Eugenics & Aktion T4 : The Details Of The Nazi Euthanasia Program You Didn't Learn About #NeverForget #NeverAgain
What is Eugenics?
Eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices that aims to improve the "quality" of the human genetic population.
Historically this has led eugenicists to commit atrocities such as:
-Forced Sterilization
-Forced Abortion
&
-Mass Murder Including the Holocaust
More recently screening of embryos and use of CRISPR gene editing technology in humans has become a novel means of eugenics.
Other acts of eugenics are in practice to this day (see further slides).
---------
What Was The T4 Program?
Aketion T4 was the Nazi involuntary "euthanasia" program that murdered between 275,000 and 300,000 disabled people.*
The program was named for Tiergartenstraße 4, the street address by which the doctors administering the program were paid.
The official wording on Hitler's decree stated that a "mercy death" should be given to any individual "deemed incurably sick, after most critical medical examination."
---------
Who Was Killed
All hospitals and mental asylums in Poland were emptied and patients were killed by shooting or gas chamber.
In Germany and Austria, all hospitals, nursing homes, old-age homes and sanatoria were required to report all patients who had been institutionalized over 5 years, committed as "criminally insane", were of "non-Aryan race" or who had been diagnosed with any on a list of conditions. The conditions included schizophrenia, epilepsy, Huntington's chorea, advanced syphilis, senile dementia, paralysis, encephalitis and "terminal neurological conditions generally."
Prior to 2013, it was believed around 70,000 people were killed but recently discovered records in East Germany revealed it to be closer to 200,000 in Austria and Germany and 100,000 in other European countries. At least 5,000 children with disabilities were killed.
---------
What Were The Public & Families Told?
At first, the program was largely hidden from public view. To reduce resistance from families it was often lied that the disabled person was to be sent for "special treatment" before they were killed. The family would then be sent a death certificate and ashes with a false cause of death.
However, due to the poor execution of these death certificates (for example, being told a relative who had their appendix removed as a child died of apendicitis), the public soon became increasingly aware of the killings.
The public was then informed that such killings were necessary to the war effort and that programs to eliminate the elderly and disabled were already underway in France and Britain. While this was false, it was plausible as eugenics programs similar to the Nazi's earlier disabled sterilization program in Germany were enacted in America, and there was no way for the German public to verify.
---------
What Was The Public Response?
In towns where the killing centers were located the smoke from the crematoriums and talk from the workers lead to widespread rumor about what was occuring across Germany by 1940.
At this time, many family members who could afford to do so withdrew patients from institutions. Some doctors rediagnosed their patients or worked with families to have patients sent home or transferred to private facilities beyond the reach of T4.
Eventually, the Protestant and Catholic Churches spoke out against the program triggering public protest in 1941 and the formal discontinuation of the program. However, the killing continued informally throughout the rest of the war.
----------
How Did T4 Contribute To The Holocaust?
The Holocaust saw the murder of over 6 million Jews as well as Polish, Slavic and Romani people.
The gas chambers used by the Nazi's to commit genocide were developed by the T4 program and tested on its disabled victims.
Additionally, the public outcry in reaction to the gas chambers used in the T4 program informed Hitler's decision to isolate the concentration camps and better disguise the death camps.
Finally, much of the Nazi staff that worked closely on the T4 project was later transferred to the eastern front to orchestrate Hitler's Final Solution as they had proven their willingness to commit mass murder.
----------
Recognizing Eugenics Today: What It Sounds Like
Covid-19 / the flu is not bad because it only kills old and disabled people.
I would kill myself if I became disabled.
Disabled people should kill themselves.
Covid-19 is a good "genetic filter."
Disabled people are a waste of resources.
Why would disabled people want to get married?
Why would disabled people ever be so selfish as to have kids?
People "like that" shouldn't reproduce.
We need to cure autism / ADHD / deaf people / other neurodiverse or disabled groups that do not want to be cured.
----------
Recognizing Eugenics Today: Eugenical Policy
"Herd-immunity" strategies of allowing covid-19 to infect the entire population.
Using "triage" to allocate overburdened healthcare resources away from those with disabilities.
Lack of marriage equality for disabled people. Taking away disability benefits if a disabled person marries.
Disability benefits below poverty level forcing disabled people into homelessness.
Provision of MAID to disabled people whose desire to die is circumstantial based on inadequate welfare or unsafe housing.
-----------
Abilism Underpins All Eugenics
You may have learned about eugenics as a topic of racism. That its that ideology the Germans used (or maybe you even learned Europeans) to justifying being racist.
But the racism is only eugenics manifesting itself in the way most convenient to those in power. The Japanese believed in eugenics just like the Germans. Only in their hierarchy, Japanese people were at the top.
But what is consistent across all eugenical practice and theory is the idea that disability and weakness must be eliminated. The superiority of the dominant race is justified by (supposed and rigged measured of) intellectual and physical ability.
When we fail to question the ableism inherent in eugenics it will never die. Because eugenics might be a handy tool for racists. But eugenics is ableism.
---
Disabled people were the first to die under the Nazi government. #NeverForget
⠀
Eugenics is dangerous. The tragedy of the T4Program and the Holocaust illustrate exactly how deadly this rhetoric can become.
⠀
I am deeply grateful to be descended from a #holocaustSurvivor because it taught me from a young age that when we devalue and dehumanize a group of people, any group of people, terrible things can happen.
⠀
The girl on the cover of this post is Anna Lehnkering one of approximately 250,000 disabled chronically ill and mentally ill people murdered by the Nazis.
⠀
Anna would have been a spoonie and member of the spoonie community. She struggled in school and had frequent absence due to illness but found community in her church, particularly among the other disabled young women.
⠀
At age 19, Anna was forcibly sterilized, a year and a half later she was hospitalized with kidney disease and the doctor convinced her family to have her institutionalized. Her niece's research showed that those in the care home were horribly mistreated and often starved. Only a few years later at the age of 24 she was murdered at the Grafeneck gas chambers in 1940 alongside an estimated 10,654 mentally and physically disabled people.
⠀
The T4 program was the Nazi's first extermination campaign. But it was only the start of the largest systemic mass murder in human history.
⠀
#NeverAgain we say when we discuss the Holocaust. Yet we have failed. Genocide has continued with the Cambodian Genocide, Rwandan Genocide, Bosnian Genocide and Dafur Genocide. So long as we do not learn the true lesson of the Holocaust we will continue to fail.
⠀
The lesson of the Holocaust is not just antisemitism. It is that we cannot value people based on their race, ethnicity, ability, or sexual orientation. That we must see all people as fully human.
⠀
That is why I want you to remember Anna. To remember not just a faceless program of mechanized murder, but a young woman who had her community and her life stolen because people believed that committing mass murder could somehow make the human race better.
