34 replies to this topic

[Tinbasher]

I have just been asked at short notice to write and read at a public event, a short piece about the Nazi Aktion T4 Project which killed an estimated 275,000 disabled, deaf and mentally Ill people between 1939 and 1945.

I feel both honoured and petrified!

Tin

[S&W Winger]

What an awesome honour, Tin!

Hope you share your words with us...as I am certain you will inspire as you are quite up to this distinction...only wood gets pertrified, people have the Truth shaken out of them...

I wish you well with it...

Edited by S&W Winger, 23 January 2011 - 10:21 PM.

[Lucydog]

fascinating.

[greybeard]

I don't want to wish you luck, as luck really doesn't come into it. You were obviously chosen because someone believes you are the right man for the job. Good for you Tom.

[greybeard]

Having had a look at the Wikipedia entry about this programme, I must say it makes harrowing reading. I was aware of Hitler's racial cleansing and purification policies, but nothing specific. I now realise it is certainly a topic that, like the attempted extermination of Jews, must never be allowed to fade in humankind's memory.

Well done, Tom, for bringing it back to centre stage.

Light a virtual candle on the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust web page HERE

Edited by greybeard, 24 January 2011 - 12:02 AM.

[jenny407]

Tom, I'm sure you'll do this important task in a great way. It's an honour they asked you - and rightly so.
Yes, this is of the utmost importance - to keep those memories alive, for the young people, too.
Do share your thoughts and words with us.

[isobar]

Hi,




Congrats..... you'll do just fine.

[Tinbasher]

Well I have to keep it to 5 minutes so here is my first draft. It is aimed at an audience who know next to nothing about the subject and mustn't sound like a lecture. Those of you who know a bit about the subject will see that I have had to miss out a lot about the wider context of the time when eugenic ideas were widely held all over Europe and the USA.

Your comments (constructive or otherwise) are welcome.

In the street outside a bus station in a quiet suburb of Berlin there is a plaque set into the pavement on the site of a now demolished villa known as number 4 Teirgartenstrasse. The plaque commemorates the victims of an untold story of the holocaust; the project known as Aktion T4 and named after the address where its headquarters stood Teirgartenstrasse 4. Was in many ways the test bed in which the industrialised murder of the death camps was developed. The project was so ruthlessly efficient that virtually no survivor testimony exists. This is why we must remember for those who could not speak out.



On August 18, 1939 on Hitler's orders, the Reich Ministry of the Interior circulated a decree compelling all physicians, nurses, and midwives to report newborn infants and children under the age of three who showed signs of severe mental or physical disability.



Beginning in October 1939, public health authorities began to encourage parents of children with disabilities to admit their young children to one of a number of specially designated paediatric clinics throughout Germany and Austria for special treatment. The clinics were in reality children's killing wards where specially recruited medical staff murdered their young charges by lethal overdoses of medication or by neglect and starvation.



The writer, Michal Baten Evanari remembers his little cousin Karl in his memoir…

"Karlchen was a happy boy who was slow to walk, learn and speak. After a visit from local Nazi officials, his mother my aunt was told that he had been offered a holiday at a special hospital where he would be made healthy and strong just as the Führer wanted for all German children.

Some weeks later she received a letter saying that Karl had sadly died of Pneumonia. An urn with ashes and a death certificate followed. It was not until his mother met the parents of other disabled children in a nearby village that she found that they too had received the same letter. After the war a nurse told them that the children had been taken directly to a killing centre and gassed."

At first, medical professionals and clinic administrators incorporated only infants and toddlers in the operation, but as the scope of the measure widened, they included juveniles up to 17 years of age. Conservative estimates suggest that at least 5,000 physically and mentally disabled German children perished during this phase of what was euphemistically named "child euthanasia".


Planners quickly envisioned extending the killing program to the so called "Useless eaters", the adult disabled patients living in institutional settings. In the late autumn of 1939, Adolf Hitler signed a secret authorization in order to protect participating physicians, medical staff, and administrators from prosecution; this authorisation was backdated to September 1, 1939, to suggest that the effort was related to wartime measures.

Whilst the official programme was aimed solely at German nationals and those of other Germanic countries, the murder was not confined to this group. In fact the first disabled adults to be killed by the Nazi regime were not Germans, but Poles murdered by the men of SS Einsatzkommando 16 as they cleared the hospitals and mental asylums of western Poland which was earmarked for resettlement by ethnic Germans.

In the Gdansk area, some 7,000 Polish inmates of various institutions were shot, while in the Gdynia area 10,000 were killed by various means. Similar measures were taken in other areas of Poland destined for incorporation into Germany.

At Posen, hundreds of disabled people were killed by means of carbon monoxide gas in an improvised gas chamber, Heinrich Himmler, witnessed one of these gassings, ensuring that this innovation would later be put to much wider use.

It is believed that during the official phase of the program 100,000 deaf, disabled and mentally ill people were killed. Many of the professionals who worked in this programme were transferred to the extermination camps where their expertise in mass killing was used to increase the scale and industrialisation of death.

By 1940 T4 had become an open secret, families began to hide their disabled and sick relatives and to try and remove them from state institutional care.

In 1941 in the small town of Asberg a small act of resistance took place, on the day before being taken away the inmates of the local institution knowing of their fate, went around the town saying goodbye to the residents who had befriended them, they did not save themselves but the local people were so outraged that they staged the first open protest against the programme. Such was the growing national outrage that the official T4 programme was terminated.

