Psychiatry during National Socialism: Contacts with relatives of the victims of NS-Euthanasia as part of a consequent Memorial Culture.

Abstract

Crimes against humanity took place in many institutions as well as psychiatric departments during the Nazi dictatorship. The cruel and inhumane history of psychiatry during National Socialism is already widely known and broadly published. Victims of the Nazi regime, of the Holocaust, of racism, racial hygiene, and hereditary biology have often been the subjects of scientific inquiry; the relatives and descendants of the killed inpatients have yet to be part of a scientific or psychotherapeutic response. Analogous to the psychiatric-psychotherapeutic approach with traumatized individuals, the procedure "secure-describe and work through-reconnect" was used in collective remembrance work and commemorative culture. As an example of one part of this collective memorial process, the grief work undertaken with the relatives of the victims of Nazi crime is presented. A phenomenological description presents the results of contact with 55 relatives and offspring of victims of Nazi crimes in psychiatric or associated institutions during National Socialism.