“Since some weeks insane persons are being taken from the institutions allegedly on the grounds of military evacuation. The directors of the institutions are enjoined to absolute secrecy. Shortly afterwards the relatives are informed that the sick person has died of encephalitis. The ashes are available if so desired. This is plain murder just as in the concentration camps. This measure uniformly emanates from the SS in Berlin. The institutions dare not inform the authorities. Inquire at once at Rottenmuenster, Schassenried, Winzertal, all in Wuerttemberg. Have the lists of 2 months ago examined and submitted to you, check upon the inmates who are there now and ask where the missing persons went to. For 7 years now this gang of murderers have defiled the German name. If my son is murdered, woe! I shall take care that these crimes will be published in all foreign newspapers. The SS may deny it as they always do. I shall demand prosecution by the public prosecutor. “I cannot give my name nor the institution where my son is, otherwise I, too, won’t live much longer. Heil Hitler Oberregierungsrat N.” If this program had stayed within the bounds set forth in Hitler’s letter to Karl Brandt, it would have been bad enough. We may pass over as quite irrelevant any such question as whether mercy killing may not in some circumstances be desirable, and whether a statute authorizing mercy killings under proper safeguards would be valid. Such questions may be debatable, but they do not confront us here. No German law authorizing mercy killings was ever adopted. Hitler’s memorandum to Brandt and Bouhler was not a law, not even a Nazi law. It was not intended to be a law or regarded as such even by the top Nazi officials. That is why the program was carried out with the utmost secrecy. The program was known to be utterly illegal by those who were in charge of it; they knew it was nothing but murder. This is brought out very clearly in a letter from Himmler to the defendant Brack in December 1940 (_NO-018_): “Dear Brack: “I hear there is great excitement on the Alb because of the institution Grafeneck. “The population recognizes the gray automobile of the SS and think they know what is going on at the constantly smoking crematory. What happens there is a secret and yet is no longer one. Thus the worst feeling has arisen there, and in my opinion there remains only one thing, to discontinue the use of the institution in this place and in any event disseminate information in a clever and sensible manner by showing motion pictures on the subject of inherited and mental diseases in just that locality. “May I ask for a report as to how the difficult problem was solved.”