Murder by Marmalade

Snuffling in handkerchiefs, their stringy hair drawn back in buns, the 14 hefty women huddled in the dock looked more like a woebegone Kaffeeklatsch of housewives than a team of killers for the Nazi cause. They were criminals all the same, maintained Munich State Attorney Manfred Bode, and they were charged with more than 800 deaths. Between 1942 and 1945, these 14 "angels of death" had worked as nurses at the Obrawalde insane asylum in Brandenburg, where, under Adolf Hitler's "euthanasia" program, more than 8,000 physical and mental "defectives" were put to death.

Through the Keyhole. In three weeks of testimony, Bode unfolded a grisly story. Obrawalde was a large, handsome sanatorium surrounded by parks, and relatives were told how lucky their demented loved ones were to be so close to nature. But when patients arrived, a male nurse examined them, then assigned the strong ones to "Department 19," which meant the forced-labor camp. The weak ones went to "Department 20," the death room. "I was first told about the killings," testified Obrawalde's dentist, "by a group of children who had watched through the keyhole."

Massive overdoses of barbiturates were the technique, and it was often the nurses who gave the injections. Children were fed a treat as well as a treatment: poison mixed with marmalade. Patients who resisted had stomach tubes forced down their throats, or were given lethal enemas. But many were literally killed with kindness by the motherly defendants, who spoon-fed them, urging them cheerfully to take their medicine. "They obeyed me," recalled Margarete Tunkowski, 54, charged with 200 murders, "because I always performed my duty with love."

Satisfying No One. None of the whimpering defendants denied their deeds. They merely maintained they were following doctors' orders, faced punishment if they refused, and did not realize the gravity of their offense. "When Frau Doktor told me to give a patient five grams of luminal," explained Luise Erdmann, 63, "I naturally assumed there had been a mistake, and gave the normal dose of .5 gram." When she learned Frau Doktor had meant what she said, Luise went to the head physician and was told that it was all done on orders from above. "If it hadn't been legal," she added, "wouldn't the police have come?"

Judge Albert Thomas accepted their defense. "This verdict will satisfy no one," he said, acquitting them all, but "it is not possible to prove that the accused identified themselves with the Nazi ideas of the main perpetrators. They were automatic robots, simple-minded persons who lacked the ability to realize the illegality of their doings."

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