Prior Experience of Killers in German Nazi Murders of Disabled People
The two commanders of the camp, Kriminalpolizei officers SS-Sturmbannführer Christian Wirth and SS-Hauptsturmführer Gottlieb Hering, had been — in common with almost all of their staff — involved in the Nazi euthanasia Action T4 program since 1940. Wirth had the leading position as a supervisor of all six euthanasia institutions in the Reich; Hering as the non-medical chief of Sonnenstein (Pirna, Saxony) and Hadamar. As a participant of the first T-4 test gassing of handicapped people at Brandenburg, Wirth had been a killing expert from the beginning. He was, therefore, an obvious choice to be the first commandant of the first extermination camp in the General Government. It might have been his proposal to transfer the T-4 technology of killing by carbon monoxide gas in stationary gas chambers to Bełżec, because the comparable technology of mobile gas vans used before December 1941 in the German Nazi extermination camp Chelmno had proven insufficient for the planned number of victims.
Read more about this topic: Belzec Extermination Camp
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