Launched at the eleventh World Congress of Psychiatry in Hamburg in 1999, the traveling exhibition In Memoriam Aktion T4: Nazi Genocide of People with Disabilities arrived in Rome three years later, at the House of Memory and History. Drawing on research by Michael von Cranach, director of the Kaufbeuren Psychiatric Institute until 2007, the exhibition set out to educate the public on a history still too widely forgotten. Thirty-three panels traced Aktion T4—the operation conducted between 1939 and 1945—through documents, testimonies, and photographs. The display covered the extermination of people with disabilities, the killing of children, starvation, human experimentation (including chilling correspondence between Dr. Hensel and Dr. Valentin Faltihauser about children used as test subjects), and forced laborers confined to psychiatric institutions. It also gave voice to the families of victims.
People were taken under the pretext of treatment or surrendered in good faith by their families. Then they vanished. A certificate would arrive at home, certifying death from "natural causes" and announcing immediate cremation—supposedly to prevent epidemics. The desperate letters written by mothers, wives, and sisters to authorities pleading for news of their loved ones were simply heartbreaking.
The exhibition traced what came after: the Nuremberg trial of Nazi doctors who bore material responsibility. Many of them defended themselves by claiming not only that they had followed orders, but that what they had done was inherently good. Dr. Faltihauser was one such case. In his attempt to minimize his own guilt, he attacked the Catholic Church in language that inadvertently revealed the depth of Christian witness. "It is clear that the Catholic Church may disagree with euthanasia," he said. "Personally, however, I do not believe that this position is truly humanitarian. The Church preaches mercy, but in this case it proves cruel—for, by a purely emotional standard, it demands the perpetuation of endless, unbearable suffering."
In Memoriam: to remember, so that we do not forget. And to learn from history, especially today. As the exhibition's opening panel stated: "Seriously confronting the events of the past can help us find direction and points of reference in a world where utilitarian ethics, bioethical conventions, genetic technology, and debates about euthanasia pose constant challenges to our convictions."