Disability Studies and the Legacies of Eugenics

Hadamar Day Two: Afternoon Session

(Transcript originally completed for accessiblity purposes and should not be considered a verbatim account of the proceedings. This transcription is meant to represent a general sense and may include gaps and mistaken information. Please request permission to quote )

Please if you find that there is still a place where the name is not anonymous, please do that.

Nancy’s keeping the materials from here. Well make copies in Potsdam.

Questions? Comments?

Sorry. She just wanted to tell me.

I want to thank you for your hospitality and the opportunity to be here.

This is the English letter from the record. Copied for everyone. Take it on your way out.

Is there in Germany, or internationally, research and scholarship being done about how places like Hadamar and maybe other ww2 memorials, is there work done about the memorials themselves? And is this memorial included as a memorial in some of that research?

Yes.

In the US we have a very active number of scholars who analyze memorials which is different from history. I was wondering if there was work on this as a memorial.

Not in an organized way. Sometime people come here and ask how we work, research beginnings of memorial. There exists in Berlin, topographies. They have also a department especially for memorials in Germany. They publish a paper every month or every second month. There the memorials write about their work. Topography of terror website. Use a search engine, you’ll find it. There’s a website for a group that did a tour of Germany and its memorials.

Topography of terror have a ground in Berlin and an unfinished exhibition. They are not able to finish this building. Site of perpetrators. Archaeological exposure of the basement of the SS Gestapo headquarters. It’s over by the Gropius bau. But their website.

If you have a password you can chat with them on the website forum.

What kind of books do you have available re your center.

Catalogue. All the documents of the exhibition, but a written text. Not on notice board. It’s the translation of the exhibition.

Let me add to what’s missing. There’s a larger historical context in the exhibition.

It’s interesting to see that the text in the exhibition reflects cultural viewing of the exhibition. Very interesting. Even the way it’s said is interesting.

One of the things I want to say is that a lot of people asked me to visit the grave. We could go over there around 1:30. We could go as a group.

I can accompany you if you’d like.
We’ll leave for Weimar at 2. Michelle gets here at 2, we’ll load.

We’ll go have lunch until 1:30, go to grave. We still need to load up.

Before you go, I want to say thank you for coming here, for showing interest in our work. I would like very much to stay in contact with you.

Maybe we could give her our cards.

Some of you I have already.

We have a mutual friend.

The world is very small.

We’re going to be presenting this film after it’s updated. At the American Holocaust museum in November.

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