#025 The Fascination of One Fact in Nonfiction The Devil’s Castle: Nazi Eugenics, Euthanasia, And How Psychiatry’s Troubled History Reverberates Today by Susanne Paola Antonetta, published by Counterpointe Publisher on September 23, 2025.
https://www.counterpointpress.com/books/18125/
What made you decide to write this non-fiction work? I began this book when I learned that before the Second World War Nazi Germany, with input from the United States, first built gas chambers to kill their psychiatric population. Hundreds of thousands of people died, and without the expertise it took to create this first gas chambers, there would not have been a Holocaust.
http://zundelsite.org/archive/leuchter/report1/us_gas.html
https://holocaustcentrenorth.org.uk/blog/a-brief-history-of-the-first-nazi-gas-chambers/
From Left to Right: Viktor Brack testifies in his defense at the Doctors’ Trial in Nuremberg in 1947.
Albert Widmann at his postwar trial, the Gaswagen-Prozess, in Stuttgart. Philippe Bouhler on Nazi Party uniform
Can you talk about your experience of researching this non-fiction work? And the dates of when you began researching and when your research was complete? I began this book in 2017, made multiple trips to Germany, and learned the German language. I conducted many interviews and really didn’t complete my research until I submitted my book to the press in 2024. The dates (of writing) are the same as my research dates! I was editing and finalizing information up until the moment I submitted my manuscript.
From Left to Right: Susanne heading to Wangerooge in the North Sea of Germany, where Dorothea Buck had her first visions.
Susanne at Dorothea Buck’s house on the outskirts of Hamburg.
Where did you do most of your writing for this non-fiction work? Good question! I did most of the writing in my living room in Bellingham, Washington, where I no longer live, but did while writing this book. I looked out on my garden, had a wood stove next to me, and generally also had some kind of purry mammal thereabouts.
What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? I know writers who keep music playing while they write and even have book playlists. I can’t be distracted by any kind of noise. I am not a fast writer, so getting a book finished means a lot of undisturbed time whenever in the day I can grab it.
My one discipline is to try to force myself to draft a lot before revising. I usually have one of my cats (gray cat Budley) somewhere around. My orange cat Clarke loves to unexpectedly roll over on my laptop. This habit reminds me to save frequently!
Please include an excerpt of one FACT or one set of FACTS that you were most impacted by in this non-fiction work. The excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer. Dorothea Buck was sterilized under the Nazi law to prevent hereditary diseases and survived multiple institutionalizations. She lived to be one hundred and two, a passionate critic of historical wrongs and advocate for a new, humane psychiatry. Because Dorothea Buck died in 2019, I found her then, when I most needed her strength and her faith in consciousness’s powers. I followed her star with her during my own psychotic break. She died in October, and by dying received the most attention she’d ever had in U.S. media: her obituaries.
LEFT: 4 Tiergartenstrasse in Berlin, the headquarters of the Nazi Aktion T4 I explore in The Devil’s Castle. From this place came the orders to kill almost one hundred thousand neuro-psychiatric patients. A house stolen from a Jewish family, no longer there.
MIDDLE: the young Dorothea next to her sculptures.
RIGHT: Dorothea in her later years.
Why was this one fact or one set of facts so compelling for you to discover and to write about? The life of Dorothea Buck, a German Nazi survivor—she was sterilized at the age of 19 due to a diagnosis of schizophrenia—gripped me. I wanted the world to know her story. She was an activist who protested until the end of her life at the crimes committed by the Nazi government against psychiatric patients.
Susanne details her own psychic episode in the Fall 2019, around the same time frame that Dorthea Burk died.
Dorthea Burk is featured in her native language.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbXRRk9Oq4c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEpO1AEtxO0
Dorothea Burk interview in English.
https://bpe-online.de/gemeinsam-sind-wir-stark/
I felt like this heroic, warrior woman had been kind of lost to history. It’s been so important to me that people learn about Buck and hopefully read her book, now out in English: On the Trail of the Morning Star.
Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. I’m sorry, I keep nothing like that around. I do not hang onto drafts or anything of that sort. I would never get anything done if I did.
