Temporary stop due to pressure from the church

On 18 August 1941, Hitler temporarily halted the program under pressure from Cardinal Clemens August von Galen of the Catholic Church, other churches and families of the victims. More than 70.000 people had already been murdered by then. The German public resistance slowed down but not completely halted; the program was continued in utmost secrecy. Trained troops kept going. Some parts of the program were transferred to military concentration camps.

The murder of the disabled patients continues

Many of those involved in the program also took an active part in the Holocaust. Some of them were engaged in the development of the gas chambers in Bełżec, Treblinka and Sobibór extermination camps as part of Aktion Reinhard. Besides Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek and Chełmno, these were the main sites of the murder of millions of people.

The results of the Aktion T4 program

By the end of 1941, every third resident of a mental institution in Germany was already dead, either from murder or from starvation, resulting in 93.000 beds available. An estimated 200.000 people died under the program. Hitler's grandniece, Aloisia Veit, was also among the victims. This program did not end in 1941. Doctors and nurses continued to perform in hospitals in Germany, Austria and Poland. The murders were carried out in such a way that the mistrust of the German population was minimized. Such precautions were not taken when people from the occupied territories were murdered. Brutal and violent action has been reported and recorded.

After the war

Doctors and nurses involved in the euthanasia program were by no means always brought to justice. Long after the founding of the new German states in 1949, senior officials escaped prosecution and continued to work in the German healthcare system. On 8 July 2013, the Federal Minister of Culture laid the foundation stone for a monument to the victims of this project in Tiergartenstraße, where the office of the service stood.