Dr Asperger helped in Nazi euthanasia plan: Research
Vienna, April 19: Austrian paediatrician Hans Asperger, after whom Asperger's syndrome is named, “actively cooperated” with the Nazi euthanasia programme, according to a new study published on Thursday.
“Asperger managed to accommodate himself to the Nazi regime and was rewarded for his affirmations of loyalty with career opportunities,” Herwig Czech, a historian of medicine at the Medical University of Vienna, wrote in the study.
Asperger “publicly legitimised race hygiene policies including forced sterilisations and, on several occasions, actively cooperated” with the Nazis' child euthanasia programme, according to Czech.
Asperger joined several organisations affiliated with the Nazis, although not the Nazi Party itself, Czech added in the report, published in the journal Molecular Autism.
Czech said he consulted a “vast array” of contemporary publications and previously unexplored archival documents including the doctor's personnel files and case records from his patients.
He quotes a Nazi document from 1940 as saying Asperger “was in conformity with National Socialist [ Nazi] ideas in questions of race and sterilisation laws”.
In public lectures Asperger declared his allegiance to the tenets of Nazi medicine.