Disability Studies and the Legacies of Eugenics

Wednesday July 28: Wannsee Conference Memorial and Educational Site

Submitted by: Pamela Wheelock, Disability Studies, University of Illinois, Chicago

High ranking representatives of the SS and various ministries met here on January 20th, 1942 to plan the deportation and murder of the European Jews. The Wannsee Memorial is dedicated to revealing and educating via its comprehensive displays and the provision of seminars tailored to meet the specific interests of attendees. Among its resources are 10,000 videos which are being converted to CD-ROM.

We met in the library on the second floor. The librarian, (insert full official name here) introduced us to the history of the Joseph Wolf Library, opened in January 20th, 1992. The library contains over 20,000 volumes, including microfilm. They have access to national socialist documents but one can only view these at in-house computers due to prohibitions about their distribution. According to (Gaby), Nazi generated films still show up in interesting (and from my perspective, scary) places. She recounted one medical school that had, without knowing, been using a film generated by the Nazi medical system.

You can visit the library and peruse their book collection at www. ghwk.de, library. Videos are not available on the web site.

Presentation by Volker van der Loche

In 1984 the catholic asylum in Essen (the largest in Western Germany) held a celebration for its 100th birthday. A newspaper article presented a positive and benevolent history of the Franz-Sales-House. Volker felt this history might be incomplete and wrong. His own personal research lead to a dissertation, Charity Against Social Selection: Social History About the Motivation of Welfare for Disabled Persons in the Franz-Sales-House in Essen. He tracked down personal stories of residents, many of whom were murdered at the hands of the T-4 killing machine.

He shared some of these stories with us:

Catherine was born in 1910, the youngest of six children. At the age of 6 she was sent to an elementary school for the learning disabled. In 1921, at age 11, the special youth committee ordered her to enter a welfare institution near Koblenz. In 1928 she was sent to a new location. The director wrote about her, “Catherine does nearly nothing but is impertinent and naughty. She is a greedy eater and simulates illness to lie in bed in the morning”. The head physician of the asylum sent officials to visit her family. They reported the family had a bad reputation, lived in poverty, and that one of her brothers was the father of three illegitimate children. The asylum decided Catherine could not return to her family unless sterilized. In 1937, she was sterilized (age 27) before attending a family celebration.

Matilda was born in 1916 in Essen. She contracted rickets in childhood due to wide spread malnutrition, and didn’t walk until the age of 3. She spent six years in a school for learning disabled children, after which she worked on a farm and lived in an orphanage. The orphanage’s director wrote that she was intellectually and physically retarded but “not a total imbecile”. He found her lazy, sexually aggressive, and a danger to other children. She was transported to another institution in 1935. In 1936 the sterilization court found her impaired and she was sterilized in 1937. Moved to another location, she stayed until 1940 when the T-4 administration deported 1700 residents to other facilities. Most went to Brandenburg. Eventually she was moved to Bernberg where she died on March 7th, 1941, the day she arrived. Her name can be found in a list of those killed in concentration camps and gas chambers.

For related information Volker suggests the web site, www.shoa.de

Volker’s talk showed a deep connection with the T-4 murder victims. He presented their records with sympathy and respect. In describing the actions of asylum administrations and society’s attitude towards disability, he punctuated his speech with, “It was crazy” and “how crazy”. I enjoyed hearing the term “crazy” used to describe the actions of public administrators and asylum keepers. Reclaiming its meaning, he pointed the energy of the word “crazy” back at a system which used its understanding of this simple word to murder the bodies and lives of so many disabled people.

Presentation by Michael Vander

Our afternoon presenter was Michael Vander, a psychologist who describes himself as active in left political groups (anti globalization & disability rights). He has published on disability issues and has explored the independent living movement in relation to Marxist thought. He has participated in a number of protests. He discussed the German government’s plowing of funds into improving the opportunities for “super-normals” even though Germany has the lowest integration rate for disability in Europe. He also shared that special education teachers prefer disabled children be taught in separate schools to prevent unfair treatment in “regular schools” and have lobbied to that end. An early integration pioneer, as a child Michael went to a regular school through a special case agreement with the local administration. He explained that the average income of disabled people is 50% lower than non-disabled. The year 2000 report from the government showed an 18% unemployment rate among disabled individuals.

Michael is very concerned about the disenfranchisement of the elderly. There is a growing consensus that the elderly are problematic because of their health resource use. For example, after the age of 80, hip replacements and special dental work are discouraged. The war between the generations is openly discussed as competition for resources intensifies. One way of framing this competition has been, “generational justice”= the younger people support the elderly but have competing needs of their own.

Michael spoke about a generation gap in the disability rights movement. Younger people are sometimes disconnected from the rights movement and may prefer to self identify as gay, for example, instead of as disabled. Even with this gap, there is a growing involvement in civil disobedience by wheel chair users who position themselves in the front lines of student protests.

Upon my request he spoke about the psychiatric survivor groups in Germany—they are not closely affiliated with the disability rights movements but are active in their own right. He mentioned Mad Offensive (irrenoffensive) http://www.antipsychiatrie.de/ in Berlin.

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