"Euthanasia" victim of the Nazis: "I died without senses!"

Rosa Schillings took her bread and butter over several patients' coffee, threw it on the floor and shouted: "Dogs do not put such food in. I do not let myself be degraded to an animal." In the first weeks in the health and nursing home Galkhausen Rosa was very anxious. This was followed by the rebellion. She saw herself as an object of exploitation and did not want to participate in the daily life of the institution and thus in the work that patients had to do. Again and again she refused the medication and said that you give her sleeping pills in the evening and bothering her at night in immoral ways.

At the time of her admission, Rosa had been forcibly sterilized on the order of the doctor. Her golden tooth had been broken out of her. Her once pretty face described herself as a grimace.

Rosa Schillings was murdered on 2 May 1941 by the Nazis. She died in the wake of adult "euthanasia" in the gas chamber of Hadamar killing center.

People with disabilities and mental illness were discriminated and persecuted during National Socialism as early as 1934. From the summer of 1939 the "destruction of life unworthy of life" was planned and legitimized by Hitler by a killing authorization, dated to the 1st of September, 1939, day of the beginning of the war by the German attack on Poland. The murder program was named "Action T4", after the address Tiergartenstraße 4 of the purpose-built administrative headquarters in Berlin.

In gray buses to the killing centers

The systematic murder of children with mental or physical disabilities began in 1939; The National Socialists also veiled it as a "mercy death". From January 1940, adult patients were picked up by gray buses and taken to a total of six killing centers, including Hadamar in Hesse. There they were murdered with carbon monoxide in gas chambers disguised as shower rooms and immediately incinerated the bodies.

The Nazis killed around 200,000 sick and disabled people, of which about 15,000 in Hadamar. In the first eight months of 1941 alone, 10,122 people were murdered there. The relatives were shortly afterwards "consolation letters" and death certificates with false information on the cause and date of death.

Rosa Schillings was my grandmother. My father also received such a consolation letter and a death certificate. The date of death was 26 May 1941, the cause of death was leukemia.

A cynical lie.

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My dad used to tell a lot about his mother, but his stories always ended in 1936, when contact with her was broken off. The next thing he learned from her: She had "died" in Hadamar.

With two toddlers to Borneo

Rosa Schillings was born on 18 March 1899 as Rosa Antonette Hubertine Droste in Würselen. She grew up with three brothers in a well-to-do merchant family, a carefree childhood and adolescence. Rosa married Johann Josef Schilling in 1925, whom all named Jean. In the same year her daughter Inge was born, a year later her son Gregor.

Jean Schillings accepted in 1927 the offer of a Dutch company to take over the technical management of a mine on the distant island of Borneo. At first, Rosa stayed in Germany to look after her sick mother; her father had already died in 1924. Rosa's mother-in-law could not understand that she did not immediately follow her husband to Southeast Asia and broke off all contact with her and the grandchildren.

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After the death of her mother, Rosa traveled with the children to Borneo in February 1929. In the former Dutch colony her husband had now acquired a house and hired staff. In January 1930 there was a revolt of the miners, in which Jean was stabbed. Rosa buried him in Borneo and returned with the two children back to their hometown Würselen. There it came to disputes over the inheritance of her husband and the final break with the parents-in-law.

Rosa set up a flat for herself and her children. She had no financial worries because she received a widow's and orphan's pension from the Netherlands and had her own fortune from her parents' inheritance. But fate continued to grow: her malaria daughter Inge died in November 1931. At that time, Rosa's depression began.

"The children are already vaccinated the hatred"

At Christmas 1932 Rosa broke out in cramps, her brother Hermann took her to a hospital near Aachen. At intervals followed by further stays in several hospitals. Hermann was used as her legal guardian and guardian of her son. Rosa and her brother Josef tried to prevent this - in vain: guardianship and guardianship remained with Hermann for several years.

Despite her illness, Rosa's whole love and concern was son Gregor. She was afraid that he would have to suffer because of her, because even the children supposedly "mentally ill" were in danger because of the "Law for the Prevention of Diseased Offspring".

Murder of a 14-year-old - why Ernst Lossa had to die

Ernst Lossa was murdered in the course of the National Socialist euthanasia program. He grew up in children's homes and in 1942 was admitted to the health and nursing home Kaufbeuren. There they gave the only 14-year-old boy on 9 August 1944, the death injection.

The siblings Lossa experienced the first year of the war in the orphanage, but were separated in 1940. Ernst Lossa came to an education center near Dachau. His sister Amailie Speidl remembers the breakup: "My sister and I were woken in the middle of the night, they said we should say goodbye to our brother, Ernst was dressed in the hallway and looked sadly up to the present day. Ernst had disappeared the next morning.

Valentin Faltlhauser headed the institute in Kaufbeuren. As a particularly perfidious murder method, he developed the so-called E-food: vegetable remains were so long, until they contained no more nutrients. The patients starved to death while eating or fell victim to infectious diseases.

The feature film "Fog in August" traces the fate of Ernst Lossa (from September 29, 2016 in theaters). The scene shows Ivo Pietzcker as Ernst Lossa and Sebastian Koch in the role of the director of the institution, which is called in the film Werner Veithausen. The real hospital director, who had so many children on his conscience, came away after the war without punishment: The merciless Faltlhauser was sentenced to three years in prison, but pardoned for several suspensions in 1954 pardon.

The death certificate As an "asocial psychopath" Ernst Lossa is classified here, his cause of death with "bronchopneumonia" (pneumonia) specified. In truth, he died because a nurse and a nurse were joining him in injecting the remedy Luminal. The 14-year-old was a healthy boy, who was murdered in children's homes after a few years because of his origin from a family of driving merchants. His father died in a concentration camp.

