Adolf Hitler stopped the program on 24 August 1941.
Two months later, the first large extermination camp, under the command of the SS, was opened near Chelmno, and there all the biological and ideological enemies of Germany, the disabled and the Jews, were gassed and cremated on an industrial scale.
In the following months, extermination camps were opened at Belzec, Sobibor, Majdanek, Treblinka and Auschwitz.
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The administrator of Action T4, Franz Stangl, who was responsible for the deaths of thirty thousand disabled people at the euthanasia center of Schloss Hartheim, became the first commandant of the Sobibor extermination camp.
Between May and August 1942, he killed a hundred thousand Jews.
Franz Stangl was promoted to the post of commandant at the extermination camp Treblinka II.
Between August 1942 and August 1943, he killed another eight hundred thousand Jews.
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After the fall of the Third Reich, Franz Stangl fled to Brazil.
Pursued by Simon Wiesenthal, he was arrested on 28 February 1967 and extradited to Germany.
Found guilty of the deaths of more than nine hundred thousand people — among them the cerebral palsy sufferers from Action T4 and the Jews from Operation Reinhard — he died in his cell in Düsseldorf.
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Like Franz Stangl, Josef Mengele also fled to Brazil.
As an SS doctor, he was charged with examining and selecting the prisoners from the Auschwitz extermination camp.
The able-bodied — who could be used for slave labor — were sent to his right. The less able-bodied — who could be immediately gassed and cremated — were sent to his left.
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(Picture Credit 1.8)
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In the previous image: Josef Mengele in Auschwitz selects those who will live and those who will die.
The photo was taken in 1944.
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In Auschwitz, Josef Mengele conducted medical experiments that resulted in the disability or death of thousands of prisoners.
Educated at the Institute of Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt, he had a particular interest in hereditary anomalies, such as dwarfism, hermaphroditism and Down’s syndrome. According to him, Judaism itself was a hereditary anomaly. In their natural state, all Jews were “monsters.” And all “monsters” were Jews.
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In one of his experiments, Josef Mengele selected two boys — one of whom was disabled — and cut them in half lengthways with a scalpel.
Then he sewed one child to the other: back to back, shoulder to shoulder, wrist to wrist — as if they were Siamese twins.
One of the boys was called Nino. The other boy was called Tito.
That’s right: Tito.
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Tito and Nino.
My sons are called Tito and Nico.
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We are on Enseada beach in Bertioga.
On 7 February 1979, Josef Mengele waded into the sea on Enseada beach, had a brain hemorrhage and died.
I have come here with my sons Tito and Nico, on the trail of Josef Mengele. I want to wade into the sea in which he died. I want to dance on his corpse. I want to celebrate the value of the life of a disabled son.
I am the Simon Wiesenthal of cerebral palsy.
Josef Mengele is dead. Tito is alive.
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On Enseada beach, I blow up some water wings.
Tito — the monster — wades into the sea. Nico goes with him.
Tito and Nico: one is sewn to the other.
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In the previous image: my Siamese twins.
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Tito improved rapidly at Padua Hospital.
On the second day of his life, he stopped having convulsions.
On the third day of his life, he could breathe without the help of machines.
On the fourth day of his life, he uttered a sound that the doctors interpreted as crying. On the fifth day of his life, he opened his eyes wide. On the sixth day of life, he took milk from the breast. On the seventh day of life, he was discharged from the neonatal intensive-care unit and placed in a room with my wife.
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A week later, Tito came home.
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We lived in the Palazzo Barbaro Wolkoff on the Grand Canal, next to the Palazzo Dario.
Who designed the Palazzo Dario?
That’s right: Pietro Lombardo.
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(Picture Credit 1.9)
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In the previous image: the Palazzo Barbaro Wolkoff, where we lived, and to its right the Palazzo Dario.
The painting is by Claude Monet. It dates from 1908.
I am at the window, cradling Tito and looking out over the Grand Canal.
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Claude Monet stayed in Venice two and a half months.
When he painted my windows, his wife, Alice, wrote in a letter to her daughter Germaine:
He’s doing some marvellous work and, between you and me, it’s a welcome change from those old water lilies.
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I am the Claude Monet of cerebral palsy. Tito is my water lily. He has become my sole subject matter. I devote myself entirely to him, he is my one passion. I never tire of my subject matter either. I always find in him an unexpected color, an unexplored shadow. Tito is the Absolute. Tito is Everything.
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Pietro Lombardo designed the Palazzo Dario in 1486.
In the same year, Jacopo Sansovino was born.
Like Pietro Lombardo, Jacopo Sansovino is linked in circular fashion to Tito’s birth. First, he designed one wing of the Scuola Grande di San Marco, completing Pietro Lombardo’s work. Then he designed the Church of San Giuliano, adorning its doorway with a statue of Tommaso Rangone. Finally, he designed the Palazzo Corner, opposite the Palazzo Dario and the Palazzo Barbaro Wolkoff, on the other side of the Grand Canal.
I could see the Palazzo Dario and the Palazzo Corner from my window.
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(Picture Credit 1.10)
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In the previous image: on the right, the Palazzo Dario, designed by Pietro Lombardo, and on the left the Palazzo Corner, designed by Jacopo Sansovino.
The painting is by Canaletto. It dates from 1738.
I am still at the same window, cradling Tito and looking out over the Grand Canal.
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According to John Ruskin, the Palazzo Dario is an “exquisite example” of the domestic architecture of the time. The Palazzo Corner, on the other hand, built half a century later, in 1537, was “one of the worst and coldest buildings of the central Renaissance.”
The Palazzo Dario expressed the soul of a true artist like Pietro Lombardo, who could also reason, but only occasionally, and who could even acquire knowledge, but only the knowledge he could pick up “without stooping, or reach without pains.” The Palazzo Corner, on the other hand, expressed Jacopo Sansovino’s academic pride, along with his geometrical fanaticism, which could “be taught to any schoolboy in a week.”