Following the publication of Ernst Klee’s now well-known “Euthanasie” im NS-Staat. Die “Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens” (S. Fischer Verlag, 1983), the author and publisher considered it necessary in view of the wealth of material to issue a volume of documents for separate use. The intention was to present the readership with texts in their original length that could only be briefly cited in the aforementioned book. Ernst Klee has now succeeded in unearthing further material which no one had envisaged or wanted to envisage. He was able to view almost complete collections of files that had been considered lost or hidden since the end of the war, which contain highly charged written sources and even photographic material. This volume presents documents that could only be cited in extract form in the first volume, along with texts and photos published for the first time, or in some cases plucked from obscurity after previous publication in other contexts decades ago. Not only the acts carried out in clinics, mental institutions and gassing institutions are shocking. Shocking is also the fact that hundreds of individuals participated voluntarily, organized and then carried out the mass murder, that thousands and thousands knew about it and said nothing. More than a generation later, we are only at the beginning of the necessary work of mourning the dead.
