Gray Matter (2004)
Plot: In the spring of 2002, acclaimed filmmaker Joe
Berlinger (Brother’s Keeper, Paradise Lost, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster)
traveled to Vienna to witness the burial of the preserved brains of over 700
handicapped children.
My Review and Thoughts:
This is possibly one of the most disturbing documentaries I
have ever seen. A true brutal experience. I could not help crying. I was
disturbed and also in pain at the truth and sickening reality that this
happened and nothing was ever done to the ones responsible. To realize that the
research on these innocent victims brains, where still being used all the way
up into the late 90’s was a disgusting and uncalled for reality. The hospital
and all those doctors who brutalized these children are no more than historical
monsters that deserve no mention in the term of science or medicine.
Every doctor that experimented on those brains and organs
after the war was over, was no better than the Nazi’s themselves. I couldn’t
believe how horrible and hopeless I felt watching this film. To know that over
700 children were brutally murdered and experimented on why they were still
alive is heartbreaking. I know millions of children died during World War II
but those select few who were considered inferior because of being deaf or
mentally challenged or having some sort of handicap were experimented upon and
ultimately murdered in disturbing and sickening ways.
This is created by a brilliant documentarian who created one
of my all-time favorite documentaries Paradise Lost and also the brilliant Brother’s
Keeper. In this documentary Joe goes above and beyond showcasing the horrendous
truth of this hospital and all the preserved brains that came from victims that
were destroyed, mutilated, experimented on and ultimately put to death in
horrible manners by by members of Nazi Germany. The majority of these victims
at this hospital can be traced to one doctor. A doctor that seems to have been
forgotten through history. A doctor, a Nazi brutalizer and disgusting human being.
He is the vilest of the VILE. He is what the term monster, boogie man, beast
and devil is. Dr. Heinrich Gross is everything that the term evil is.
Gross got away with all his unspeakable experiments,
murders, and asinine destruction of children. He said it was in the cause of
science and the exploration of understanding the human mind. He defended
himself killing helpless children. The Spiegelgrund mental hospital was a place
of nightmares, horrors, and mass murder. This hospital still stands today and
is still a mental hospital. Dr. Gross continued to work there after the war
still experimenting on his many victims and still publicized science and
medical essays and documents and still praised and regarded as a brilliant
doctor. He was used by the Austrian judicial system to state if people were
mentally capable of standing trial. They knew of his past and he still was
allowed to be praised, honored, and was highly respected by the bigwigs of the
courts such as judges, mayors and politicians. To me that showcases that the
Austrian government after the war up until 2000 was nothing more than Nazi
sympathizers.
There are those few doctors that did raise awareness and did
object to knowing that he continued to work there and continue to be praised
and for those I applaud and congratulate you on being true heroes of the cause
of stamping out the beliefs of the Nazis and their horror. For America is no
different we harbored Nazis for our own scientific gain. Every country
harvested the exploits of a group of horrendous monsters. To me any Nazi that
was directly responsible no matter how good they are today or how old they are
today or how frail they are today, if they caused murder then they are
murderers and should be held responsible for the action that the law says.
This is a documentary that I think everyone should see that
everyone should discuss and everyone should recommend. It’s something I highly
praise as being nightmarish yet so truthful in the reality that these
individuals still existed and was still able to practice, to further themselves,
to be recommended, to be awarded and to be praised.
I think one of the worst things about the documentary or one
of the most horrible experiments was listening to the survivors of the
hospital. To listen to what they did to these children. Also going in the brain
room with thousands of brains are in jars and cut into medical slides. You get
to see images in the faces and each one of these victims. Listening to the
person at the funeral say their names and their ages and family members or
mourners holding up pictures of their sweet, beautiful, innocent lovely faces
knowing that each one of them were experimented on and ultimately destroyed is
something I will never forget seeing or knowing. This is a historical
documentary that should be placed in a setting that all people should see for
its historical documented merit of an atrocity at a mental hospital and the
atrocity that was allowed upon innocent children and the atrocity that was
still allowed until 2002. The last known study and document written on the
brains of the children was in 1998, clearly meaning the brains were still used
even though they knew that these brains were murder victims and clearly still
did not have a proper and humane burial.
