00:00 Welcome to the heart of history, I am Virginie Giraud.
00:04 In the first episode of this story dedicated to Hans Asperger,
00:08 this promising young psychiatrist joined the service of curative pedagogy in Vienna
00:13 for children with social issues.
00:15 This service is largely composed of Nazi doctors
00:19 who promote a racial hygiene supposed to heal the population.
00:23 Episode 2
00:25 Euthanasia of the bad children
00:28 The first Nazi doctors of the war
00:33 Between 1938 and 1940,
00:37 just after the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany,
00:41 Hans Asperger drives the program of motorized counselling to the mayors.
00:45 It is a squad of doctors and psychiatrists
00:48 who go to the countryside to meet the mothers.
00:51 Their goal is to prevent rachitism
00:55 and to reduce infant mortality
00:58 by spreading the good practices of care and nutrition.
01:01 A priori, it is a good social measure.
01:04 But motorized counselling has a second function.
01:08 It keeps records of physically and mentally disabled children.
01:11 These children begin to be considered as burdens,
01:15 first for their families, then for society.
01:18 Finally, they are considered as waste.
01:23 And waste is eliminated.
01:25 At first, the service of Hans Asperger can remove the children
01:33 with social issues or with disabilities from their families
01:35 and send them to rehabilitation centres
01:37 or to a service of healing pedagogy,
01:40 that is, to a psychiatric hospital.
01:42 This means that the fate of hundreds of children
01:46 rests on the diagnosis of Hans Asperger.
01:50 And then, in 1940, an institution specializing in problematic children
01:55 opens its doors in Vienna.
01:57 It is a sanatorium for children called Spiegelgrund.
02:01 It is part of the psychiatric hospital of Steinhof.
02:04 It consists of a set of coquettish pavilions in a green screen.
02:09 First of all, it is very pretty.
02:12 The first director of Spiegelgrund is a friend of Hans Asperger.
02:18 It is Erwin Jekelius, the one who works with Hitler's sister.
02:22 But before I tell you what happens at Spiegelgrund,
02:25 I have to tell you about the Action T4 program.
02:28 You know that the Nazis worship you with perfect and athletic bodies,
02:37 with the ideal Aryan, blond with blue eyes,
02:40 who serves his homeland with his work or his military commitment.
02:43 A physical handicap with atrophied limbs
02:47 or an idiot, a word used by the Nazis to talk about mental disabilities,
02:51 will never serve the Reich.
02:53 Worse, it will be a burden for the rest of the community.
02:57 Those who transmit genetic defects are not better off,
03:00 since they contribute to corrupt the population
03:03 with a descendance carrying diseases or malformations.
03:06 This way of thinking of the handicap
03:09 is typical of the eugenicist theories in vogue at the time
03:12 that really want to improve the human race.
03:15 They go far beyond the framework of Nazism.
03:17 However, until then,
03:20 no one really pushed this eugenicist logic to the end
03:23 by practicing the euthanasia of the useless,
03:25 those whose life would not deserve to be lived.
03:28 Hitler is therefore particularly careful
03:32 when he begins to mature the Action T4 program,
03:35 the program of euthanasia of the handicapped.
03:37 As the historian Christian Ingrao underlines,
03:40 it is war that allows the accomplishment of this fateful project.
03:44 Yes, because war has a purging function
03:47 that allows to eliminate the weakest.
03:49 Does it seem cynical to you?
03:51 It is.
03:52 This is how things will happen.
03:55 From October 1, 1939,
04:06 Hitler authorizes doctors to give death to incurable patients.
04:09 The thing is presented as an act of mercy, of humanity.
04:13 In reality, it has been six months
04:15 since Nazi doctors have put in place
04:17 euthanasia measures for handicapped children between 0 and 3 years old.
04:20 There, the project becomes official
04:23 and now includes adults.
04:25 The Action T4 program aims to free
04:29 20% of the hospital beds occupied by the useless.
04:32 That's 70,000 people to eradicate.
04:35 At the end of 1939,
04:39 psychiatric hospitals receive forms to fill
04:41 to sort their patients.
04:43 Two hospitals, one in Germany and one in Austria,
04:46 will take care of euthanasia.
04:48 For children, it is Spiegelgrunen in Austria
04:51 who will take care of this task.
04:53 The idea is that these euthanasia do not cost too much.
04:57 Hitler's cynicism has no limits.
04:59 It is therefore for the Action T4 program
05:02 that gas chambers are invented.
05:04 They will then be extended to the Jewish extermination program
05:07 because the choice per bullet is expensive.
05:10 And it is too slow for the Nazis.
05:12 At Spiegelgrunen, led by Dr. Erwin Jekelius,
05:22 nine pavilions are devoted to handicapped or asocial children.
05:25 Number 17 is the anti-chamber of hell,
05:29 where these days are only suspected of being desperate.
05:32 It is often a waiting room for pavilion number 15,
05:35 where children are euthanized.
05:39 Does Hans Asperger know what is happening at Spiegelgrunen?
