Bezduszni. Zapomniana zagłada chorych

The subject of World War II might appear to have been thoroughly exhausted in the literature. However, writers and researchers continue to arise who deepen our knowledge and uncover further shocking facts concerning this period.

The author has turned her attention to the most overlooked group among the victims of World War II – children and adults in psychiatric clinics and care homes.

According to the author’s estimates, at least 20,000 patients from psychiatric hospitals and inmates of care homes died during the war. The exact number of victims from this group is impossible to establish due to incomplete, destroyed or lost documentation. The tragic stories of the sick are overlaid with the concepts of eugenics and euthanasia, in which those who could produce offspring with hereditary conditions were deprived of life. The victims were often subjected to medical experimentation and, years after the war, many of the doctors who took part in it have still not been held accountable for their crimes.

This book constitutes a thorough piece of reportage. The author has not only accessed archival sources in the form of acts, minutes of hearings and newspaper articles, but has also discovered witnesses who, though few, preserve the memory of events of more than eighty years ago. Soulless Beings sheds new light on a recently discovered, but still not fully understood history.