After World War II, Aktion T4 was used as a term for the systematic
mass murder of the mentally ill and disabled in the Third Reich.
The term was first used in trials against doctors involved in the murders,
and was later adopted by historiographers.
Gerda suffered from musculoskeletal paralysis and was taken from
her mother and then transferred to a so-called “children’s specialist ward”
in a municipal children’s hospital in Stuttgart.
A specialist had come to the family home to examine Gerda.
The ‘doctor’ took the child into a separate room.
Gerda’s mother was not allowed
to be present during the examination.
She could hear her daughter screaming in pain. When the ‘specialist’ had finished the examination,
Gerda’s mother asked, “What exactly did you examine?”
The woman was told to shut up and say goodbye to her daughter.
Because Gerda was going to be taken to a specialist clinic.
On July 12, 1943, Gerda died in the clinic, she was not yet 4 years old.
She was euthanized. Although T4 had officially stopped at that time, it continued
unofficially until the end of the war.
The director of the clinic was Dr. Karl Lempp. He was never prosecuted for
any of his involvement. All he had to do after the war was to follow the
de-Nazification program and receive a financial fine. He continued to work as
a doctor until 1950 when he was granted a pension.
Research between 2008 and 2009 conducted by Dr. Marquart who analyzed
506 existing death certificates for children who died at the children’s hospital
between January 1943 and the end of April 1945, found 52 suspicious deaths
of children diagnosed with serious congenital disorders – but for which no causal
link could be proven.
One third of the children died of pneumonia, a typical result
of Luminal poisoning. The death certificate was sometimes signed with a false name.
In 2013, the Gerda Metzger memorial stone was placed in Stuttgart.
