Stokers

   The Nazi euthanasia process entailed among other methods of killing those deemed as “life unworthy of life,” the murder of patients in gas chambers. Following their deaths, orderlies known as “stokers” (Heiser) came in, disentangled the bodies, and dragged them out to the “death room,” where selected corpses were dissected and their organs removed for the purpose of sending them to research centers for study. The bodies of the dead were burned in the crematorium and their ashes shoveled in urns by the stokers. Subsequently ashes, not necessarily those of the deceased, were sent in urns to the grieving families.