Laws which affect deaf people in Nazi Germany
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Overview[edit]
The Great Depression was a worldwide phenomenon which left many people out of work, angry, and scared. People were looking for strong leadership and someone to blame. In Germany, Adolf Hitler placed the responsibility for the poor economy on the Jews. He portrayed himself as a strong and powerful leader, and offered the public the stability they were looking for. Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancelor on January 30, 1933, and so began the Holocaust. The Nazi German regime, referred to as the Third Reich, put into motion Nazi Ideology, which dehumanized and devalued entire groups of people and called for the elimination of “racially inferior” people, including people who were deaf and/or hard-of-hearing. Other Nazi Ideology concepts included racism, nationalism, antisemitism, anticommunism, antigypsyism, and eugenics or racial hygiene. Such Ideology viewed Jewish people as “racial threats” and disabled people as “biological threats”. Hitler instilled his beliefs of racial hygiene on the people of Germany, considering any disabled person as a “social burden” and a drain on the unstable economy. He offered a solution, the sterilization and/or murder of those who were determined to be “hereditarily diseased”. This involved the passage of several laws which allowed the German government to commit heinous crimes against their own citizens.
Reichstag Fire[edit]
Following the Reichstag fire on February 27, 1933, the Nazi leadership and its Nationalist coalition partners exploited the fire to pass emergency legislation that abolished a number of constitutional protections and paved the way for Nazi dictatorship.
Fire brigade arrives at the Reichstag (German parliament) building. Despite fire-fighting efforts, the building was virtually destroyed by fires set at several places in the building. Berlin, Germany, February 27, 1933.
Letters and Propaganda[edit]
This photo originates from a film produced by the Reich Propaganda Ministry, It shows two doctors in a ward in an unidentified asylum. The existence of the patients in the ward is described as “life only as a burden”. Such propaganda images were intended to develop public sympathy for the Euthanasia Program.
Hereditary Health Law[edit]
Germany passed the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases on July 14, 1933. Under this law, Germany forcibly sterilized over 400,000 people who the government determined to have hereditary diseases.
Laws for the Deaf Community[edit]
- Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases
Germany passed the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases on July 14, 1933. It was amended and extended on June 26, 1935, and Section 10a was added, which authorized forced abortions in women who were otherwise subject to sterilization. It was used as a method to prevent the expansion of hereditary disease. Hitler believed in an Aryan nation, and that the German race could reign supreme through eugenics. Anyone that was deemed "unfit to live" was to be sterilized or eliminated. In the case of the Jewish Deaf, many were eliminated. Section 1 of the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases stated "a person who is hereditarily diseased may be sterilized by a surgical operation, when the experience of medical science indicates a strong likelihood that the offspring will suffer from severe hereditary physical or mental defects." Deafness was believed to be hereditary, but there was a lack of proper modern medicine or research to prove otherwise. German eugenicists believed that only legally regulated compulsory sterilization would solve the issue of "racial hygiene", a belief that placed races in a hierarchy and sought to keep people considered non-white from having children with people considered white. So, they looked to the United States for a model. Between 1934 and 1939, estimates on the number of people sterilized range from 200,000 to 400,000, as much as 0.5% of the German population. The Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases not only affected deaf individuals, but also those with other disabilities including mental deficiency, schizophrenia, hereditary epilepsy, blindness, physical disabilities, congenital feeblemindedness, and even severe alcoholism. The deaf were reported to the authorities by their families, peers, teachers, and doctors. Children in deaf schools were often taken by authorities, and even some of their teachers, to be sterilized unknowingly and without consent. Some were forced to undergo sterilization even if there was proof that they could give birth to "healthy" children. After Section 10a was added, women were not only forced to undergo sterilization, but to terminate their pregnancies without consent or knowledge. Some were terminated as late as nine months. The usual method of sterilizing men was to sever the sperm duct, known as a vasectomy. By the 1930s, there were more than one hundred different female sterilization procedures. In almost all cases a laparotomy was practiced, and either the fallopian tubes were crushed, severed, or removed, or the entire uterus was removed. This was called the "Hitler cut," and in many cases it would take weeks, sometimes even months, to heal. Some died due to surgical complications such as infections. X-rays were also used as a form of sterilization and became legally permissible in 1936. These procedures allowed surgeons and gynecologists the chance to experiment on human subjects in order to test for new operational procedures. Legislators, supported by other institutions, agreed to remain silent on the subject of persecution under the sterilization law, and deaf persons and their families were warned not to speak of their sterilizations. Leaflets and other propaganda were used to suggest that the operations were harmless, comparing them to appendectomies. Even some educators of deaf students characterized the "experience of sterilization" as positive. A questionnaire was sent out by Horst Biesold, author of Crying Hands: Eugenics and Deaf People in Nazi Germany. It was revealed that of those who responded, 1,215 people admitted to being sterilized between 1933 and 1945. Their ages ranged from nine to fifty years old, with 18% of them being between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-five. More than half of them were female. Nearly all of them were born between 1901 and 1926. Most sterilization took place in Berlin, but also occurred in cities such as Munich, Düsseldorf, Dortmund, Duisburg, and Essen.
