Disability Studies and the Legacies of Eugenics

Discussion of: "Nurses in Nazi Germany":

Reading:

McFarland-Icke, Bronwyn Rebekah. Nurses in Nazi Germany: Moral Choice in History. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1999. Chapter 8: “War, Mass Murder, and Moral Flight: Psychiatric Nursing, 1939-1945.”

Monday, July 26, 2004 . Submitted by Sumi Colligan, Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Massachusetts College of the Liberal Arts

From 10-11 A.M. we gathered in the outdoor patio/café of the Steigenberger Maxx for Nicole Markotic’s reading discussion on McFarland-Icke’s “Nurses in Nazi Germany.” Nicole underscored the importance of the stories told about specific nurses, as well as the data gleaned from interviews with nurses concerning institutional atmosphere, hierarchies and interpersonal relationships. Since nurses were typically closer to patients than doctors, the overarching question was why nurses complied with doctors’ orders and why there was so little resistance on the part of nurses. In answer to these questions, we arrived at the following: gender inequalities and gendered performances came into play; nurses were hired to provide the appearance of care (rather than genuine care); nurses feared that if they didn’t distance themselves from the status of patient (and from real patients), they could suffer the same fate; and some nurses were willing to sacrifice one patient’s life for another. Related issues concerned what Nicole called “the structure of contradiction” (thinking about why the medical model persisted in the face of mass murder) and the circumscribed nature of rhetorical strategies to describe or make sense of localized experiences and observations.

Additional comments included: 1) the powerlessness nurses described may have been exacerbated by the rigidity of the professional structure in Germany at the time (Walt); 2) the multiple functions of space within institutional settings allowed a psychological, emotional and physical distancing to take place between the actions of “care giving” and the actions of murder (David); 3) women are often the first to develop a critique of militarism so it is interesting to consider why certain identities trump others (Debjani); and 4) the association of nurses with maternal roles could be interpreted as an expression of weakness, increasing the nurses’ sense of vulnerability and making them easier targets for punishment (Sara).

We met at Tiergarten Strasse 4 in the early afternoon to visit the memorial site and remember Hugh Gallagher (who died in mid-July). Sharon asked the taxi driver to take her there but was told that there was no such address (so, once again, we were reminded of the erasures of historical memory). The memorial site itself consisted of a large plaque and a double, curved metal wall with enough space in between for a wheelchair to drive through it (assuming that the metal walls were, indeed, part of the memorial). The plaque itself read (significantly paraphrased) that there were 200,000 psychiatrically and physically disabled people who had been killed and starved to death at pediatric clinics and psychiatric institutions, their deaths having been facilitated by doctors, nurses, allied health personnel, courts, and judges. It noted that the large number of people murdered had not been matched by an equal degree of condemnation.

After Nicole translated the plaque from the German, Sharon placed flowers and a Not Dead Yet t-shirt on the site. Dave read a selection from Gallagher’s work on his visit to one of the killing centers, and Rosemarie and Sandy made some brief comments about the impact of Gallagher’s work on their academic and activist endeavors.

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