West Germany: Murder by Marmalade

Snuffling in handkerchiefs, their stringy hair drawn back in buns, the 14 hefty women huddled in the dock looked more like a woebegone Kaffeeklatsch of housewives than a team of killers for the Nazi cause. They were criminals all the same, maintained Munich State Attorney Manfred Bode, and they were charged with more than 800 deaths. Between 1942 and 1945, these 14 "angels of death" had worked as nurses at the Obrawalde insane asylum in Brandenburg, where, under Adolf Hitler's "euthanasia" program, more than 8,000 physical and mental "defectives" were put to death.

Through the Keyhole. In three weeks of...

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