- Sterilization of deaf children
In Nazi Germany many people were forced into sterilization by Nazis who believed in race purity and their right to enforce it. Between 1933 and 1945 roughly 15,000 deaf people were forced into sterilization. The youngest victim being only 9 years old, nearly 5,000 children up to the age of 16 were sterilized. Deaf children were forced to sterilization for reported hereditary deafness or feeblemindedness. Some were even reported for asocial behavior and claimed defects of character. Some deaf children learned to act as if they could hear, some even learned to speak to avoid this fate. Although pretending to hear may have saved some, thousands of children fell victim. Many deaf children who were students in Deaf Institutes were reported by their own teachers and directors. The teachers reported, forced, and even transported students to hospitals, in order to contribute to the Nazi race cultivation plan. Students were often brought to hospitals under pretext of other treatments, and tricked into sterilization. If a student refused they were beaten and handcuffed, some cases were reported that they were forced to watch the procedure as well. Many times the parents were only informed after the procedure was done to their child. Parents often thought they were sending their kids to get cured from being deaf, when in fact they were being sterilized or even killed. By 1940 sterilization stopped and was followed by killing which was called "Mercy Killing" by the Nazis, about 16,000 deaf people were murdered. Around 1,600 children who were deaf and had special disabilities were killed by drugs or even being starved to death. Newborn babies who were thought to be deaf were registered and marked to be murdered. Women who were pregnant and deaf, would have forced abortions, even when they were nine months pregnant. Many of the parents who sent their kids to be "cured" were not informed of their death until after the bodies were cremated and they would not even send the bodies to the family. The families were led to believe that their children had died of natural causes. The forced sterilizations were often rushed and used little anesthetics. The sterilization process affected very intimate areas, and many victims felt maimed, violated, and degraded, especially those who were at the age of puberty. Deaf children lived their lives feeling violated and endured physic al and psychological pain.
- 1924- Eugenicists in America The Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act)
Eugenics Committee members created this act to allow immigration into the United States with a quota system allowing 2% of each groups population aiming to improve the American’s population in the future. The Eugenics Committee of the United States Committee of Selective Immigration wanted a “preponderance of immigration stock from North and Western Europeans that were of “higher intelligence” providing the best material for American citizenship."
- 1933- Law of Restoration of the Professional Civil Service
Passed on April 7, 1933 made it that “non-Aryan” individuals were dismissed from government positions and others were transferred, or demoted. When terminated from these jobs the individuals would be unable to claim any pensions, benefits, or retain designation, rank, or titles thereafter. This was also included to those who were members of the bar through disbarment of all non-Aryan lawyers.
- 1933- Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring (Sterilization Laws) implemented
Law enacted in Nazi Germany on July 14, 1933 allowing sterilization of any citizen who suffered from a list of alleged genetic disorders, which many in fact were not genetic. This law would go into effect the beginning of 1934. This included Congenital Mental Deficiency, Schizophrenia, Manic-Depressive Insanity, Hereditary Epilepsy, Hereditary Chorea, Hereditary Blindness, Hereditary Deafness, and any severe hereditary deformity.
