Germany remembers Nazis’ ‘euthanasia’ victims

BERLIN: Germany on Friday marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a tribute to the 300,000 ill and disabled people killed under the Nazis’ "euthanasia" programme, who are often seen as forgotten victims of that era.

In a solemn ceremony at the German Bundestag, parliament speaker Norbert Lammert said the programme was the first to use gas to murder those considered "unworthy of living" and served as a "trial run for the Holocaust". "It became the model for the mass murder that would follow in the Nazi extermination camps," he said in a speech. Adolf Hitler’s euphemistically named euthanasia programme, in which doctors and scientists actively participated, sought to exterminate the sick, the physically and mentally disabled, those with learning disabilities and those considered social "misfits".