In celebration of the Fourth of July, I declare my independence from a bulging inbox and a tremendous backlog of facebook communications that beg a response. Having company and being out of pocket for 3 weeks in May and 2 weeks in June can really back things up, and justifiable as the reasons may be, it does nothing to relieve my feelings of embarrassment and guilt. The only way to rid myself of the guilt and embarrassment is to go through the emails and facebook comments/messages.
Now I could tick an entire page full of boxes and elect to delete emails en masse, but I don’t, preferring instead to re-read each and every one. Though plowing through emails that are months old may leave me feeling quite unproductive at the end of the day, the re-reading of them leaves me feeling much-loved and appreciated. It has been a heart-warming skip down memory lane as I re-read your funny, loving, touching, supportive messages. Thank you for your patience and your friendship . . . and for the bulging heart warmers folder that now stands ready for me to dip into next time I have one of Those Days.
The T4 program under which the 70,273 physically and mentally disabled people we commemorate with The 70273 Project were murdered generated a tremendous amount of paperwork as thousands and thousands and still more thousands of completed medical forms poured into headquarters. The 10-15 assessing physicians agreed to make evaluations on top of full time jobs and additional wartime responsibilities that were already in progress. One assessing physician, Hermann Pfannmuller, for example, was the manager of a rather large psychiatric institution. During his fifteen months of service – from January 1940 to April 1941 – Dr. Pfannmuller received 159 separate shipments of forms, each containing between 200-300 questionnaires. 159 shipments x 250 (splitting the difference) questionnaires = 39,750 evaluations in 15 months. He actually passed judgment on some 2,058 patients over an eighteen-day period during which he continued to fill the daily duties associated with his full-time job and his additional wartime responsibilities.
Think about that for a minute. This man worked his full-time job AND passed life and death judgments on 2,058 people in 2.5 weeks. Seems way short of careful consideration, doesn’t it?
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Thank you for the information about Dr, Phanmnuller and his forms. x
It’s not pretty info, Judy, but I think we needn’t sweep it under the rug. Hope this means you’re feeling better. xo