Last year, I [Reed Larson-Erf] checked out the book Asperger’s Children: the Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna by Edith Sheffer (2018) from my local library. As someone on the autism spectrum who avoids the label “Asperger’s Syndrome,” owing to the eponymous doctor’s Nazi connections, I was very intrigued by the book. In her introduction, Sheffer notes, “While [Asperger] offered intensive and individualized care to children he regarded as promising, he prescribed harsh institutionalization and even transfer to Spiegelgrund [a hospital and killing center] for children he judged to have greater disabilities.”
Ever since reading that chapter, I [R.L.E] have wondered how I would be judged if I were under Asperger’s care. I am haunted by the thought that I [R.L.E] would be considered capable of “social integration,” while other people with disabilities I know would be sent to die.
The Holocaust is perhaps the most well-known genocide in the Western world. From 1933-1945, this human tragedy claimed the lives of more than 11 million people, particularly targeting Jewish people, who account for more than 6 million of the total lives lost. The effects of the Holocaust on the Jewish diaspora are not negligible, and still reverberate today.
Less well-known are the Holocaust’s effects on people with disabilities.
People with disabilities (an umbrella label describing a host of differences in cognitive and physical functioning, some less visible than others) had long been demonized. In 1927, ruling on the case of Buck v. Bell, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed for a 17-year-old considered “feeble-minded” by the state of Virginia to be sterilized. In his opinion for the case, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declared, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” (According to Klaus Fries of The New York Times, the Buck v. Bell decision has never outright been stricken down.)
The Nazis, however, went even further. In October 1939, Adolf Hitler established a program to systematically “euthanize” psychiatric patients, people with terminal illnesses, individuals with physical or intellectual disabilities, and others considered “unworthy of life.” This program would become known as the T4 Program (after Tiergartenstrasse 4, the Berlin address out of which it was run).
The T4 Program was partly a eugenic effort. People with disabilities supposedly threatened German “purity.” However, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “Nazi officials assigned people to this program largely based on their economic productivity. The Nazis referred to the program’s victims as ‘burdensome lives’ and ‘useless eaters.’”
Medical doctors involved with the program reviewed case studies of hospital patients and selected those they believed ought to die. Initially, these victims were neglected by hospital staff; later, they were taken to one of six major killing centers for the T4 Program in Germany, where they were lethally injected or gassed in faux shower rooms before being cremated. In all, 70,000 people died before the program was shut down in 1941.
““[The Nazis were] trying to wipe out…innocent civilians…kids, babies, adults–who had…visible disabilities or not-visible disabilities,” AP European History teacher Kristen Pommerenke-Schneider said. Pommerenke-Schneider says she plans to talk more to her World War II class about this subject when they focus on the Holocaust in the spring.
When discussing the Holocaust, one can not neglect the unbroken solidarity between Jewish people and people with disabilities. A crucial pillar in Judaism is the love and respect of all people. Numerous Jewish organizations such as Keshet provide support for people with disabilities. Jewish law demands that people with disabilities be treated with the same dignity as those without. The mass killings of disabled people are deeply intertwined with the Jewish people’s struggle against antisemitism, as both peoples were brutally mass murdered due to reasons out of their control.
Even though the Holocaust seems long behind us, we are not as far past anti-disability oppression as we think. Donald Trump recently called Kamala Harris “mentally disabled” as an insult. Even at Niles North, “SPED” (an acronym for Special Education) and the R-word are commonly used slurs. These insults are casually used to describe someone who lacks intellectual or logical abilities, reinforcing the incorrect and frankly offensive notion that people with disabilities aren’t smart–somewhat similar to how the Nazis considered such people “burdensome” and of no use to Germany.
While the legacy of the Holocaust lives on through hate speech and hallway whisperings, there are ways to reinforce the message of “never again.” When you hear ableist and anti-Semitic rhetoric in your school hallways, you must have the courage to shut it down. When no one challenges this harmful rhetoric, people think it’s ok. So say something, because in this case, silence is complicity.
