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Lily Offenbacher Shares Her Knowledge of the "Euthanasia" Program with the U.S. Coordinator of Information (September 1941)

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The Linde Eis Maschinn [sic] factory has been extremely busy since the beginning of the war. They are said to manufacture small gas bombs used as fuses of bigger bombs. There were also rumors that these gas bombs had been used in the conquest of French forts. Another persistent rumor was that some kind of poison gas was produced there which made whole groups of persons unconscious. All the French prisoners who were spread all over the country and who were generally considered to be very well treated, answered questions about the way in which they had been taken prisoner by saying that they did not know what had happened, but had awakened in Munich after a deep sleep. This detail was corroborated by tales of German soldiers who said they had seen cattle grazing before forts falling down without reason visible from the outside.

There is also a completely new munitions factory near the Ostfriedhof in the disguise of small houses of a housing estate. They are an exact replica of settlement houses of the police force in the vicinity of the churchyard. Very few people realize the true nature of this group of buildings.

The big military air field is not any longer in Schleissheim but in Riem.

There is also a dummy factory in Puchheim, the next station after Germering. Here a garbage dump is made to give the impression of a factory by the installation of electric fires. As far as I know, no bombs have been dropped there yet.

There is also an airplane trial station east of the railway station of Baierbrun where there is a big camouflaged hangar."

Mrs. Offenbacher will make map sketches of the places about which she informs. She has also evidence that actually thousands of inmates of homes for the mentally defective were put to death. They seem to have been used instead of guinea-pigs for a vivisectional experiments on the effect of gas. The usual course of events was that the patients who were certified for mental diseases were taken for a bus ride to an unknown destination or to Linz where there is a big home for mental defectives. A few weeks later the relations received an urn with their ashes, and the institution from which they were taken received the patient's clothes. These clothes were, according to unanimous evidence of nurses and doctors, contaminated with the smell of gas. Mrs. Offenbacher knows more details about this and other evidence on the German home front which she hopes to use for publication. She has little means. She is ready to give this additional information also to us if it is any use for publication by a British organization. She is most interested in military training, preferably in the air force in one of the British forces which accepts foreigners. She has a great experience in motoring and is the holder of several prizes for motor races.


REPORT ON MERCY KILLINGS


Mrs. Offenbacher (Olsen) completes her report:

I forgot to mention that a particularly well constructed air raid shelter was built on the corner of Galleriesstrasse and Prinzrefuheustrasse near the Prince Karl Palais (the former Austrian Legation). Most of the important state functions take place in the Prince Karl Palais.

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