The forgotten Nazi genocide

When people think of Nazi genocide obviously Jewish people come to mind first since the Nazis killer over six million Jewish people in the Holocaust. Some will know (but all should) about the Roma and Sinti genocide or how LGBT people were targeted. Many people don't know the Nazis forcibly sterilized and murdered hundreds of thousands of disabled people.

Nazis were inspired by the United States eugenics movement when they decided to forcibly sterize disabled people. A 1934 law allowed for the forced sterilization of anyone who had (or was presumed to have) a long list of conditions. Typically for those with a uterus, the fallopian tubes were removed but fully hysterectomies were often performed as well to remove the uterus. Vasectomy was used for those with a penis but castration was also used. Procedures were done without any anesthesia. Nazis also experimented on concentration camp victims to try to find "more efficient" ways of sterilization. Those who survived forced sterilization (and many didn't) reported chronic pain and health issues for the rest of their lives due to the procedure. Forced sterilizations slowed around 1940 as other programs picked up.

In 1939, Hitler signed a euthanasia note to begin killing "life unworthy of life" in Nazi Germany aka physically and mentally ill or disabled people. The Aktion T4 euthanasia program was born. The first person in the program was brought by their parents to be killed. Doctors and nurses were to make the determination who would die and do the killing themselves. The original preferred methods were starvation or lethal injection. But that wasn't killing disabled people fast enough for the Nazis. They then experimented with gassing people. That's right, Nazis learned the technique to gas masses of people from experimenting on disabled people. It was found running a truck and killing people with carbon monoxide was most effective (the same method used death camps like Chelmno and on the Eastern front).

Soon, many German families were suspicious of where their disabled loved ones were. They were getting false death certificates citing odd reasons for death. One family got a death certificate which said their loved one died of a burst appendix....when he already had his appendix removed years before. Once the word was out, many Germans removed their family members from hospitals and asylums in an attempt to protect them. In 1941, protests were led by a German bishop Clemens von Galen. It was the largest protest to Nazi Germany by Germans. Pretending to agree and to pacify the protesters, T4 euthanasia program "officially" ended in 1941.

The protests didn't stop Nazis from killing disabled people though. They just learned to be more subtle about it. They also expanded killing to include people in old age homes and even those with "shell shock" from the bombing of Germany. The last disabled person killed by doctors under the T4 program was two weeks AFTER the war had ended.

By the end of the war, 300,000 disabled people were murdered and another 400,000 forcibly sterilized by Nazi Germany. It is undoubtedly a genocide of disabled people but one often forgotten to history. It's important to recognize the genocide, understand the context and history, and continue to fight against ableism and eugenics.

the worse climate disaster gets, the more you’ll see closet eugenicists start to advocate for letting people die. you need to be prepared to combat the ideology wherever you see it, because it’s only going to get worse and worse Read everything having to do with climate disaster critically. If the central argument underlying what’s being said is that the death of disabled and/or racialized people is inevitable, natural, or desirable– that’s a fascist.

they might be appear to be a garden variety republican or liberal or even a leftist at first, but know that if that argument is being made, their underlying ideology is one of supremacism, and given additional climate stress, they will become more blatant about it.

I wrote this post before the global pandemic, and it’s depressing how correct I was.

It’s not even an underlying argument, it’s so openly expressed as part of mainstream opinion. the eugenicist ideology has accelerated so rapidly in the last four years, even in leftist spaces. It’s extremely disturbing.

“Oh maybe if the virus kills enough people, the environment will recover!”

THAT IS LITERALLY ECO-FASCIST THOUGHT, MY PALS! STOP THAT!

A virus killing off vulnerable people is not good for society or the earth!

CAPITALISM is the root cause of climate change. Kill THAT off.

[Image: Still of Tom Hardy in Mad Max, pointing upwards and saying “That’s Bait,” but with the word “bait” blacked out and replaced with “Eugenics.”]

every time i talk about eugenics abortion being bad, people assume i want to legally ban or restrict abortion of disabled fetuses, instead of noticing that sex-selective abortion is a similar issue with similar solutions that have nothing to do with legal anything.

disability activists generally want the following things, in order to reduce eugenics abortion:

- no more pressuring pregnant people to abort disabled fetuses or shaming them for choosing to carry the pregnancy to term (in case you’re wondering, doctors absolutely do this) - no more pressuring disabled and/or mentally ill pregnant people to have abortions or shaming them for choosing to stay pregnant (doctors do this too) - no more devaluing disabled people’s lives in pro choice rhetoric, such as by bringing up disabled fetuses as an argument or “gotcha” when arguing with people who think all abortion should be illegal - active valorization of disabled people and involving us in the leadership of pro-choice organizations - pro-choice organizations addressing the prevalence of doctors and society pressuring people into eugenics abortions - pro-choice organizations actively challenging and critiquing ableism in their movements, historically and currently - establishment of better support systems for disabled parents and parents with disabled children - better health care and better access to it

disabled people who criticize the eugenics abortion are not your enemies. we don’t want to force or pressure anyone to stay pregnant or to terminate. please acknowledge that it’s frankly terrifying for us when a fellow pro choice person directly defends the ethics of eugenics abortion to us.