was shown widely throughout Germany's 5,300 cinema houses.
The third film, “I Accuse” (Ich klage an, 1941), was
unique in that it dealt specifically with medical killing and, in fact, emerged
from a suggestion by Karl Brandt, the early medical leader of that project,
that a film be made to persuade the German public to accept the idea of
“euthanasia.” A related purpose was to test public opinion about
whether there was sufficient support to legalize the program and bring it out
into the open. The film was based on the novel Mission and Conscience by
a physician-writer, Helmut Unger, a Berlin ophthalmologist who also served as a
consultant of the child “euthanasia” program and as Dr. Wagner’s
press representative. “I Accuse” was clearly a falsification of the
actual Nazi policy: the Nazis murdered mental patients against their will; the
film depicts a physician giving a lethal injection to his incurably ill wife in
response to her desperate plea that he do so to relieve her of her terrible
pain and suffering. Indeed, a sympathetic member of the jury before whom the
physician is eventually tried states categorically that “the most
important precondition is always that the patient wants it.” The
film’s real message is more or less subliminal — a reference, in the
midst of ostensibly thoughtful discussion, that an exception to that voluntary
principle should be made for the mentally ill, where “the state must take
over the responsibility.”11
But
“I Accuse” is of respectable artistic quality; and after viewing
portions of it, I could understand why doctors I interviewed still felt its
impact and remembered the extensive discussion it stimulated among their
colleagues and fellow students about the morality of a doctor’s aiding
incurable patients to achieve the death they long for.
These
doctors’ response was confirmed by a research report prepared by the SS
Security Service (the Sicherheitsdienst, or SD), which stated that the
film had “aroused great interest” throughout the Reich and had been
“favorably received and discussed,” and that the majority of the
German population accepted its argument in principle, with some reservations
concerning possible abuse and questions of consent. These reservations could
generally be overcome by the “convening of a medical committee in the
presence of the family doctor” for declaring a patient incurable: that is,
by keeping the procedure medicalized. Doctors polled also had “a mostly
positive response.” Doubts were raised, especially by older physicians,
concerning accuracy of diagnoses and other medical arrangements; but the
investigators had the impression that the medical profession was ready to take
on or at least go along with such a project.l2* The project that doctors and others saw
themselves approving, however, was essentially voluntary dying with careful
medical supervision and built-in arrangements to prevent any possible abuse. It
is unlikely that many respondents |
__________
* These SD “reports
from the Reich” were, according to Heinz Hohne, based on “a sort of
secret Gallup poll,” and were thought to be rather accurate, although
often impressionistic in content. |
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