Viktor Brack (1904 – 1948)

Alongside Philip Bouhler and Karl Brandt, Viktor Brack was one of the people most responsible for the National Socialist »euthanasia« crimes. Brack came from a family of doctors and spent part of his childhood and youth in Munich, where he then studied agriculture, then economics, at the Technical University. In 1929, Brack joined the National Socialist Party and the SS, rising to become SS-Oberführer by 1940. In 1932, he became an employee of the party headquarters of the NSDAP, first as Chief of Staff of the Reich Managing Director Philip Bouhler.

In the »Chancellery of the Führer« (KdF), formed in 1934, Brack became Chief of Office II and the deputy of Reichsleiter Bouhler in 1936. In this function, he was responsible for organizing and implementing the T4 killings. He participated in the first »trial killings« in Brandenburg in January 1940. Up to 1943, Brack was also involved in other »euthanasia crimes«, such as in the murder of concentration camp prisoners in »Aktion 14f13«, in the death camps in Poland as part of »Aktion Reinhardt« as well as in attempts to castrate people using x-rays in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Brack was sentenced to death in the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial in 1947 and executed in Landsberg am Lech in 1948.