This chilling documentary brings to light an overlooked but crucial episode in Holocaust history - the Euthanasia Program. Instituted in 1939 by the Nazi's to eliminate the mentally handicapped, this systematic killing program was the pivotal first step toward mass extermination. The procedures developed for the Euthanasia Program were later used at Auschwitz and other death camps. The denial of the Hippocratic oath by German doctors was a crucial factor in creating the Nazi killing machine. As early as 1940, during a mercy killing operation (euthanasia), medical doctors and scientists had developed the first model of the gas chamber and crematorium. From planning and organizing through mass selections into actual killing, doctors misused their medical authority and provided a scientific legitimation for the Nazi killing machine. Without the initiative and cooperation of Nazi doctors, it is doubtful whether the death industry of the holocaust would have developed to the extent that it did. In the film, Aviram reveals the ambivalent position of the physician in society as both healer and harbinger of death. It conveys a sense of moral outrage at the idea of doctors applying their own moral judgment concerning which lives are worth living. `The doctor is the gatekeeper between life and death, so people tend to ask him for advice, and he wields that kind of life and death authority,' said Aviram. `But the doctor should not be a philosopher. His job is to preserve life.'