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"A human experiment on the effectiveness of the gas was conducted in January 1940. A number of senior officials responsible for Aktion T-4, including many asylum directors and several others who would later make their names infamous at Auschwitz, gathered at a defunct prison near Berlin. Approximately 20 naked asylum inmates were herded into a prototypical gas chamber by psychiatric nurses. The enthusiastic onlookers watched closely as the inmates died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Eight further inmates were administered lethal injections, but when the poison had little immediate effect, these inmates were gassed as well. Buoyed by the dreadful success he had just witnessed, Viktor Brack, one of the top Aktion T-4 officials, victoriously declared the importance of using physicians to administer the gas through his oft-repeated motto: "The needle belongs in the hand of the doctor."

Useless Eaters: Disability as Genocidal Marker in Nazi Germany

Catholic Culture, 2002

https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=7019

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