German doctor accused of euthanasia given honour

Published on Sunday 25 May 2008 23:56

A FORMER SS doctor accused of sending 900 children to their deaths under the Nazi euthanasia programme has been awarded the highest honour by a German medical association.

The decision by the German Federation of Internal Medicine (BDI) to honour Dr Hans-Joachim Sewering, 92, comes as Jewish organisations continue to pressure Germany to put him on trial for murder.

The US Anti-Defamation League, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and an independent committee seeking his prosecution claim Dr Sewering – who says he joined the SS for "social reasons" – was an enthusiastic supporter of the euthanasia programme, a secret Nazi policy of murdering handicapped people, which ran across Austria and Germany before the Second World War.

Dr Sewering has always denied being responsible for euthanasia.

Dr Sewering is accused of participating in the transfer of 900 Catholic children from Schoenbrunn Sanitarium near Dachau – site of the Nazis' first concentration camp – to the Eglfing-Haar "Healing Centre" south of Munich.

Eglfing-Haar was, in reality, a killing centre of the euthanasia programme. Four nuns, who broke their vow of silence in 1993, claim to have witnessed the doctor ordering the transfer of the children and signing documents to that effect.