[cir...] culating among the people (for example, that people unable to work on account of age or injuries received during the World War have also been done away with or are to be done away with), but it seems as if the selection of the persons concerned is performed in a wholly arbitrary manner.

If the state really wants to carry out the extermination of these or at least of some mental patients, shouldn't a law be promulgated, which can be justified before the people - a law which would give everyone the assurance of careful examination as to whether he is due to die or entitled to live and which would also give the relatives a chance to be heard, in a similar way, as provided by the law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Affected Progeny?

With regard to the patients entrusted to the care of our institutions in the future, I urgently pray that everything possible be done to suspend the execution of this measure until a clear legal situation has been established.

Heil Hitler !

[Signed] Schlaich

Subject: Mental Institutions

The following is for your personal information. Please destroy this sheet afterwards.

For some time the inmates of mental institutions have been visited by a commission which functions on orders from some very high office. The commission's task is to find out which inmates should be selected for transport to certain other institutions. The commission bases its decision on the records of the institution. The patients who are then transferred are examined again in the institution designated by the commission and then the decision is made whether they should be released from their sufferings.

The body itself is cremated and the ashes are placed at the disposal of the relatives. Small mistakes in notifying are naturally always liable to occur, and in the future it will not be possible to avoid them. The commission itself is anxious to avoid all mistakes. I could give you further information but I would like to abstain from it and beg you to look me up when you visit the Gauleitung.