“The Germans have never tried to kill mentally ill people here,” NIOD said, denying previous allegations

These were harsh words that Gerdi Verbeet, chairman of the National Committee 4 and 5 May, spoke in 2016 at a meeting about the ‘Forgotten victims during the Second World War in mental health care’. These psychiatric patients would “most likely have fallen victim to active neglect,” Verbeet said. A year later, the committee presented figures: the number of patients who died during the war had doubled compared to previous years: to 8,737. According to the committee, among them were unfortunate people who, for example, had deliberately received too little to eat.

That was a strong accusation. The staff who cared for ‘insane’ during the occupation are said to have knowingly contributed to their patients not surviving the war. A scientific study was commissioned to provide factual substantiation for this idea, which is also widely held by surviving relatives.

This Tuesday, NIOD employees Eveline Buchheim and Ralf Futselaar will present the results of this research in the book Driven out of care. The Dutch insane asylum during the Second World War, and guess what? There has been no neglect of psychiatric patients – certainly no conscious neglect.

What idea did you start with this project?

Futselaar: “We found the mortality rates shockingly high. And you soon see in the archives that mortality in mental health care – we deliberately use the term from that time, because it is ahistorical to talk about mental health care – did indeed double during the war.

“It was not surprising that we initially thought that the image that existed within the 4 and 5 May Committee, and that also emerged from other publications, was correct. Especially if you combine these figures with the knowledge that people with mental disabilities were murdered on a large scale in Germany because the Nazis considered them inferior.”

Buchheim: “We thought our research would have a serious outcome.”

F: “It also became intense, but in a different way than expected.”

How did you proceed?

B: “During the occupation, there were more than thirty institutions in the Netherlands that dealt with the care of the insane. In four of them, we entered all registration registers into a database and viewed a large number of patient files. This involved the reformed institution Dennenoord in Zuidlaren, the Catholic institutions Sint Anna and Sint Servatius in Venray, the public institutions Rhijngeest, Voorgeest and Endegeest in Oegstgeest and the Dr. Mr. Willem van den Bergh Foundation for the education of ‘idiot and retarded children’ in Noordwijk. This way we had a good geographical spread and all pillars were represented.”

F: “We also looked at what could be found in other sources on this subject. Our suspicion was that everything had been kept a bit under wraps – because of the possible neglect – but that turned out not to be the case. Immediately after the war, there was already talk about that high mortality and the possible explanations for it.”

Have you found any evidence that someone consciously attempted to kill patients?

F: “The Germans never tried to kill mentally ill people in occupied territory as they did in Germany – not in the Netherlands and not elsewhere in occupied Europe. They had other priorities: hunting Jews and fighting the resistance.”

B: “Occasionally German soldiers made comments here about useless mouths that had long since been killed, but that was it.”

F: “There were mental health care workers who were members of the NSB, but they also made no suggestions to give people less food or to sterilize them. The same applied to the rest of the doctors, nurses and orderlies. The documents show that the staff has done everything they can to care for their patients as best as possible.”

NIOD researcherRalf Futselaar The staff did everything they could to take the best possible care of their patients

Could malicious people falsify those accounts in order to conceal their actions?

B: “We were struck by how extensively everything was reported – there were daily, weekly, monthly and annual reports. If you want to falsify all of them, you have to set up an extremely sophisticated system in which many people participate.”

F: “We have no indication that this has happened. In fact, much correspondence focuses on care and mercy. The idea was – and you still see this in mental health institutions: we take care of the people who have nowhere to turn.”

What impression did you get of the conditions in mental care?

F: “From day one of the occupation, people were faced with shortages. Food was rationed, there was a shortage of textiles and fuel. When you deal with sick people, that is of course a big problem. This became increasingly worse during the course of the war, reaching its lowest point during the Hunger Winter.”

B: “Furthermore, there was a constant feeling of threat. We now know that the Germans had no intention of harming the patients, but enough rumors filtered through from Germany at the time to cause unrest.”

You write that there were regular evacuations of patients, forced by war conditions. What were the consequences of that?

F: “When the Willem van den Bergh Foundation in Noordwijk had to evacuate, hundreds of children returned to their parents. This was not because they would no longer have to live in an institution, but because the receiving institution could not accommodate everyone.

“Due to the concentration in these receiving institutions, the level of care deteriorated. The families of patients who were younger or had fewer complaints therefore preferred to take someone back into their home. As a result, the facilities were left with a relatively old and unhealthy population.”

B: “We also saw that the people who were admitted to an institution for the first time during the war were often elderly. They suffered from dementia, combined with other conditions. We saw that patients sometimes died within 24 hours of being admitted. Then you did die in an institution, but not door the institution.”

Do your findings mean a rehabilitation of the staff who worked in mental care during the Second World War?

B: “Absolutely. Yes, it is true that death rates were high. This was because the population of the institutions became older and sicker and because of the war itself, which meant that overcrowded institutions had to make do with fewer and fewer resources. The staff has done everything they can to provide the best possible care to their patients under these circumstances.”

F: “We are curious how our research will be received, because there is a plan to name these deceased patients as a separate group of victims on May 4 during Remembrance Day. Our conclusions really do shed new light on that intention.”

Also read
Dutch officials worked closely with the German occupier: ‘The best of evil has been removed’

Arthur Seyss-Inquart.” class=”dmt-article-suggestion__image” src=”https://images.nrc.nl/KD21c4LlFmzZBZ8lE-wx6QpkwK8=/160×96/smart/filters:no_upscale()/s3/static.nrc.nl/bvhw/files/2023/09/data104634101-799e66.jpg”/>