Description:

SIGNAL CORPS FILM OF HADAMAR EUTHANASIA CENTER
Three 16mm. film reels, two on original acetate, one a later copy, no soundtrack, which according to placards shown in the film, was taken by American Staff Sgt. Moscow of the U.S. Signal Corps on the subject of "MURDER" at "Hadamar" (Euthanasia Center) in early April, 1945. This very graphic film, of which we viewed only a small clip, was certainly never made available to the public. It depicts American officers on the scene viewing exhumed bodies, ongoing exhumations at Hadamar, autopsies conducted in the field, and interviews with personnel, including one individual we believe was the hospital commandant. We searched for examples of any scenes from this film on-line, and found only a few stills and perhaps one or two minutes of film made available from the National Archives, making these reels perhaps the only ones extant. A note with the film reels indicates that all three films are identical. From the estate of the recipient, Col. Ernest "Tex" Lee, who served throughout the war as Eisenhower's Executive Officer and Aide de Camp. Lee joined Ike in June, 1941 and assisted in the planning of the invasions at Normandy and the ultimate defeat of Germany. In 1934, the mental institution in the town of Hadamar in Hesse was converted into a "euthanasia" center in keeping with the Third Reich's plans to liquidate the chronically infirm and mentally disabled among Germany's citizens. Rooms to receive arriving patients were located on the first floor. A gas chamber disguised as a shower room was installed in the basement of the building, together with a crematorium with two ovens which were attached to a chimney. Victims arrived daily in buses and were conducted through the so called "sluice" (a narrow fenced-in path) to the extermination building; this method would soon be adopted by almost all death camps. Hadamar is particularly notorious for being the site of the murder by injection of children with partial Jewish heritage. Almost 15,000 were murdered at Hadamar, and those supervising the crimes were among the first to be tried at war's end.

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January 21, 2010 10:00 AM EST
Stamford, CT, US

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