Hans Asperger Would Pick and Choose Which Autistic Children Would Be Sent to the Gas Chamber
Today, there is a book that has become a bestseller among parents of kids with autism called NeuroTribes. In the book, the German pediatrician, Hans Asperger, is touted as the “hero” who saved the lives of many autistic children during World War II. But in reality, he was part of a committee that helped to classify autistic children by their “usefulness”.
For those who were high-functioning enough to work, they were classified with his newly coined “Asperger’s Syndrome”. But he is still complicit in the deaths of 35 children, who he deemed to be eligible for euthanization under Hitler’s regime. He sent them all to the Am Spiegelgrund clinic in Vienna, where they were all used as science experiments and then killed.
