CW / TL;DR: Hans Asperger was a Nazi collaborator, signing disabled children’s death warrants.

Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-truth-about-hans-aspergers-nazi-collusion/

»The Austrian paediatrician Hans Asperger has long been recognized as a pioneer in the study of autism. He was even seen as a hero, saving children with the condition from the Nazi killing programme by emphasizing their intelligence. However, it is now indisputable that Asperger collaborated in the murder of children with disabilities under the Third Reich. [...]

Sheffer lays out the evidence, from sources such as medical records and referral letters, showing that Asperger was complicit in this Nazi killing machine. He protected children he deemed intelligent. But he also referred several children to Vienna’s Am Spiegelgrund clinic, which he undoubtedly knew was a centre of ‘child euthanasia’, part of what was later called Aktion T4.

This was where the children whom Nazi practitioners labelled ‘genetically inferior’ were murdered, because they were seen as incapable of social conformity, or had physical or psychological conditions judged undesirable. Some were starved, others given lethal injections. Their deaths were recorded as due to factors such as pneumonia.

Sheffer argues that Asperger supported the Nazi goal of eliminating children who could not fit in with the Volk: the fascist ideal of a homogeneous Aryan people.

Both Czech and Sheffer include details on two unrelated children, Herta Schreiber and Elisabeth Schreiber, and their referral letters, signed by Asperger. In these, the paediatrician justifies Herta’s referral to Am Spiegelgrund because she “must be an unbearable burden to the mother”; and Elisabeth’s, because “in the family, the child is without a doubt a hardly bearable burden”. These provide proof that he effectively signed their death warrants.

Nearly 800 children were killed in Am Spiegelgrund. Asperger went on to enjoy a long academic career, dying in 1980.«

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