Germans give former SS doctor accused of killing 900 children a medal

A former SS doctor accused of sending 900 sick children to their deaths under the Nazi euthanasia programme has been awarded a German medical association's highest honour.

The decision comes as Jewish organisations continue to press Germany to put 92-year-old Hans-Joachim Sewering on trial for mass murder.

He was given the Guenther-Budelmann medal by the German Federation of Internal Medicine for "unequalled services in the cause of freedom of the practice and the independence of the medical profession and to the nation's health system".

Sewering was a doctor at a tuberculosis clinic near Munich before World War II.

He allegedly signed orders sending 900 German Catholic children from the clinic to a "healing centre".

In fact, it was a killing centre carrying out a secret Nazi policy of murdering the handicapped who were declared "useless eaters" by the Nazis before the war.

Many of the Nazi participants in the programme went on to become death camp commandants and high-ranking officials of the Holocaust.

Four nuns who broke their vow of silence on the recommendation of the Archbishop of Munich in 1993 claim to have witnessed Sewering ordering the transfer of the children and signing documents to that effect.

The U.S. Anti-Defamation League, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and an independent committee seeking Sewering's prosecution claim he was an enthusiastic supporter of the euthanasia programme.

He has admitted to membership of the SS, an elite Nazi group, claiming he joined for "social reasons", but has always denied being responsible for euthanasia.

Sewering, former head of the German doctors' association, was designated in 1992 as chairman of the World Medical Association but had to withdraw the following year under international pressure because of the accusations against him.

Wolfgang Wesiack, president of the German Federation of Internal Medicine, said Sewering was honoured because "he deserved it".

He refused to talk about the Nazi allegations.

The case illustrates Germany's reluctance to pursue alleged Nazi war criminals.

Despite a flurry of trials after the war and a few in the early 1950s, Germany largely forgot about former Nazis, many of whom thrived in politics, the judiciary and the police.

A spokesman for the Committee to Bring Dr Hans-Joachim Sewering to Justice said he "symbolises the lingering legacy of Nazi medicine and the failure of a large part of the German medical community to take responsibility for their acts in the Third Reich".