05:42 Objectively, he cannot ignore it.
05:45 Does he monitor what is happening there?
05:48 No historian can guess that.
05:51 What is certain is that Hans Asperger
05:54 is involved in the sorting of children for euthanasia
05:56 and that he has the power to send children
05:58 to pavilion 15 of Spiegelgrunen.
06:01 On what criteria does he make these morbid selections?
06:05 Heavy, physical or mental disabilities
06:07 are not a problem for children.
06:09 Their fate is sealed.
06:11 They must alleviate their family from the burden they represent.
06:13 But what about the others?
06:15 These famous children, considered autistic at the time?
06:18 How does Asperger and his team sort them?
06:21 Well, they sort them on the basis of a simple concept.
06:27 The Gemüt.
06:29 The Gemüt is a German concept
06:31 that cannot be translated literally into French.
06:33 It is an ability to make links with others
06:36 and to live a rich inner life.
06:38 It is also an ability to integrate moral values
06:41 such as patriotism or altruism.
06:43 According to Nazi theory,
06:45 asocial children,
06:47 small grass criminals, if you will,
06:49 are deprived of Gemüt
06:51 or, in some cases, they do not have enough of it.
06:54 There are two options.
06:56 Either a rehabilitation centre
06:58 or a service of curative pedagogy
07:00 only includes the Gemüt.
07:02 Either way, these children are good for Spielberg's Pavilion XV.
07:06 Hans Asperger continues to deal with autistic children.
07:14 But the study of the archives shows
07:16 that his diagnosis is plagued by several cognitive biases.
07:20 For example, he is much more severe with girls than with boys.
07:24 He begins to sketch the idea
07:26 that autistic disorders are extreme variations
07:29 of male intelligence.
07:31 But that's not all.
07:33 Asperger shows more leniency
07:35 towards young boys from rich families
07:37 than towards those from poor families.
07:40 Let's not forget one thing.
07:42 Asperger comes from a modest background.
07:44 He was raised by his father to have a social upliftment.
07:47 He is therefore undoubtedly a little fascinated by the elites
07:50 and despises those who fail to rise.
07:53 In the end, we see that he is very interested
07:56 in children who look like him,
07:58 original and intelligent children
08:01 whose social disorders can be erased
08:03 by appropriate therapies.
08:05 What interests him are the children
08:07 who will later be called "Asperger's Autists",
08:10 little boys who look like him when he was little.
08:13 What the DSM-5, the Bible of psychiatry,
08:18 today calls Asperger's syndrome,
08:21 is translated by a lack of communication
08:23 and social interaction.
08:25 Asperger's often have very particular centers of interest
08:28 but no intellectual deficiencies.
08:31 Asperger's misogyny and class contempt
08:34 explain his aversion to young Christine Berka,
08:37 a 14-year-old asocial teenager from a modest family.
08:41 The teenager behaves badly in her school,
08:43 she can't make friends
08:45 and steals her classmates' business.
08:47 The director demands that Christine see a psychiatrist.
08:50 This is how she arrives in the service of Hans Asperger.
08:54 Although he finds her dangerous,
08:56 Asperger doesn't sentence her to death.
08:58 He sends her to a rehab as long as possible.
09:01 He believes in the virtues of group life
09:04 to improve asocial characters.
09:06 That's why during the war
09:08 he admires so much the Hitler Youth,
09:10 this movement of training children and teenagers
09:12 of Adolf Hitler's party.
09:14 Christine Berka won't be euthanized
09:17 by Dr. Erwin Jekyllus
09:19 who hesitates between two barbiturates
09:21 to kill children.
09:23 Jekyllus, like his brother Mengele,
09:25 the doctor from Auschwitz,
09:27 does experiments on his little guinea pigs.
09:29 Sometimes he tests various amounts of vitamin D
09:32 to fight against rachitism.
09:35 Other times he inoculates them with diseases
09:37 like tuberculosis to test the effectiveness of vaccines.
09:41 And then the children, victims of unnameable violence,
09:44 die of poor care.
09:46 Officially, they die of pneumonia,
09:48 a real epidemic is happening in Spiegelgrund.
09:51 All deaths are registered in a record
09:53 ironically called "The Book of the Dead".
09:56 In 1941, Asperger and Dr. Erwin Jekyllus
10:06 founded the Society of Curing Pedagogy of Vienna.
10:09 They share the same medical ideas.
10:12 The following year, Dr. Ernest Hilling
10:15 replaces Dr. Jekyllus
10:17 at the Spiegelgrund.
10:19 This pediatrician is very involved in the T4 campaign.
10:22 Hans Asperger now collaborates with him.
10:25 Until the end of the war,
10:27 he held various positions
10:29 with the same objective,
10:31 to sort out the children
10:33 and choose those who will end up euthanized.
10:35 Today, we consider that Hans Asperger
10:38 would have sent about thirty children to their deaths.
10:48 In 1945, the war ends.
10:51 The psychiatric asylums in Austria
10:53 are liberated by the Russian army.
