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Viktor Brack
Viktor Hermann Brack (9 November 1904 – 2 June 1948) was a member of the Schutzstaffel (SS), a convicted Nazi war criminal and one of the prominent organisers of the involuntary euthanasia programme Aktion T4; this Nazi initiative resulted in the systematic murder of 275,000 to 300,000 disabled people. He held various positions of responsibility in Hitler's Chancellery in Berlin. Following his role in the T4 programme, Brack was one of the men identified as responsible for the gassing of Jews in extermination camps, having conferred with Odilo Globočnik about its use in the practical implementation of the Final Solution. Brack was sentenced to death in 1947 in the Doctors' Trial and executed by hanging in 1948.
Brack was born the son of a physician in Haaren (now part of Aachen) in the Rhine Province. In 1928, he completed a degree in agriculture at the Technical University of Munich and shortly thereafter began managing the estate attached to his father's sanatorium; he also was a test driver for BMW.
In 1929 at the age of 25, Brack became a member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) and the Schutzstaffel (SS). Throughout 1930 and 1931, Brack was one of Heinrich Himmler's personal drivers, having become acquainted with the Reichsführer-SS as a consequence of his father having delivered one of the SS leader's children. Sometime in 1932, he became adjutant to Philipp Bouhler and by 1934, Brack was his chief of staff. In 1936, he was appointed chief of Hauptamt II (main office II) in the Chancellery of the Führer in Berlin. The office handled matters concerning the Reich Ministries, Wehrmacht, NSDAP, clemency petitions and complaints received by the Führer from all parts of Germany.
Hauptamt II officials under Viktor Brack played a vital role in organising the killing of mentally ill and physically handicapped people in the Aktion T4 "euthanasia" programme, especially the child "euthanasia" from 1939. By a (backdated) decree of 1 September, Hitler appointed Philipp Bouhler and his personal physician Karl Brandt to manage the euthanasia program, where they would oversee the murder of physically and/or mentally disabled persons. The implementation of the killing operations was left to subordinates such as Brack and SA-Oberführer Werner Blankenburg. To efficiently accomplish this task, Brack, who headed Office II of the Führer's Chancellery created four offices; these were Office IIa or the Deputy Chief of Central Office II, headed by Blankenburg; Office IIb, led by Hans Hefelmann, which dealt with the Reich government and clemency petitions; Office IIc, overseen by Reinhold Vorberg, responsible for matters related to the armed forces, the police, the SS, and churches; and Office IId for matters concerning the Nazi Party, which was headed by Amtsleiter Buchholz and then by Dr. Brümmel.
In January 1940, Brack gave August Becker the task of arranging gas-killing operations of mentally ill patients and other people whom the Nazis deemed "life unworthy of life". The Aktion T4 program was related to popular early 20th-century ideas of eugenics and improving the race, not allowing disabled or mentally ill people to reproduce. Initially, the doctors in the program sterilized people, but then they murdered nearly 15,000 German citizens at Hadamar Euthanasia Centre under an extension of this program.
On 3 April 1940, Brack explained to leading members of the German Council of Municipalities his justification for murdering persons deemed permanently mentally ill. Among material considerations, Brack outlined how they "deprived" others of food (useless eaters), and unnecessarily took up space at hospitals for otherwise curable people. Beyond those reasons, Brack added the ideological components of racial hygiene as grounds for their extermination, atop stressing the importance of the war effort above humanitarian factors.
There were six principal killing centers; these resided at Hartheim, Sonnenstein, Grafeneck, Bernburg, Brandenburg, and Hadamar; most of which, historian Robert Lifton points out, "were in isolated areas and had high walls—some had originally been old castles—so that what happened within could not be readily observed from without." Given the scale of the operation, Brack recruited personnel using his network of contacts and party connections to fully staff T4, none of whom were forced to participate but volunteered their services. The T4 killings took place from September 1939 until the end of the war in 1945; from 275,000 to 300,000 people were killed in psychiatric hospitals in Germany and Austria, occupied Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now the Czech Republic).