Propaganda offensive: With such "training material" accompanied the Nazi leadership campaign for the killing of the sick and disabled.

With this letter, Adolf Hitler personally ordered that the terminally ill "mercy death be granted". From then on, psychiatrists in Berlin decided on the lives and deaths of people across the country. The order was probably issued by Hitler in October 1939, but apparently backdated to September 1st, the day the war began.

Philipp Bouhler was head of Hitler's law firm and became the head of the Nazi euthanasia program, which was shortened to "T4" after Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin. After the war Bouhler was arrested on 19 May 1945 and committed suicide with a hydrocyanic capsule.

The reviewers of the Nazis decided on a "life unworthy of life". The picture from September 1941 shows, among others: Rudolf Lonauer, head of the killing center Hartheim. Victor Ratka, director of the district health center Tiegenhof and "T4" assessors, as well as Friedrich Mennecke, Hermann Paul Nitsche and Gerhard Wischer.

Unsuspecting children such as here in the sanatorium Schönbrunn near Dachau were extradited by the law for the "prevention of genetically ill offspring", which was already adopted in July 1933, death.

Mentally handicapped children in Schönbrunn: The NS leadership had very clear ideas about what should happen to them. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary: "With Bouhler's question of tacit liquidation of mentally ill people discussed, 40,000 are gone, 60,000 still have to go - that's hard work, but it's necessary." Bouhler is the right man to."

Transport to Death: The photograph from the summer of 1941 shows two buses of GEKRAT, which had been commissioned with the transport to Hadamar killing center. The abbreviation stands for "Non-Profit Association for Ambulance Transports", a code name for a sub-division of the Central Unit "T4".

Smoking chimney of the crematorium in Hadamar in Hesse: In this killing center around 14,500 people with disabilities and mental illnesses were murdered, mostly gassed and then burned - a place of horror.

Hadamar Cemetery: From January 1941 to March 1945, the mass murder of the Nazis in the killing center extended. "Nobody should stay here overnight or be treated," says Jan Erik Schulte, historian and director of the Hadamar Memorial. "Here, people should just arrive and be killed the same day."

Death by hanging: Karl Willig was a caretaker in Hadamar and, like Heinrich Ruoff, also a caretaker, and Alfons Klein, administrative director, was sentenced to death. Willig, responsible also for the corpse burning, was notorious as a particularly brutal offender. The executions were carried out on 14 March 1946 in Bruchsal Prison.

Scenery from "Nebel im August" : What happened to Ernst Lossa, the Americans explored after the war very thoroughly and used his fate as an example in processes of Nazi crimes. The feature film is based on the eponymous book by Robert Domes, which appeared in 2008 and received several literary awards.

Do not forget: Ernst Lossa, portrayed here in a film scene, sometimes behaved conspicuously and at the same time was considered helpful and good-natured. In the movie he sees through the hospital system. He tries to help other children and plans his own escape. In 1944 he did not succeed - Ernst Lossa died at the age of 14 years.

On March 22, 1936, Rosa was admitted to the Hospitals of Galkhausen. Diagnosis: paranoid schizophrenia. Rosa did not fit into the institution life. For doctors and nurses, she was just a rebellious, rebellious patient. They could not break Rosa's will, nor stop her critical remarks about Hitler and the Nazi regime. So she called Hitler a bastard, who started his people with "Kraft durch Freude".

According to the doctor's note, and the conditions in Galkhausen: "The children are already being vaccinated against the hatred," Rosa said: "You can not but abuse the people and give them nothing to eat." They took my young face and have given me their grimaces. "

Almost 75 years later, I went to Rosa's way

Only once did Rosa leave Galkhausen with the gray bus that took her to Hadamar killing center. This was the last entry in the medical file, the "Reich Defense Commissioner" on 2 May 1941. In Hadamar she died on the same day the Gastod.

Rosa's son Gregor, my father, grew up around 1937 with his uncle Josef. He has worked up a part of his mother's destiny and thus his own fate. In Hadamar, he learned how his mother died. The transport lists available at the Hadamar Memorial were the true date of death.

In 2005 my father spoke in an interview with an American scientist about his mother's fate. But even here, the years 1936-1941 remained in the dark, about that he had no information.

This part of my family history caught up with me two years ago: In March 2015, for the first time in Hadamar, I saw the place where my grandmother was murdered. I made my way from the garage of the gray buses to the gas chamber and the crematorium. A cruel way, Rosa's last.

"I have the honor rights of the whole world"

In Hadamar I learned that 30,000 medical records of the victims of the T4 action, who were killed until August 1941, can be viewed in the Federal Archives in Berlin. Also the file of my grandmother. It mainly documented Rosa's comments, not the therapy. So I could understand her life from 1936 to 1941. The reading of the file touched me emotionally, but also made me very proud: Despite all the harassment, no one could break Rosas will, she has rebelled to the very end against the treatment in Hadamar and the Nazi regime.

I was particularly impressed by what Rosa said to the prison doctor on 19 January 1941: "I have the rights of the whole world, I am employed as a prosecutor to explain myself why I have been murdered, I died without any senses!"

Nearly 75 years later, Rosa's face is used in films by Israeli filmmaker Yaniv Schwartz: as a prosecutor for the terrible euthanasia murders. And so her statement has become reality.

In April 2015, I accidentally came across these short films by Yaniv Schwartz on the Internet about the T4 campaign. He found my grandmother's photo on the American scientist's website. I got in touch with Yaniv, so a new short film about Rosa (see here) was made. It is a memorial to all who have died this senseless death - an Israeli-German random project on one of the atrocities of National Socialism.