10:55 Some of the Spiegelgrund survivors
10:57 remember that the soldiers
10:59 offered them apples and cigarettes,
11:01 a luxury after so much bad treatment.
11:03 The T4 action program
11:05 has killed more than 70,000 people, as planned.
11:08 It has even exceeded a few hundred
11:10 its initial objectives.
11:12 To this number,
11:13 it is necessary to add the 789 euthanized children
11:15 to the Spiegelgrund.
11:18 The end of the war announces the chase against the Nazis.
11:21 Dr. Erwin Jekelius
11:23 is sentenced to prison by the Russians.
11:25 He died of cancer in detention in 1952.
11:28 His co-detainees have mourned a man
11:30 who was always at the little care for them.
11:32 Hans Asperger, on the other hand,
11:34 is not worried.
11:36 He has never been charged with NSDAP.
11:39 He is not a Nazi
11:41 and has never been one officially.
11:43 This is what saves his reputation.
11:45 It does not matter that his work and his actions
11:47 prove that he was in favor of the euthanasia
11:49 of children considered incurable.
11:51 By prudence, he takes his distance
11:53 with the concept of "gay mute".
11:55 He only participates in a few research conferences
11:57 and does not really delve into his work on autism.
12:00 Anyway,
12:02 at the end of the war,
12:04 Austria lacks psychiatrists,
12:06 so Asperger quickly becomes a professor
12:08 and successively leads several pedopsychiatry services
12:11 until the 1970s.
12:13 His co-detainees have very divergent opinions
12:15 on his subject.
12:17 For some, he is a formidable psychiatrist,
12:19 listening to children,
12:21 respectful of their singularity.
12:23 For others, he is a violent man
12:25 who mistreats patients,
12:27 especially patients,
12:29 as Anna-Theresia Kimmel,
12:31 one of his patients in the 1950s,
12:33 testified.
12:35 Asperger would have established the diagnosis
12:37 of the teenager after giving her,
12:39 by surprise, a punch in the face.
12:41 Anna did not scream.
12:43 She only disfigured the psychiatrist
12:45 with a black look.
12:47 Asperger deduced that she was aggressive.
12:49 These two versions of Hans Asperger,
12:51 the good therapist
12:53 and the cold monster,
12:55 are not irreconcilable.
12:57 He was apparently very different
12:59 depending on the profile of his patients.
13:01 Later, when Asperger evokes war,
13:03 which is rare,
13:05 he ends up presenting himself
13:07 in a nutshell as a "child schindler",
13:09 a doctor caught in the clutches
13:11 of a murderous Nazi system
13:13 who, on his scale,
13:15 saved as many children as possible.
13:17 Recent work by American historian
13:19 Edith Schaeffer
13:21 shows that the diagnosis of the child
13:23 is not a diagnosis of the child,
13:25 but a diagnosis of the child.
13:27 The diagnosis of the child
13:29 is a diagnosis of the child.
13:31 The diagnosis of the child
13:33 is a diagnosis of the child.
13:35 The diagnosis of the child
13:37 is a diagnosis of the child.
13:39 The diagnosis of the child
13:41 is a diagnosis of the child.
13:43 The diagnosis of the child
13:45 is a diagnosis of the child.
13:47 The diagnosis of the child
13:49 is a diagnosis of the child.
13:51 The diagnosis of the child
13:53 is a diagnosis of the child.
13:55 The diagnosis of the child
13:57 is a diagnosis of the child.
13:59 The diagnosis of the child
14:01 is a diagnosis of the child.
14:03 The diagnosis of the child
14:05 is a diagnosis of the child.
14:07 The diagnosis of the child
14:09 is a diagnosis of the child.
14:11 The diagnosis of the child
14:13 is a diagnosis of the child.
14:15 The diagnosis of the child
14:17 is a diagnosis of the child.
14:19 The diagnosis of the child
14:21 is a diagnosis of the child.
14:23 The diagnosis of the child
14:25 is a diagnosis of the child.
14:27 The diagnosis of the child
14:29 is a diagnosis of the child.
14:31 The diagnosis of the child
14:33 is a diagnosis of the child.
14:35 The diagnosis of the child
14:37 is a diagnosis of the child.
14:39 The diagnosis of the child
14:41 is a diagnosis of the child.
14:43 The diagnosis of the child
14:45 is a diagnosis of the child.
14:47 The diagnosis of the child
14:49 is a diagnosis of the child.
14:51 The diagnosis of the child
14:53 is a diagnosis of the child.
14:55 To the production, Camille Bichler.
14:57 To the production, Clément Ibrahim.
14:59 To the artistic direction,
15:01 Julien Tharaud and Adèle Imbert.
15:03 To the composition of the original musics,
15:05 Julien Tharaud and Sébastien Guidice.
15:07 To the communication and the broadcast,
15:09 Kelly De Croix and Romain Vintillas.
15:11 And I, the author of this story,
15:13 I give you an appointment very quickly
15:15 on your favorite listening platform.
15:17 See you soon.
15:19 [MUSIC PLAYING]
Commentaires