This began the period known as the "Wild Euthanasia" where the killing effectively continued in local institutions until 1945.

In the institution at Kaufbeuren Bavaria the last victim of T4 was killed fully 33 days after Germanys surrender. His name was Richard Jenne, he was four years old.

In all an estimated 275,000 ordinary disabled people were murdered by ordinary doctors, nurses and officials.

In the first week of this New Year the graves of 220 unknown victims of T4 were discovered in the grounds of a psychiatric hospital in Austria.

Even now the belief that disabled people are burden on society or have lives not worth living is not far below the surface of our society. That those who are different or "other" are the cause of all our social ills is still the mantra of the far right.

When we read about disabled scroungers, or lives not worth living, or people who would be better off dead. We must remember Richard Jenne and those who preceded him. We must make sure that these murders and the beliefs that led to them are not forgotten.



Tom Hendrie

23 January 2011

[greybeard]

Excellent, Tom.

[S&W Winger]

As I said in chat, excellent on first read...I will reread tonight, with verbal presentation in mind and PM...

[mellowgator]

wow tom this is a great speech. it will get the attention of those present. good job.



mellowgator

[StillFingers]

Excellent Tom...tears still flow, those times personified man's inner evilness, a misguided lot of monsters following an insane one...keep the torches lit so all remember/feel the true horror of those days/years and keep in our hearts those that perished so brutally!

[DannyR]

I think that over the years people have become passive when it comes to the Holocaust and we need to be reminded. I never knew of such a place. Good job.

[S&W Winger]

Tom, I tried to find something to critique or assist edit, but am unable...it is complete, polished, and perfect As Is...please do not remove anything...when I read it out loud it was about 7-8 minutes, but close enough to five...

Yes, please continue with the good work of battling complacency and apathy, instilling awareness, inspiring excellence...


"Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it" --Winston Churchill


Enjoy the speaking commitment...

Edited by S&W Winger, 25 January 2011 - 04:58 AM.

[nomis]

Good stuff Tom.

[catmint]

Excellent Tom !

I thought your opening was very good, 'speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves' the listener becomes engaged right from the start and asks the 'who,what,why questions'

You then personalised it by relating the account of the little boy Karl after first setting the scene. The audience is hooked. I read it out to my grandson, he has been studying the holocaust and like most people had no idea that it wasn't 'just' Jews who treated in this inhuman way.

You bought out the fact that it was 'ordinary' people inflicting these horrors upon other 'ordinary' people, that really gives the listener something to ponder.

As to the length, it seems just right to me. You say you don't want it to sound
like a lecture. I don't think it will because you have enough places where a pause is called for and that's what happens in conversation.

[dangerousdave]

Well put together with more factual then flowery statements
Should be well recieved Basher
Congrats

"There was no birdsong when I visited Belsen"

Edited by dangerousdave, 25 January 2011 - 10:43 AM.

[isobar]

Excellent work !!

[jenny407]

Tom, very well worded. I liked the fact that you included concrete examples and mentioned the fact that it was 'ordinary' people who participated. And the fact that some people DID try to resist, although only with little success, in the end.

And I think it's important you showed the connection to some of today's debates.

This is no way too much like a lecture. Well done. Much success!

[HiltonP]

Tom,

As someone who has studied the Holocaust extensively, and visited both the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem and the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, I believe you have put together an excellent piece. I would however appeal to you to please point out to your audience that tragic events in our history such as this are all too easily forgotten (which is why we have the Indonesia's, Bosnia's, DRC's and Rwanda's happen again while we watch in mute silence). Our world is becoming increasingly polarised, with nations looking to blame other nations for their woes. That was the building block for the Holocaust, and the acts of genocide which took place before, and after. We need to be vigilant that our political leaders do not lead us down those paths.

[Tinbasher]

Well I gave my reading and there wasn't a dry eye in the house including me.

Many in the audience who were comitted anti fascists told me that they had never heard of this story and that they had learned a great deal.

The other readings were very moving especially the guy from the Gay community.

Tin

[plank]

Well done Tinbasher. Congratulations.

[S&W Winger]

Oh excellent, Tom...your words had the same impact upon me...I had been well aware of this part of The Story, having also extensively studied the Holocaust...however your ability to so concisely and precisely impart this was awesome, inspiring...

[isobar]

Hi,

Congrats !!! 

[isobar]

Hi,

Congrats !!! 

[jenny407]

Tom, congratulations. I did feel that you worded everything very well, especially the examples. And I'm sure your way of presenting it was great. Thank you - this task is indeed important. As it is to stress also that gays were killed. Some people don't know these details.

Fortunately, in German schools (at least grammar schools), the holocaust is on the curriculum, widely discussed (also the plight of disabled, mentally ill and gay people). My son went to Dachau concentration camp with school yesterday.

[catmint]

Well done.!

[greybeard]

It couldn't have been an easy speech to give. I think you hit exactly the right note to make it memorable, which was after all, the object of the exercise. Well done, Tom.

[dangerousdave]

Jen - did he hear birdsong at Dachau, and what did he think of the Jewish memorial which looks like a gateway to the underground hell, and the rows of concrete plinths that the huts stood on
Could go on and on - its a place that for me has many sad memories

Should also say - it'll never again happen in germany, its people now question decisions

Edited by dangerousdave, 29 January 2011 - 12:07 PM.

[jules]

Well done Tom, what a beautifully written speech.

Jules