Disability Studies and the Legacies of Eugenics

Disability in the Holocaust Timeline: Euthanasia Killings as Model for Genocide

Aly’s question: not how much did Germans know? But rather why didn’t they want to know?

270,000 institutional residents murdered by 1946

1920: Meltzer survey sent to parents of children in asylum

1933: Sterilization Law modeled on Chicago-based laws drafted by Harry Laughlin
Targeted “conditions”: schizophrenia, congenital malformation, epilepsy, hereditary deafness/blindness, alcoholism, sexual ambiguity; senility

Pre-1939 euthanasia granted following request by family or relatives after reviewed

1938: Children’s killing program and escalation in asylum euthanasia (starvation wards)
Winter, 1939/40: Brandenburg gassing experiment held
Aug. 18, 1939: Reich Committee for the Scientific Processing of Serious Genetic
Diseases formed: data collection on institutional inmates and “deformed newborns”

Sept. 1939: shooting deaths of asylum inmates in occupied territories

Sept. 1931: registration round-up of all inmates held in institutions on more than a temporary basis

October, 1939: T4 adult killing program formally begins – order backdated by Hitler to coincide with beginning of WWII

T4 Goals = systematically earmark and destroy 65,000-70,000 (1000/10/1) institutional residents based on following criteria: 5 years or more in institution, no rehabilitation possible, incapable of working even in institution, eugenics “idiots” and “imbeciles” as primary target (RAG letterhead = Reich Association of Mental Hospitals)

1940: Law on Euthanasia for Incurably Ill drafted and circulated (anticipatory legislation)

July 18, 1940: Guidelines for Evaluating Genetic Health include 4 groups: 1) antisocial, 2) acceptable; 3) average citizens; 4) persons of particular genetic worth.

Summer, 1940: All Jewish mental patients murdered for “biological inferiority”

1941: All aid to disabled children and their families ended

1941: Planning trips to mental institutions only two protests from med staff & administrators

April 1941-1943: Operation 14 f 13 begins – incapacity to work as sole criteria for extermination (summer 1942: work to death program starts); disabled Aryans receive superficial exam by physicians while disabled Jews only receive file review

June 22, 1941: Killing of Soviet pows by starvation program begins

Aug. 24, 1941: T4 stop order issued – why now?

Sept. 1941: “I Accuse” released

Late 1941: Concentration camp inmate killings commence instead of mass relocation projects as previously planned to Madagascar or Russia (Jewish dumping grounds)

Death criteria expands to “aliens to the community”: psychopaths, asocials, political malcontents, Communists, homosexuals, beggars, pimps, prostitutes, indigent and lazy, people of inferior appearance, delinquent in paying support, thieves, and vagrants (for Aly this represents a shift from medical to social criteria)

1942: Central Reich Office to Combat Homosexuality and Abortion established

1942: Killings extend to old age homes, tubercular asylums, juvenile homes, workhouses, detox centers, and psychiatric institutions – patients condensed to death in order to artificially exacerbate institutional mortality rates

Jan. 1942: Wansee conference for final solution held

Early 1943: systematic killings in institutions stopped due to war’s escalation

July, 1943: Decision to kill remaining psychiatric patients for bed space as necessary “6 million and more”. Jews, Roma, and gay people murdered

Sharon L. Snyder, Ph. D.,
Director, "Legacies of Eugenics" Summer Institute, Einstein Forum
Assistant Professor, Interdisciplinary Ph. D. Program in Disability Studies
Department of Disability and Human Development
University of Illinois at Chicago (MC 626)
1640 W. Roosevelt Rd. #207
Chicago IL 60608-6904 U.S.A.
E-mail: ssnyder@uic.edu Phone: (312) 413-1975 (Voice) Fax: (312) 996-0885