Bettelheim was hired in 1944 to be the director of the Orthogenic School for Troubled Children at the University of Chicago as a residential treatment milieu for such children, who he felt would benefit from a "parentectomy". This marked the apex of autism viewed as a disorder of parenting.[16] Some authority was granted to this as well, because Bettelheim had himself been interned at the Dachau concentration camp before World War II.