In 1945, eighteen physicians from Hamburg, all of them on the staff of the Rothenburgsort Pediatric Hospital, were brought before the German criminal justice system at the behest of the British Occupying Forces. All eighteen were charged with murdering, or acting as accessories to the murder of, fifty-six children who had been diagnosed as permanently unfit between 1939 and 1945, by means of lethal injection. In 1949, the Langericht (regional court) of Hamburg dismissed the charges. Yes, "it has been objectively verified" that "at least fifty-six children were killed at the Rothenburgsort Pediatric Hospital." Yes, these acts were "against the law." The judges argued, however, that "all of the defendants . . . deny their guilt . . . and contest the charge that they committed any acts in objective violation of the law, explaining that they believed their actions to be permitted under the law."
- From The Law of Blood: Thinking and Acting as a Nazi by Johann Chapoutot
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