I am disturbed by the human tendency to categorise certain unusual behavioural traits in children as a “syndrome”. I could well be diagnosed as having Banana-perger Syndrome – being particularly partial to bananas; whereas I contend that enjoying bananas is within a normal spectrum of chimpanzee likes and dislikes.

I have been reading an article by Russell Grigg ‘Nazi Child Euthanasia and Hans Asperger’. It is an introduction to the history of Asperger Syndrome, which has been recorded in Dr. Edith Sheffer ‘s book, Aspberger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Germany. 

Hans Aspberger (1906-1980) was an Austrian pediatrician, medical theorist, and professor, who studied mental disorders in children and declared his allegiance, during the war, to the tenets of Nazi medicine. He would sign his diagnostic reports with “Heil Hitler”. He is pictured above with a child in about 1940.

In 1941, Asperger was asked to be the medical advisor on a seven-member commission to assess the ‘educability’ of children at the Gugging psychiatric hospital in Vienna. Those children labelled ‘uneducable’ were to be delivered to the operation of Dr Jekelius at the Am Spiegelgrund, a children’s psychiatric clinic founded in July 1940 at the Steinhof psychiatric hospital in Vienna.

Dr Erwin Jekelius was the first Medical Director of this clinic until 1942, and as such was responsible for the deaths that occurred there under his direction. All told, from 1940 to 1945, 789 children were killed here, making it the Reich’s second largest child killing facility. Just from Gugging, 59 of 158 children evaluated by the commision died at Spiegelgrund before the end of the war, a death rate of 39.3%.

A memorial garden has been planted for the 789 children killed at Spiegelgrund Clinic see picture here. 

We chimpanzees  nurture our off-spring. Why can’t human beings always treasure each one of their children?

Gibber! Gibber!

Chugley

The Nurtured Chimp