During October 1941, Adolf Eichmann and Brack decided to begin using "gas vans" to murder Jews incapable of working, the first three of which were set up at Chełmno extermination camp. Not only did the Einsatzgruppen mobile units assigned there kill Jews, but they also gassed Romani, people suffering from typhus, Soviet POWs, and the insane; all of whom were led into the vans, murdered, and then driven to nearby woods so their bodies could be placed in mass graves. On 23 June 1942 Brack wrote the following letter to Himmler:
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Viktor Brack
Viktor Hermann Brack (9 November 1904 – 2 June 1948) was a member of the Schutzstaffel (SS), a convicted Nazi war criminal and one of the prominent organisers of the involuntary euthanasia programme Aktion T4; this Nazi initiative resulted in the systematic murder of 275,000 to 300,000 disabled people. He held various positions of responsibility in Hitler's Chancellery in Berlin. Following his role in the T4 programme, Brack was one of the men identified as responsible for the gassing of Jews in extermination camps, having conferred with Odilo Globočnik about its use in the practical implementation of the Final Solution. Brack was sentenced to death in 1947 in the Doctors' Trial and executed by hanging in 1948.
Brack was born the son of a physician in Haaren (now part of Aachen) in the Rhine Province. In 1928, he completed a degree in agriculture at the Technical University of Munich and shortly thereafter began managing the estate attached to his father's sanatorium; he also was a test driver for BMW.
In 1929 at the age of 25, Brack became a member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) and the Schutzstaffel (SS). Throughout 1930 and 1931, Brack was one of Heinrich Himmler's personal drivers, having become acquainted with the Reichsführer-SS as a consequence of his father having delivered one of the SS leader's children. Sometime in 1932, he became adjutant to Philipp Bouhler and by 1934, Brack was his chief of staff. In 1936, he was appointed chief of Hauptamt II (main office II) in the Chancellery of the Führer in Berlin. The office handled matters concerning the Reich Ministries, Wehrmacht, NSDAP, clemency petitions and complaints received by the Führer from all parts of Germany.
Hauptamt II officials under Viktor Brack played a vital role in organising the killing of mentally ill and physically handicapped people in the Aktion T4 "euthanasia" programme, especially the child "euthanasia" from 1939. By a (backdated) decree of 1 September, Hitler appointed Philipp Bouhler and his personal physician Karl Brandt to manage the euthanasia program, where they would oversee the murder of physically and/or mentally disabled persons. The implementation of the killing operations was left to subordinates such as Brack and SA-Oberführer Werner Blankenburg. To efficiently accomplish this task, Brack, who headed Office II of the Führer's Chancellery created four offices; these were Office IIa or the Deputy Chief of Central Office II, headed by Blankenburg; Office IIb, led by Hans Hefelmann, which dealt with the Reich government and clemency petitions; Office IIc, overseen by Reinhold Vorberg, responsible for matters related to the armed forces, the police, the SS, and churches; and Office IId for matters concerning the Nazi Party, which was headed by Amtsleiter Buchholz and then by Dr. Brümmel.
In January 1940, Brack gave August Becker the task of arranging gas-killing operations of mentally ill patients and other people whom the Nazis deemed "life unworthy of life". The Aktion T4 program was related to popular early 20th-century ideas of eugenics and improving the race, not allowing disabled or mentally ill people to reproduce. Initially, the doctors in the program sterilized people, but then they murdered nearly 15,000 German citizens at Hadamar Euthanasia Centre under an extension of this program.
On 3 April 1940, Brack explained to leading members of the German Council of Municipalities his justification for murdering persons deemed permanently mentally ill. Among material considerations, Brack outlined how they "deprived" others of food (useless eaters), and unnecessarily took up space at hospitals for otherwise curable people. Beyond those reasons, Brack added the ideological components of racial hygiene as grounds for their extermination, atop stressing the importance of the war effort above humanitarian factors.
There were six principal killing centers; these resided at Hartheim, Sonnenstein, Grafeneck, Bernburg, Brandenburg, and Hadamar; most of which, historian Robert Lifton points out, "were in isolated areas and had high walls—some had originally been old castles—so that what happened within could not be readily observed from without." Given the scale of the operation, Brack recruited personnel using his network of contacts and party connections to fully staff T4, none of whom were forced to participate but volunteered their services. The T4 killings took place from September 1939 until the end of the war in 1945; from 275,000 to 300,000 people were killed in psychiatric hospitals in Germany and Austria, occupied Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now the Czech Republic).
During October 1941, Adolf Eichmann and Brack decided to begin using "gas vans" to murder Jews incapable of working, the first three of which were set up at Chełmno extermination camp. Not only did the Einsatzgruppen mobile units assigned there kill Jews, but they also gassed Romani, people suffering from typhus, Soviet POWs, and the insane; all of whom were led into the vans, murdered, and then driven to nearby woods so their bodies could be placed in mass graves. On 23 June 1942 Brack wrote the following letter to Himmler: