Teacher criticized for Hitler 'pros and cons' assignment

Stasi files 'hid proof that showed doctor was Nazi murderer'
By Tony Paterson in Berlin
14 February 2004


Communist East Germany kept Rosemarie Albrecht's Nazi past a closely-guarded secret for40 years. Its regime showered the physician with awards and gave her the title "People's Doctor of Outstanding Merit". It never revealed her alleged role in Hitler's infamous "euthanasia" murders of the mentally handicapped.

Professor Albrecht is now 88, and livingon a state pension at her home outside the East German town of Gera. Later this year she is to appear in court charged with helping to kill more than 150 mentally handicapped women and children at a Nazi hospital during the Second World War.

Her case is expected to result in one of the last major Nazi "euthanasia" trials in post-war Germany. It has only come to light because of evidence unearthed in East German Stasi secret police files, which showed that her activities during the Nazi era were covered up by the communist regime.

Last week, state prosecutors in Gera formally charged Professor Albrecht with the murder of one 34-year-old mentally handicapped woman at Germany's Stadtroda Hospital in 1941 and with complicity in the killing of a further 158 female patients in her care between 1940 and 1942. Many were girls.

The deaths were among an estimated 900 "euthanasia" killings at the hospital in accordance with Nazi doctrine, which stipulated the mentally handicapped were a "useless burden" on the German people.

The charges are the result of a four-year investigation by Gera state prosecutors. "The evidence against Professor Albrecht is contained in a meticulously-kept hospital archive, which shows one of her women patients was given a massive dose of sleeping tablets that resulted in her death," said Raimund Sauter, the prosecutor leading the investigation. "Without the evidence unwittingly provided by the Stasi, it is doubtful we would have been alerted to her case."

Many other mentally handicapped women and children were allegedly given huge doses of barbiturates which weakened their lungs and eventually led to their dying from pulmonary infections. "To the outside it looked like natural death," said Dr Goetz Aly, a German historian who has been pursuing the Albrecht case.

Professor Albrecht has repeatedly denied the allegations against her. She is on record as having told journalists: "Amuse yourselves, you'll get nothing from me." She has described her time at the Stadtroda in glowing terms. "Those were wonderful years. I could work , work and work," she said in a German medical journal.

Stasi files unearthed during the investigation showthe communist regime decided to conceal her Nazi past to ward off international condemnation. The files, dating back to 1964, were codenamed Ausmerzer (the wiper-out). But by that time the professor had already won the approval of the communist regime. She was honoured for successfully treating the former East German leader Walter Ulbricht and went on to become a deacon at Jena University.

Her Stasi file reveals that secret police were reluctant to investigate her from the outset. "As the accused holds a high position, an investigation could produce a result that would contradict the conditions of our society," a senior Stasi officer said in her dossier. The Stasi subsequently called off plans to investigate her, claiming that there was "insufficient evidence" to bring charges.

"We are all shocked by these revelations," said Andreas Blei, head of the German government's Stasi investigation unit in Gera. "Most East Germans thought that they were morally superior to capitalist West Germany because they believed in the official line which held the communist state had rooted out Nazism."

... I find that more educational than memorizing that "Hitler was bad". ...

OCCOM BILL wrote:

... I find that more educational than memorizing that "Hitler was bad". ...

But he was bad. Anything "positive" to come out of his time as dictator certainly wasn't due to any altruism on his part.

I may have seen the same documentary as you did because I recall a comment made that those who died from the medical experiments would likely have wanted their deaths to have some meaning....that by ignoring all of the medical information would be worse...that by making the best possible use from their deaths provided a form of honor to them...to die so that others may live...

The end does not justify the means. The price of knowledge should never be thru acts as hideous as those committed by Mengele and his brethren. Even to suggest that it is-is depraved.

Precisely Caprice! And, there in, lies the proof that good can be derived from bad actions. The doctors performing the experiments could only be described as "bad"... But "good" doctors may well have gained the necessary information to save lives with the knowledge. Isn't that more educational than the comic book depiction of Good Vs Evil? (I sincerely hope no one's misinterpreting my words as Pro-Hitler).

The doctors performing the experiments could only be described as "bad"... But "good" doctors may well have gained the necessary information to save lives with the knowledge

However, facts uncovered in these experiments have subsequently saved lives. In other words; some "good" has come out of a horrendously "bad" thing.

... And, there in, lies the proof that good can be derived from bad actions. ...

High school history tends to paint historical figures as Devils or Saints with little middle ground.