1. The Nuremberg Laws: Creating the Road to the T-4 Program
By Jennifer Hight

2. Introduction Nuremberg Laws: implemented September 15, 1935
These laws established a foundation for a eugenics program that the Nazi doctors performed on inmates in T-4 centers and concentration camps from 1939 to 1945.
The Nuremberg Laws were the first law codes to give discrimination a strong legal standing and removed repercussions against doctors’ actions towards their patients which created the Nazi eugenics program.

3. The Nuremberg Laws Reich Citizenship Law
Law for the Protection for Hereditary Health
Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor

4. Reich CITIZENSHIP LAW Revoked the status of Jews as legal citizens
Define what it meant to be German or Jewish
Created the framework the Nazis would use to persecute Jews and other minorities
Was later applied to other minorities, the disabled, mentally and terminally ill

5. Law for the protection of hereditary health
Anyone the Nazis deemed as carrying inheritable diseases would be forced to undergo sterilization
Diseases ranged from schizophrenia to alcoholism
Anyone with a physical disability was sterilized
Patients could not refuse sterilization

6. Law for the protection of German blood and German honor
Outlawed marriage between Germans and Jews
Defined “mixed race” children
Established legal concept of blood purity

7. The path to the t-4 program
Gleichschaltung Program
Social coordination
Nazi party used propaganda to control every aspect of society
Compliance
German citizens trained to be compliant
Lack of protest allowed Nazis to escalate their programs
Violent Demonstration
SS- Hitler’s paramilitary. Harassed and attacked Jews and other minorities
Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass)- Predetermined night of violence against Jews by Germans. Targeted businesses and synagogues
The path to the t-4 program

8. Survivors Testimony about Path to t-4
Joshua Degani
Jewish survivor
Faced persecution under Coordination
Not allowed into movie theaters
Family barber refused to cut hair
Schterma = propaganda books
Kurt Messerschmidt
Jewish survivor
Testimony on silence after Kristallnacht
“I’m sure, in this particular situation, that some of the people standing there disapproved of what the Nazis did. But the disapproval was only silence. And silence is what did the harm”

9. T-4 program 6 killing centers, but all hosptials included
Targeted disabled and mentally ill
Sterilized individuals the Nazis deemed inferior
Killed victims with sleeping pills, injections, and poison gas
Doctors chose patients who had “anatomy that interested the researcher”
Killed and autopsied these patients
Corpses were experimented on

10. Similarities between t-4 centers and concentration camps
T-4 Facilities
Concentration Camps
Patients transported with gekrat buses
Death buses
Doctors and physicians used selection process
Mass murder with poison gas
Crematoriums and mass graves
Experiments conducted on autopsied bodies
Trains for transportation
Selection used on prisoners
Mass murder with poison gas
Zyklon B gas
Crematoriums and mass graves
Experiments conducted on prisoners
Mengele, Luftwaffe, and other

11. conclusion T-4 Program Citizenship Weaponized
Escalated into the Holocaust
Desensitized Nazi doctors to mass murder and human experiments
Citizenship Weaponized
Citizenship only real protection
“Other” vs. Germans
Issues of medical Consent
Experiment Review Boards
Signed consent for medical procedures