Amendment to the Sterilization law in 1935
Law was extended to include a Section 10a which authorized forced abortions in women who were subject to sterilization
- 1935- Blood Protection and Reich Citizenship Laws (The Nuremberg Race Laws)
September 15
Signed by Hitler and other Nazi officials saw this as a law that would go against race-mixing or “race defilement” (“Rassenschande”). Law striped those that were not “of German or related blood” of their German citizenship, barred marriage and “extramarital sexual intercourse” between Jews and other Germans, and barred Jews from flying the German flag, which would be the newly implemented swastika. Although it was more focused on Jews in the beginning it extended to others such Gypsies, people of color, etc.
- 1935- Marriage Health Law
On October 18, 1935, the Marriage Health Law was implemented that stressed the importance of marrying someone who was “racially pure”, as well as marriage certificates requiring tests to make sure either party is free of genetic disease. This law required hereditary health examinations before being able to marry. Health officials in Germany were made to register the birth of disabled as “unfit."
- '1935- Nuremberg Race Law
Nazis had always seen people with physical and mental disabilities as a defect in the genetic pool, so far they were able to produce offspring and that was damaging to the German Aryan "race". After long careful collection of data and planning during the late summer and autumn of 1939 German physicians murdered people with physical and mental disabilities (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/narrative/4032/en), or anyone who lived in s=institutions at that time in Germany. However, throughout the course of every euthanasia the Nazis were trying to find evidence that there was proof that the people they were murdering had some scientific evidence that they had inherited inferior genes. they did not find any evidence that there was scientific evidence.
- 1990- American with Disabilities Act (ADA)
The passing of this bill was to rid the discrimination of individuals with physical or mental disabilities in society. Discrimination before against these individuals persisted in crucial areas of life such as employment, housing, public accommodations, education, transportation, communication, recreation, institutionalization, health services, voting, and other public services creating a severe disadvantage socially, vocationally, economically, and educationally to these individuals. The goal for ADA is to create equality of opportunity, participation, living, and economic self-sufficiency for those affected by a disability.
Before the American with Disabilities Act was passed it was difficult for those of the Deaf community to participate in everyday life as they had to rely on volunteer services that had limited hours of operation for both business and scheduling medical appointments before the creation of internet and cellphones. There was also great difficulty being able to find a job being a deaf as companies would be able to automatically disqualify individuals just for their disability with no other reason or repercussions to these companies. This mandate also paved the way for deaf children to attend public schools and gave rise to a new generation of a deaf middle class.
References[edit]
· Crying Hands: Eugenics and Deaf People in Nazi Germany by Horst Biesold
1. Horst, Biesold, Crying Hands: Eugenic and Deaf People in Nazi Germany, Washington D. C., Gallaudet University Press 2004.
2. Biesold, Horst (1988). Crying Hands. Gallaudet University Press. ISBN 1563682559.
3. “Racism: In Depth.” Encyclopedia.ushmm.org, encyclopedia.ushmm.org/index.php/content/en/article/racism-in-depth?series=28. Accessed 13 May 2024.
· https://www.rit.edu/deafww2/sites/rit.edu.deafww2/files/documents/DeafPeopleinHitlersEurope.pdf
· https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-great-depression
· Tweek_0729 (ushmm.org)
· United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “A Forgotten Suitcase: The Mantello Rescue Mission.” Collections Highlights. www.ushmm.org/research/research-in-collections/collections-highlights/mantello- rescue-mission. Accessed on 4/21/24
· GHDI - Document (ghi-dc.org)
· https://www.eeoc.gov/americans-disabilities-act-1990-original-text
· https://learndojo.org/gcse/edexcel-history/life-in-nazi-germany-1933
· https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8802574/
· https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nuremberg-race-laws
· https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2010/winter/nuremberg.html
· https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1521
· https://www.yadvashem.org/docs/restoration-of-professional-civil-service.html
· https://immigrationhistory.org/item/1924-immigration-act-johnson-reed-act/