[NOTE: text finalised on 16/11/2021]
Disabled people are only rarely acknowledged as victims of Nazi terror and mass murder, and when they are this is “in the background”. Within this work, the author: posits that the reason for this lack of acknowledgement is that nondisabled people cannot bring themselves to fully condemn Aktion T4 and the ideologies behind it; explains that this is an indication that disabled people remain under threat of socially accepted mass slaughter; and examines how the author has been personally drawn to this line of research and this perspective as the disabled grandchild of a disabled and ill autistic man who lived in Germany under the Third Reich.
Within the context of this work, “disabled” refers to people who were or are cognitively, physically or mentally impaired in the context of European and broader Western society within the timespan of the mid-20th century to the current day.
Within the context of this work, “nondisabled” refers to people who were or are not cognitively, physically or mentally impaired in the context of European and broader Western society within the timespan of the mid-20th century to the current day.
Within the context of this work, “Aktion T4” refers to what is commonly termed in English as “Project T4” or “the T4 Project”. This was a program of mass slaughter (or “euthanasia”) of disabled people carried out by the National Socialist party on the orders of Hitler. The murders took place from July 1939 until the end of the Second World War, with an unknown death toll that is suspected to be around 300,000. Although the foundations for the killings were laid as early as 1933, within the context of this work “Aktion T4” refers specifically to the killings that occurred.
Within the context of this work, “National Socialist” is a term used to reference to what is commonly termed in English as “Nazi”.
Nondisabled people, to use the phrasing of Christine Nejeer in the 2015 A Companion to the History of American Science, “too easily accept the incorrect notion that support for eugenics plummeted after World War II”. This “too easy” acceptance of the notion is deliberate and wilful ignorance. Eugenics never went away. It is alive and it is thriving. Nondisabled people who wish for themselves and others to believe otherwise are at best complicit in normalisation of murder and at worst have themselves committed murder.
There are no official lists of names of the victims of Aktion T4. As Hechler (2015) expresses, translated by Hamilton and Kalkbrenner (2017), that “This situation is unthinkable for other groups who were victimised by the Nazis; for them, public commemoration by name is a key concern.”
Hechler continues to describe the issues of contemporary awareness surrounding Aktion T4, explaining that “The [German disability rights movement] has consistently raised awareness of eugenics, ‘euthanasia’ and the murder of sick and disabled people. The non-disabled descendants of the victims of Nazi ‘euthanasia’ have hardly done that.” This is further evidence that nondisabled people are unwilling to condemn Aktion T4.
The anti-disabled rhetoric used by the Nazis has survived with only cosmetic retouches and rebrandings. It is mainstream in both right- and left-leaning spaces. The term “waste of space” and its variant “waste of resources,” common in discussions about climate change, have evolved directly from “useless eaters,” Hitler’s term for disabled people. Disabled filicide – carers and parents murdering their disabled children – is rampant, its victims receiving less public sympathy from the non-disabled audience and justice systems than its perpetrators. In countries such as Norway people with Down Syndrome are being systematically “bred out,” and there are widespread fears among the disability community that other conditions will follow suit. People with achondroplasia have raised concerns about the drug vosoritide. Euthanasia is being framed as a human rights debate, and nondisabled people dismiss disabled fears about its risks and have seemingly forgotten what it has been used to do. Nobody would like to hear that something they are saying or supporting is “no different to the Nazis,” and such a person who does state this is rarely taken seriously. What is there to do to warn nondisabled people if they are so determined not to be warned? How may one warn people who are determined to continue with their charade of ignorance in the face of mass slaughter? This essay is a Cassandra writing, a warning that will not be heeded by those who need most to receive it. The author has spoken to Alice Wong, disabled activist, advocate, and founder of the Disability Visibility Project, concerning “disabled oracles” – disabled people such as the author who warn nondisabled people of the future, and who are wilfully disbelieved and disregarded.
Robertson, Ley and Light’s book The First Into The Dark is a study of the Nazi krankenmorde (murder of the sick, a more correct and less commonly used term than ‘Aktion T4’ to refer to Nazi killings of disabled people). In it, they write that “[t]he motivating forces behind the philosophies of ‘eugenics’ and ‘euthanasia’ are evident in the gathering influence of molecular genetics applied in public policy and increasingly, by parental and individual choice”. The book then goes on to list a number of cultural similarities between the lives of disabled people under the Nazi regime and the lives of disabled people in Western countries today, including the acceptance of their deaths as being ‘good for society,’ and the devaluation of their lives. As The First Into The Dark points out, “all this would occur in a liberal democracy that espouses individual freedom and human rights, and at the same time asserts categorically that it abhors the policies and practices employed by the Nazi state”.
Eugenics is thriving, and since its conception it has never not been so.
The collaboratively written encyclopedia Wikipedia provides an apt demonstration of how little but cosmetics has changed. The Wikipedia page for the term “Life unworthy of life,” a National Socialist term (originally “Lebensunwertes Leben”) directly related to Aktion T4, has a disambiguation. Below the article’s title, before the content of the article, it states “Not to be confused with Wrongful life or Wrongful birth”. The later two terms use the same violent exterminationist ideology as the former. It is not confusion that leads to an equation between the two, it is a connection and resemblance. The Harvard-educated son in the suit and tie may be more presentable than the skinhead older brother, but sometimes they attend the same rallies.
Katie Booth, in a 2018 article about disability and infanticide, states eloquently and poetically the fundamental tenet of contemporary ‘ethical’ encouragement for killings of disabled people. She points out that the “arguments are built intricately and beautifully, like a perfect mathematics equation, but at their core beats a single assertion, one that is still too difficult to concede: that this group of human beings aren’t really people”.
