Vichy mentally ill patients 'were not murdered'

The UK's Telegraph reports that:

A two-year investigation into the deaths of 50,000 mentally ill patients under France's Vichy regime has found they mostly starved to death, rather than being intentionally killed following the Nazi example. French historians have argued recently that the Vichy government deliberately created appalling conditions in its asylums as a form of "gentle genocide"

They supported their arguments with horrific reports written by the doctors working in the asylums during the war, describing patients eating their own hands and books, causing stomach ruptures and death.

The latest research by a team of academics in Lyons concluded that the malnutrition was similar to that experienced by all of France during the war.

They argue that if there had been a secret plan to kill the mentally ill there would have been some record of it. In Germany, the murder of the mentally ill was kept top secret but there are still thousands of documents.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/10/17/wvichy17.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/10/17/ixworld.html

Gentle genocide, indeed....enforced starvation is torture

Is a bit more efficient...