Hans Asperger ‘helped Nazis murder dozens of disabled kids during World War Two’ before he identified autism
RESPECTED autism doctor Hans Asperger helped Nazis murder dozens of disabled children, new documents reveal.
Asperger was the first psychiatrist to chronicle the form of high-functioning autism and has won a reputation for his leading work on "autistic psychopathy" - a syndrome which would later be named after him.
But new research shows the prestigious doctor actively helped and cooperated with the murderous regime as part of Adolf Hitler's euthanasia programme.
Asperger is said to have referred disabled children to the notorious Am Spiegelgrund clinic in Vienna, where they were systematically killed.
An estimated 789 children are believed to have been culled at the clinic in Vienna, mainly by lethal injection or gassing.
Others died from disease and starvation or were subjected to horrendous medical experiments.
"Aktion T4", the horrific euthanasia programme personally authorised by Adolf Hitler, set out to cull the incurable and severely disabled.
Up to 300,000 victims, including children, were exterminated at clinics in Germany, Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic between 1939 and 1945.
The chilling discovery was made by Herwig Czech from the Medical University of Vienna, who set out the claims against Prof Asperger after trawling through unexamined Nazi documents from the Nazi era including personnel files and patient records.
Dr Czech believes Asperger did the Nazis' bidding to ingratiate himself with the regime, and was complicit in the fate of the vulnerable children.
He said: "These findings about Hans Asperger are the result of many years of careful research in the archives.
"What emerges is that Asperger successfully sought to accommodate himself to the Nazi regime and was rewarded with career opportunities in return".
The claims had reached the UK by 1941, when Royal Air Force dropped leaflets in Vienna stating that Dr Erwin Jekelius, director of the Steinhof hospital and Am Spiegelgrund was responsible for "the systematic murder of patients".
Dr Czech says three-year-old Herta Schreiber was referred to the clinic by Asperger, after being diagnosed as suffering "severe personality disorder", "idiocy" and "seizures".
What is Asperger's syndrome?
The syndrome, sometimes referred to just as 'Asperger's', is a lifelong developmental disability that affects how people perceive the world and interact with others.
The illness, which comes under the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) umbrella, is not an illness or disease and cannot be 'cured', but is a life-long condition.
People with Asperger syndrome are of average or above average intelligence. They don't have the learning disabilities that many autistic people have but may have difficulties understanding and processing language.
It is not known how many people suffer from Asperger's, though earlier estimates have suggested about 1 in 500 people were affected.
Asperger said: "The child must be an unbearable burden to the mother, who has to care for five healthy children" and recommended "permanent placement at Spiegelgrund"
Dr Czech claims that "permanent placement" could have been a "euphemism for murder".
The girl's mother also appeared to be aware of her daughter's likely fate, with a note saying: "If she cannot be helped, it would be better if she died."
Herta was admitted to the clinic on July 1, and died of pneumonia on September 2.
Dr Czech said that pneumonia was typically induced at the clinic by administering barbiturates.
Czech's allegations are part of a broader effort by historians to expose what doctors were doing during the Third Reich.
The allegations are reported in the journal Molecular Autism, whose two editors explained why they support the claims.
One of them, leading British autism expert Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, from Cambridge University, admitted the findings were "controversial".
Hans Asperger (1906 - 1980)
Johann 'Hans' Friedrich Karl Asperger was an Austrian pediatrician, medical theorist. There have been numerous claims made that he was a Nazi sympathiser.
He is best known for his studies on mental disorders, especially in children. His work was little known until after his death, when his work enjoyed a resurgence in the 1980s.
In 1936 he became a director of the special education section at the university children’s clinic in Vienna in 1932. He married in 1935 and had five children.
As a child, Asperger appears to have shown many features of the condition that is named after him. He was described as a lonely child, who had difficulty making friends but was a talented linguist.
Asperger died before his identification of Asperger's becmae widely recognised - partly because his work was in German.
One of his Asperger's patients was Elfriede Jelinek, the Austrian writer and Nobel Prize in Literature laureate.
The first person to use the term 'Asperger's Syndrome' was in a medical paper, published a year after his death in 1980.
But he added: "We believe that it deserves to be published in order to expose the truth about how a medical doctor who, for a long time, was seen as only having made valuable contributions to the field of paediatrics and child psychiatry, was guilty of actively assisting the Nazis in their abhorrent eugenics and euthanasia policies."
Patient groups are now discussing whether the research could provoke a change in terminology used for Asperger's Syndrome.
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Carol Povey, from the National Autistic Society, said: "We expect these findings to spark a big conversation among the 700,000 autistic people in the UK and their family members, particularly those who identify with the term "Asperger".
"Autism affects everyone differently and people often have their own way of talking about autism.
"We will be listening closely to the response to this news so we can continue to make sure the language we use to describe autism reflects the preferences of autistic people and their families.
"Obviously no-one with a diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome should feel in any way tainted by this very troubling history."
Dr Asperger was not a member of the Nazi party and claimed in a speech shortly before he died that he was on the Gestapo wanted list because he had refused to turn children over to them.
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