Of course it took a bunch a journalist and a bunch of people
to finally raise awareness to cause the Australian government and the politicians
of Vienna to actually do something even though it should’ve been done a long
time ago. I think one of the most asinine realities in this documentary is
watching the people, those so-called politicians and government workers and
hospital personnel in trying to rationalize that these experiments on these
brains and children helped the scientific community. Nothing and I mean nothing
gives anybody the right to experiment, destroy, mutilate, and savagely murder
an innocent person simply because they wanted to see how an individual that was
deaf, a Jehovah’s Witness, mentally handicapped, blind, physically handicapped,
or an orphan functioned. For some of these children had nothing wrong with them
and even if the ones that had something wrong with them, none of them deserved
what happened to them. Their tiny, innocent, beautiful little bodies were
savagely mistreated and led straight into the genocide that Nazi Germany and
all their followers caused.
My favorite excuse that all those that were involved with
Nazi Germany is all I was doing was following orders. Each and every one of
those persons that participated in the destruction, in the experiments, or the
mass genocide of any individual no matter black, white, Jew or Gentile should
be held responsible for their actions. For I don’t know how any person could’ve
lived within themselves knowing what they did. To me that just shows you the
ultimate lack of humanity that these individuals from a regular person all the
way to a Nazi SS person believed and detailed. For if you knew it was happening
or if you set on the side and watched and did not give your life to save
another individual, another human being. If you did nothing about what was
happening then you are no better than the person holding the door to the gas
chambers, to the showers of the concentration camps. Countries and governments
and people accepted and followed and murdered whatever they were told to do
without blinking an eye. And what are their excuses today and throughout history
it’s what I was told to do, it was my orders. Every person big or small knows
what is right and what is wrong and what is humane, no matter of government
policy or war propaganda, hate is hate, and murder is murder.
Dr. Heinrich Gross was born in 1915 and I can say that I
have no sadness at his death in 2005. He was considered an Austrian
psychiatrist and a medical doctor and neurologist. But to his victims at least
the ones that survived he was nothing more than a killing machine, a monster of
nightmares of the Nazi regime. He used the euthanasia program at the
Spiegelgrund Children’s Mental Hospital during World War II. It can only be
proven that he at least killed nine children but we all know he had a role in
the hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of a genocide of children. It took
until April 28, 2002 for those brains and other remains that came from these
murdered children to finally be buried. One has to understand that in Nazi
Germany inside the concentration camps the euthanasia program was used as an
efficient killing reality to get rid of whoever they deemed not fit and
basically an excuse, not that they needed one but to murder individuals.
Heinrich Gross started his career at the hospital on November 15, 1940 and he
worked until 1945. It is said he killed more children than any other doctor at
this hospital. But it wasn’t just murder, it was horrible means of torture.
Children were used as guinea pigs. They were forced to stand in the snow
barefooted, needles were stuck in their head while air was pumped into their
veins and also their brain. They were experimented upon by many drugs, formulas,
and other chemicals. After the war Dr. Gross went on to specialize in nervous
and mental diseases and he also became a head prison doctor and physician at
the hospital of Am Steinhof.
Sickening to know he also became the chief court
psychiatrist in determining if a man had mental issues. Mostly working in
insanity cases and he became the maker of the main decision in sterilization
cases. Shockingly he then had parts of an Institute created specifically for
him on the abnormalities of the nervous system in 1968. For many years he was
considered the most busy court expert. But it has been learned that most of his
diagnosis and expertise was whatever he wished to do. Many of the people that
he deemed fit or unfit he never even looked at or ever studied their persona,
he simply signed his name. This was all allowed by the Austrian government.
Surprisingly he made many public speeches and was brought too many conferences
to be a speaker. Surprisingly even many attempts at taking him to court to get
justice for all the victims of his heinous actions led really to nothing other
than having his awards stricken from him.
This documentary painstakingly showcases the horrors of this
monster and also the horrors of the monsters of the government that allowed
this evil individual to continue on doing what he did without justice. The
victims and those who were savagely murdered and with those still living today
with the nightmarish deeds done to them, will never get the justice they
deserve. The atrocities of World War II should never be forgotten. These sad
cases of horrendous murder and the defilement of the remaining parts of their
bodies, all the way up until 2002 is a sad reality of humanity. Humanity is the
ultimate evil but thankfully there are people like directors and producers and
researchers like Joe, to bring out these covered up and hidden atrocities, so
that they can be remembered and expressed and so that these horrors will never
happen again.
I think this is one of the shining examples of a documentary
that expresses everything that it needed to expressed and showcased everything
that it needed to showcase so that the viewer can remember every moment of this
filmed documentary. A good documentary or a good film is something that the
viewer will always remember and this is one of those documentaries that will
forever be a part of my thinking process. And I will forever recommended this
documentary for it is the truth and it is historical in that we can all learn
and never forget that all these innocent children who never had a voice, who
never had a good experience, who savagely and brutally was taken out and still
never got the justice they deserved, but as long as they are remembered, they
will get the peace they deserve.