Holocaust

Nazi Germany was not the first or only country to sterilize people considered "abnormal." Before Hitler, the United States led the world in forced sterilizations. Between 1907 and 1939, more than 30,000 people in twenty-nine states were sterilized, many of them unknowingly or against their will, while they were incarcerated in prisons or institutions for the mentally ill. Nearly half the operations were carried out in California. Advocates of sterilization policies in both Germany and the United States were influenced by eugenics. This sociobiological theory took Charles Darwin's principle of natural selection and applied it to society. Eugenicists believed the human race could be improved by controlled breeding.

Still, no nation carried sterilization as far as Hitler's Germany. Persons with disabilities - over 200,000 - are the first victims of the Holocaust. The atrocities caused by Hitler and the Nazi regime are well-known in the Jewish community. Most people think only of the great losses suffered by the Jews when the word "Holocaust" is mentioned. But the disabled were despised by Hitler and the regime because a disability of any kind was an abhorrent to the future of his dream of a perfect race. In his lunacy, Hitler believed by eradicating every disabled person, he could wipe out disability. Babies born deaf, blind or with even the slightest imperfection were immediately disposed of, and abortions were common if the parents genetic lineage was in question.

In 1934, this 19 year old shop clerk, identified only as "Gerda D," was diagnosed schizophrenic and sterilized at the Moabite Hospital. In 1939, she was repeatedly refused a marriage certificate because of her sterilization.

Hitler ordered the making of propaganda films to persuade the public of the necessity of eliminating people with genetic defects. The film "Victims of the Past" was made on Hitler's explicit orders and he made sure the film was shown in Germany's 5,300 cinemas. Special lighting effects distorted features so people with disabilities were portrayed as grotesque and could only survive at the expense of healthy people.⁵

The Nazis also sterilized nearly 400,000 Germans believed to have genetic impurities. During the 1930's, people with disabilities in Germany were referred to as "useless eaters". Nazi Germany targeted the disabled and the elderly as a drain on public resources. Doctors, not soldiers, were put in charge of killing the elderly and disabled, since they had first-hand knowledge of where they lived, and if the disability was temporary or not. Those deemed "curable" were transferred to special hospitals for slave labor and experiments. Dr. Josef Mengele was the most famous of these "researchers", torturing hundreds of children, especially those of a multiple birth, i.e. twins.

The lives of institutionalized children were further brutalized by visits from members of the SA, SS, Hitler Youth and League of German Maidens who were taken on tours of institutions. The visitors regarded these tours as "freak shows" and there were many instances of nasty and brutal behavior towards the children who lived in the institutions.^6,7 More than 20,000 visitors came to the Eglfing-Haar institution. Dr. Pfannmuller, the director, took his visitors to the wards and lectured them ( in front of the children) about the necessity of killing disabled for the "good of the nation". Pfanmuller advocated killing children long before the child euthanasia program was put into effect and used starvation as his preferred method.⁷

The Hadamar "euthanasia" center. In all likeli-hood the smoke is from the crematoria.
Hadamar, Germany, 1941

At Hadamar Hospital in Germany, more than 10,000 people with disabilities were killed between January and August of 1941. The first killings were by starvation, then by lethal injection. At the outbreak of W.W.II, Hitler ordered widespread "mercy killing" of the sick and disabled. The Nazi euthanasia program, code-named Aktion TA was instituted to eliminate "life unworthy of life".

 T4 MEDICAL QUESTIONNAIRE

Questionnaire 1
Case no..............................................................
Name of Institution:.............................in:..................
First and family name of patient:................maiden name:.........
Date of birth:.............City:......................District:.......
Last Residence:.......................................District:.......
Unmarr., marr., wid., div.:.....Relig:.....Race^a......Natlty:.........
Address of nearest relative:..........................................
Regular visits and by whom (address):.................................
Guardian or Care-Giver (name, address):...............................
Cost-bearer:...................How long in this inst.:................
In other Institutions; when and how long:.............................
How long sick:...........From where and when transferred:.............
Twin yes/no..............Mentally ill blood relatives:................ Diagnosis:............................................................
Primary symptoms:.....................................................
Mainly bedridden? yes/no....Very restless yes/no....Confined yes/no....
Incurable phys. illness: yes/no:.......War casualty: yes/no............
For schizophrenia: Recent case......Final stage.....good remission.....
For retardation: Debility:..........Imbecile:.......Idiot:.............
For epilepsy: Psych. changes........Average freq. of attacks...........
For senile disorders: Very confused..................Soils self........
Therapy (Insulin, Cardiazol, Malaria, Salvarsan, etc.): Lasting effects: yes/no....
Referred on the basis of §51, §42b Crim. Code, etc.........By..........
Crime:............Earlier criminal acts:....................
Type of Occupation: (Most exact description of work and productivity, e.g. Fieldwork, does not do much.--Locksmith's shop, good skhled worker.--No vague answers, such as housework, rather precise: cleaning room; etc..
Always indicate also, whether constantly, frequently or only occasionally occupied)..................................................................................................
Release expected soon:............................................................................. Remarks:..................................................................................................
Do not mark in this Space.

^aGerman or related blood (German-blooded), Jew, Jewish Mischling (half-breed) 1st or 2nd degree, Negro (Mischling), Gypsy (Mischling), etc.

Translated in Robert J. Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York, 1986), pp. 68-69.

908 patients were transferred from Schoebrunn, an institution for the mentally retarded and chronically ill, to the euthanasia installation at Eglfign-Haar to be gassed. After being gassed, the bodies were cremated.

A monument to the victims now stands in the courtyard at Schoenbrunn.

In Germany, a recognition that the Holocaust claimed the lives of thousands of people with disabilities

in 1941, a Catholic bishop, Clemens von Galen, delivered a sermon in Munster Cathedral attacking the Nazi euthanasia program calling it "plain murder". Hitler suspended Aktion T4, which had accounted for nearly 100,000 deaths by this time. The euthanasia program quietly continued using drugs and starvation instead of gassing.

After the war in 1948, The General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights.  This declaration was a direct result of the atrocities during W.W.II, but it was also the first formal steps to the Civil Rights movement. Many other disabled advocacy groups began soon afterwards, such as the United Cerebral Palsy Association (founded 1948), the National Association for Retarded Children (1950) and The Muscular Dystrophy Association (1950).

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© 2003 Barbara J. McKee