1. Created by P. Durr, NTID Dept. of Cultural and Creative Studies

2. Horst Biesold
Interpreter
Teacher of the Deaf
Ally
Scholar

3. “My deaf friends will have to forgive me that I eventually opted for scholarly publication. … new threats that are now signaled by genetic engineering…”
“I wanted to expose, uncompromisingly, the role of deaf education in the complicity of educators in the illegal Nazi state.”

4. From Social Darwinism to National Socialism
Darwin’s ideas of Natural Selection
German Eugenicists expanded these ideals
(late 1800s)
Concept of “racial hygiene”
Economic efficiency – remove “social burden”

5. Boeters’ Letter (1923)
“… since in many cases the consent of parents and others is not to be had at any price, even though the necessity of an operation is clearly evident for anyone not himself a mental defective, I urge the introduction of legislative coercion.”

6. Nazis as Teachers “racial hygiene” practices
estimated hereditary Deafness to be as high as 35 %
opposition to racial hygiene rhetoric before 1933 small
Myth – teachers of the disadvantage had a “rescue mentality”
Nazis as Teachers

7. School admin. and teachers’ attitude -
“better one too many sterilized than one too few.”

8. The Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases
July 14, 1933
Legalized sterilization if “strong likelihood that the offspring will suffer from severe hereditary physical or mental defects”

9. Social Darwinism Continuum
Preventing life leads to Exterminating life
Legalized forced abortions followed
Euthanasia
Final Solution

10. Hereditary Diseases Schizophrenia Manic-depressive psychosis
Huntington’s chorea
Severe alcoholism
Epilepsy
Blindness
Deafness
Severe Physical Deformity
Feeblemindedness

11. Methods of Sterilization
Vasectomies – local anesthesia – outpatient
Female sterilization – general anesthesia – inpatient
Crushing, severing, or removal of Fallopian tubes
Removal of uterus
Sterilization by X rays

12. Estimate – 17,000 congenitally deaf persons must have undergone forced sterilization
Accurate figures are difficult – school withheld documents or destroyed them

13. Comments by Victims “monstrous violation of human rights”
“lifelong incompleteness of marital relations” (spouses should be counted as victims)
“It was an extremely painful torture, the doctor bored around in the sensitive part of my vagina with his finger. I suffered terrible pain…Almost always I have pain during intercourse..”

14. General Findings about Victims
54 % of respondents were females
Youngest 9 yrs old – oldest 50
most btw yrs old
Turned in by health authority, Nazi party, school
Most sterilizations btw

15. Survivor
“My deaf brother NN was not sterilized …He had two healthy children. My sister… also had seven healthy children. I still suffer from it, and question why it was just me who had to suffer a fate with such terrible consequences.”

16. “About three months after the operation, my fiancé said to me that we had to break up; he couldn’t be expected to keep a wife with a ‘Hitler cut’ for the rest of his life”
“My fiancé backed out of the marriage because I could no longer have children. That happened to me three times, so that I withdrew more and more from life.”

17. “…It was just like holding a doll without feelings in my arms.”

18. Biesold’s Research Findings
Almost 50% experience physical pain
76% have psychological pain
Many unmarried due to sterilization
Many divorced due to sterilization
Suffering of teenage victims disproportionately high

19. Biesold’s Research Findings Con’t.
Bodily integrity violated
Depression due to uprooting
Sense of Shame and inferiority
Suicide and attempts
Isolation
Some deaths from operation
Infanticide

20. Forced Abortions
Of 662 respondents, 57 being forced to terminate a pregnancy
23 women aborted during or after the sixth month

21. “Killing my baby and the sterilization operation that was carried out at the same time took from eight o’clock in the morning until one in the afternoon. I will never forget the screaming and swearing of that awful woman doctor; it is stamped into my memory.”

22. Euthanasia and Deaf Germans
Euthanasia – mercy killing of those “unworthy of life” / useless eaters
Moved to secluded, primitive lodging
Death by starvation, gassing, lethal injection
1939 focusing on disabled children
T4 Program killing of disabled adults

23. Euthanasia and Deaf Germans Con’t.
T4 program killed 70,000 people – gas chambers disguised as shower rooms
1941 T4 Program on hold from protest
1941 Extermination of Jews begins
Wild euthanasia of disabled via starvation
Deaf with other disabilities killed

24. Letter from a former student to Director Singer 1960
“… On the way home I was faint with weakness. I felt so tormented and cruelly treated because I hadn’t been told anything. Why did you keep silent and not tell me that sterilization would mean killing my body and that it is a wrong and a crime that I cannot have any children?…I no longer feel like a real person. It was not right and it was a tragedy. A very great and serious crime has been committed.”

25. Singer’s Response
“Dear NN, such complaints are useless. You are not badly off, but you are not content. But compare yourself to others. Several million fell in the war or were killed. You are still alive… The fact that you have no children should not be seen as a misfortune. Better to have no children than one who is blind or deaf or epileptic. Even as a youngster you were often unhappy.

26. But when I talked to you and you thought things over, you were happy again. That’s the way it should be now too.
So, NN, keep your chin up. And good luck!
With best regards,
Edwin Singer

28. Questions???

29. Citation