Editing Aktion T4 (section)

==Gassing==
The first gassings in Germany proper took place in January 1940 at the Brandenburg Euthanasia Centre. The operation was headed by Brack, who said "the needle belongs in the hand of the doctor".{{sfn|Annas|Grodin|1992|p=25}} Bottled pure carbon monoxide gas was used. At trials, Brandt described the process as a "major advance in medical history".{{sfn|Lifton|1986|pp=71–72}} Once the efficacy of the method was confirmed, it became standard and was instituted at a number of centres in Germany under the supervision of Widmann, Becker and [[Christian Wirth]] – a [[Kripo]] officer who later played a prominent role in the [[Final Solution]] (extermination of Jews) as commandant of newly built [[death camp]]s in occupied Poland. In addition to Brandenburg, the killing centres included [[Grafeneck Castle]] in Baden-Württemberg (10,824 dead), [[Schloss Hartheim]] near [[Linz]] in Austria (over 18,000 dead), Sonnenstein in [[Free State of Saxony|Saxony]] (15,000 dead), [[Bernburg]] in Saxony-Anhalt and [[Hadamar]] in Hesse (14,494 dead). The same facilities were also used to kill mentally sound prisoners transferred from [[concentration camp]]s in Germany, Austria and occupied parts of Poland.

Condemned patients were transferred from their institutions to new centres in T4 [[Charitable Ambulance]] buses, called the Community Patients Transports Service. They were run by teams of SS men wearing white coats, to give it an air of medical care.{{sfn|Burleigh|2000|p=54}} To prevent the families and doctors of the patients from tracing them, the patients were often first sent to transit centres in major hospitals, where they were supposedly assessed. They were moved again to ''special treatment'' ({{lang|de|[[Sonderbehandlung]]}}) centres. Families were sent letters explaining that owing to wartime regulations, it was not possible for them to visit relatives in these centres. Most of these patients were killed within 24 hours of arriving at the centres and their bodies cremated.{{sfn|Lifton|1986|p=71}} Some bodies were dissected for medical research whilst others had their gold teeth extracted.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Hohendorf |first=Gerrit |date=2016 |title=THE EXTERMINATION OF MENTALLY ILL AND HANDICAPPED PEOPLE UNDER NATIONAL SOCIALIST RULE |url=https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/extermination-mentally-ill-and-handicapped-people-under-national-socialist-rule.html |journal=Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah |via=SciencesPo |access-date=29 September 2023 |archive-date=15 August 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230815233907/https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/extermination-mentally-ill-and-handicapped-people-under-national-socialist-rule.html |url-status=live }}</ref> For every person killed, a death certificate was prepared, giving a false but plausible cause of death. This was sent to the family along with an urn of ashes (random ashes, since the victims were cremated {{lang|fr|en masse|nocat=yes}}). The preparation of thousands of falsified death certificates took up most of the working day of the doctors who operated the centres.{{sfn|Lifton|1986|p=74}}

During 1940, the centres at Brandenburg, Grafeneck and Hartheim killed nearly 10,000 people each, while another 6,000 were killed at Sonnenstein. In all, about 35,000 people were killed in T4 operations that year. Operations at Brandenburg and Grafeneck were wound up at the end of the year, partly because the areas they served had been cleared and partly because of public opposition. In 1941, however, the centres at Bernburg and Sonnenstein increased their operations, while Hartheim (where Wirth and [[Franz Stangl]] were successively commandants) continued as before. Another 35,000 people were killed before August 1941, when the T4 programme was officially shut down by Hitler. Even after that date the centres continued to be used to kill concentration camp inmates: eventually some 20,000 people in this category were killed.{{efn|These figures come from the article [[:de:Aktion T4|Aktion T4]] on the German Wikipedia, which cites Ernst Klee.{{sfn|Klee|1983|p=}}}}

In 1971, [[Gitta Sereny]] conducted interviews with Stangl, who was in prison in [[Düsseldorf]], having been convicted of co-responsibility for killing 900,000 people, while commandant of the [[Sobibor]] and [[Treblinka]] [[extermination camp]]s in Poland. Stangl gave Sereny a detailed account of the operations of the T4 programme based on his time as commandant of the killing facility at the Hartheim institute.{{sfn|Sereny|1983|pp=41–90}} He described how the inmates of various asylums were removed and transported by bus to Hartheim. Some were in no mental state to know what was happening to them but many were perfectly sane and for them various forms of deception were used. They were told they were at a special clinic where they would receive improved treatment and were given a brief medical examination on arrival. They were induced to enter what appeared to be a shower block, where they were gassed with carbon monoxide (the ruse was also used at extermination camps).{{sfn|Sereny|1983|pp=41–90}} Some of the victims knew their fate and tried to defend themselves.<ref name=":0" />