The mother of the author expressed wishes to commit filicide by “throttling” the author. This is not a disclosure of bias. This is additional evidence.
When parents or other guardian relatives murder disabled relatives under their care, an outpouring of public sympathy is common. The public sympathy is facing in the wrong direction, and is outpoured to the murderers. Judges sentence parents, especially mothers, with remarks about the degree of stress they were under from having a disabled child, and speaking about how having a disabled child already went some way to being a punishment. Parents of disabled children, whom they killed, receive reduced sentences.
The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, commonly abbreviated as ‘ASAN,’ have articulated the “seven steps of filicide”. They are detailed below. Note the similarity with what has already been discussed.
The first step is that “A parent kills their disabled child”. The second step is that “Media portrays these murders as justifiable and inevitable due to the “burden” of having a disabled child”. The third step is that “Parents are given sympathy and comparatively lighter sentences, if sentenced at all”. The fourth step is that “The victim is disregarded, dehumanized, blamed for their own death and forgotten”. The fifth step is that “Media sends message that if you kill your disabled child, you get sympathy [and] attention. Criminal justice system sends message that your punishment will likely be minimal.” The sixth step is that “Parents of disabled children see these messages.”
The diagram provided by ASAN is cyclical. The seventh step is also the first: “A parent kills their disabled child.” Filicide is a cycle; the seven steps of filicide are also the cycle of filicide.
The author has conducted research into the killings of disabled people by their carers. This independent research corroborates the accuracy of ASAN’s “seven steps of filicide”.
All content in this section was written while the COVID-19 pandemic was ongoing, and situations subject to rapid change. All context in this section is to be interpreted with the context of its time of writing.
During the first months of the pandemic, there was a widespread “reassurance” that “only” elderly and disabled were likely to die from COVID-19. These “reassurances” paid no heed to the fact that some of those receiving these messages were themselves elderly and disabled. Preexisting ableist biases have led to some interpretations of this pandemic as an opportunity to “purge” society of its “useless eaters”.
Healthcare rationing and prioritisation of care to the nondisabled has been noted for some time.
“The debate over denial of care to people with disabilities […] was a conversation largely among advocates in the disability and aging communities, medical officials and state officials.” Shapiro (2020) wrote this in reference to legislative battles in the U.S. state of Oregon, but it is almost universally applicable to Western society from the mid-20th century onward.
At the time of writing, healthcare prioritisation is and has been in effect in many areas throughout the globe, particularly in Europe, the Americas, and Australasia. As well as prioritisaion of treatment, this means prioritisation of who is to receive COVID-19 vaccinations, and in which order. In most countries and areas, disabled people have been conspicuously absent from these lists, except for when they have made appearances as the inverse, as the documented last priorities.
The author is third-generation disabled. The author was formally diagnosed as autistic at the age of six, and other diagnoses followed. The author’s father has been formally diagnosed with medical and physical health conditions, and with autism. The author’s grandfather experienced health complications as a young child in Germany during the time of the Third Reich. Though never formally diagnosed, the author’s grandfather is also autistic, and, at the time of writing, has been severely ill for several years.
During the Second World War, the author’s grandfather spent time living in a sanatorium in the area of Schwartzwald (the “Black Forest”).
The author’s great-great-aunt dropped from contact with the family when living in an institution in Nazi Germany. It is extremely likely that she was a victim of Aktion T4. The author has come across, in a list of victims of Aktion T4, an unknown and untraced person bearing the surname of the author’s maternal[1] family. This surname is a rare one, and it seems probable that this unknown victim is also a relative of the author.
This is not a disclosure of bias. It is additional evidence.
[1]: Technically the family of the author’s grandmother. The author has disowned her mother, due to professed filicidal tendencies, and the author’s ‘maternal family’ is thus the family of the author’s father’s mother.
Booth, Katie. “What I Learned About Disability and Infanticide From Peter Singer.” The Wire, https://thewire.in/health/i-learned-disability-infanticide-peter-singer. Accessed 9 Dec. 2020.
Hechler, Andreas. “Diagnoses That Matter: My Great-Grandmother’s Murder as One Deemed ‘Unworthy of Living’ and Its Impact on Our Family.” Disability Studies Quarterly, vol. 37, no. 2, June 2017. dsq-sds.org, doi:10.18061/dsq.v37i2.5573.
Holmlund, Jon. “Velvet Eugenics” – Bioethics at TIU. https://blogs.tiu.edu/bioethics/2019/09/19/velvet-eugenics/. Accessed 9 Dec. 2020.
Kliewer, Christopher, and Stephen Drake. “Disability, Eugenics and the Current Ideology of Segregation: A Modern Moral Tale.” Disability & Society, vol. 13, no. 1, Feb. 1998, pp. 95–111. DOI.org (Crossref), doi:10.1080/09687599826939.
“Nazis Plan to Kill Incurables to End Pain; German Religious Groups Oppose Move.” New York Times, 8 Oct. 1933, p. 1.
Nejeer, Christine. ‘The American Eugenics Movement’. A Companion to the History of American Science, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2015.
Shapiro, Joseph. Oregon Hospitals Didn’t Have Shortages. So Why Were Disabled People Denied Care? 21 Dec. 2020, https://www.kuow.org/stories/oregon-hospitals-didn-t-have-shortages-so-why-were-disabled-people-denied-care.
Robertson, Michael, Ley, Astrid, and Light, Edwina. The First into the Dark: The Nazi Persecution of the Disabled. UTS ePRESS, 2019.