Autism pioneer Hans Asperger 'sent disabled children to their deaths in Nazi euthanasia clinic'

The pioneering autism expert Hans Asperger – after whom the syndrome is named – sent dozens of disabled children to their deaths in a Nazi euthanasia clinic, a historian has claimed.

Asperger has been hailed for decades as a pioneer in understanding the autism spectrum – but he worked closely with the Nazis, a new study suggests.

A new study by Herwig Czech, from Vienna’s Medical University, overturns previous claims that the doctor shielded his child patients from the Nazi regime in Vienna where he worked.

The doctor referred children to a children’s clinic, Am Spiegelgrund, in Vienna’s Steinhof hospital – where disabled children were killed after being judged not ‘worthy to live’.

In the case of one three-year-old child, Herta Schreiber, Asperger wrote ‘the child must be an unbearable burden to the mother, who has to care for five healthy children’.

He recommended ‘permanent placement at Spiegelgrund’.

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At Am Spiegelgrund, 789 children were murdered either by lethal injection or being starved to death, with their deaths recorded as ‘pneumonia’.

Herwig Czech said: ‘These findings about Hans Asperger are the result of many years of careful research in the archives.

‘What emerges is that Asperger successfully sought to accommodate himself to the Nazi regime and was rewarded with career opportunities in return.’