|
Doc accused of Nazi clinic atrocities dies
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-23 09:50
Dr. Heinrich Gross, a psychiatrist who worked at a clinic where the Nazis
killed and conducted cruel experiments on thousands of children, died Dec. 15,
his family announced Thursday. He was 90.
Gross, who was implicated in nine deaths as part of a Nazi plot to eliminate
"worthless lives," had escaped trial in March after a court ruled he suffered
from severe dementia. No cause of death was given in a brief statement issued by
his family.
Gross was a leading doctor in Vienna's infamous Am Spiegelgrund clinic.
Historians and survivors of the clinic had accused him of killing or taking part
in the clinic's experiments on thousands of children deemed by the Nazis to be
physically, mentally or otherwise unfit for Adolf Hitler's vision of a perfect
world.
Gross, who proclaimed his innocence for decades, had insisted he was not
present at the hospital at the time in the 1940s when most of the children were
killed.
"I was always against euthanasia," he told the weekly magazine News in 2000.
"I never sped up anyone's death, nor did I assign anyone to do so."
Nazi-era doctor Heinrich Gross, who was
accused of killing children is seen during an interview in this June 15,
1999 file photo.[AP/file] | He became a prominent neurologist after the war and was awarded the
prestigious Austrian Honorary Cross for Science and Art in 1975. He was stripped
of the medal in 2003.
He was put on trial three times, but all the cases were dismissed. In a trial
in the 1950s, the case was thrown out because of legal technicalities. A second
case in the 1980s was dismissed because the 30-year statute of limitations on
manslaughter had expired.
A third trial in 2000, in which Gross was accused of complicity in the murder
of nine handicapped children who died as the result of abuse, was suspended
after a psychiatrist testified he was unfit for trial because of advanced
dementia.
Immediately after the suspension, Gross gave lively interviews in a local
coffeehouse.
Across Europe, 75,000 people, including 5,000 children, were killed by the
Nazis for real or imagined mental, physical or social disabilities.
Hundreds of urns containing the remains of young Austrians were buried
quietly in 2002 after having been used for medical research as recently as 1978.
In September, a new play about the Spiegelgrund clinic made its debut in
Vienna, underscoring how far the country has come in confronting its World War
II past.
It portrays Gross as an evil Nazi scientist who views his patients only as
research objects. Bone-chilling laughter hangs omnipresent over the stage during
the production, which shows children confined in straitjackets, held in tiny
cage beds and force-fed medication through funnels.
During a trial in 1998, German historian Mathias Dahl said his research
showed that Gross published five articles between 1955 and 1965 based on
research using the preserved brains of children killed because they were deemed
handicapped or anti-social.
Six other articles published by him also likely used the same specimens, Dahl
said.
|
