Preface i

DEAF PEOPLE
IN HITLER’S EUROPE
 Preface iii

DEAF PEOPLE
IN HITLER’S EUROPE

Donna F. Ryan and John S. Schuchman, Editors

Gallaudet University Press

Published in Association with the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Washington, D.C.
iv Preface

Gallaudet University Press

Washington, DC 20002

http://gupress.gallaudet.edu

©2002 by Gallaudet University

All rights reserved. Published 2002

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Deaf people in Hitler’s Europe / Donna F. Ryan and John S. Schuchman, editors.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-56368-132-3 (soft cover: alk. paper)—ISBN 1-56368-126-9 (alk. paper)
1. Deaf—Germany—History—20th century. 2. Deaf—Government policy—
Germany. 3. Deaf—Europe—History—20th century. 4. Handicapped—Government
policy—Germany. 5. Eugenics—Germany—History—20th century.
I. Ryan, Donna F. II. Schuchman, John S., 1938-

HV2746.D43 2002
940.53’18’0872—dc21 2002073884

The assertions, arguments, and conclusions contained herein are those of the volume
editors or other contributors. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Cover images from the film Verkannte Menschen (Misjudged People). Used by permission
of Landesverband der Gehörlosen Hessen e.V., Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Design and composition: Alcorn Publication Design

∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984.
 Preface v

Contents

Preface vii
Introduction 1

Part I Racial Hygiene

Introduction 11
Holocaust Studies and the Deaf Community 15
Henry Friedlander
Eugenics in Hitler’s Germany 32
Robert N. Proctor
Targeting the “Unfit” and Radical Public Health
Strategies in Nazi Germany 49
Patricia Heberer

Part II The German Experience

Introduction 73
Deaf People as Eyewitnesses of National Socialism 78
Jochen Muhs, translated by Robert Harmon
Misjudged People: The German Deaf Community in 1932 98
John S. Schuchman
The Place of the School for the Deaf in the New Reich 114
Kurt Lietz, translated by Tobias Brill
Teacher-Collaborators 121
Horst Biesold, translated by William Sayers

Part III The Jewish Deaf Experience

Introduction 167
Hungarian Deaf Jews and the Holocaust 169
John S. Schuchman

v
vi Preface
Contents

Deaf Survivors’ Testimony: An Edited Transcript 202

John S. Schuchman and Donna F. Ryan

Part IV Concluding Thoughts

A Call for More Research 215

Peter Black

Index 225
 Preface vii

Preface

Donna F. Ryan

T he following collection of essays is the result of several threads

of investigation and scholarship woven together at the “Deaf People
in Hitler’s Europe, 1933–1945” international conference, which took
place in Washington, D.C., on June 21–24, 1998, under the auspices
of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the History
and Government Department at Gallaudet University.
The research that led to the conference began when the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum opened in April 1993. The Hon-
ors Program at Gallaudet University instituted a special interdisci-
plinary seminar about the Holocaust to coincide with the opening
of the museum. Students in the course, taught by Jane Hurst of the
Department of Philosophy and Religion and me, struggled to grasp
the enormity of the horror by reading historical, literary, and philo-
sophical texts and by visiting the permanent exhibition at the mu-
seum. Toward the end of the semester, Lilly Shirey, a deaf Jewish
woman who fled Vienna in 1940 with her deaf mother and sister,
came to speak to the class. She had been very young at the time of
her escape from Austria, but her retelling of her family history
touched students deeply. They understood how imperiled they might
have been had they lived in Vienna in 1940, the year that forced steril-
ization policies were imposed in Austria. Survivor stories are always
powerful, but the unique experiences of this family, whose escape
was complicated by special difficulties dealing with the authorities,
had extraordinary meaning for this class of deaf college students.
The reaction from students led to the collaboration that brought
about this project. John S. Schuchman, the son of deaf parents and
an expert in deaf community history and videotaped historical

vii
viii Preface

interviews with deaf people, agreed to work with me because of my

research expertise on the Holocaust. We set out to discover how much
research had been done about the deaf experience in Europe during
World War II and committed ourselves to trying to get this story the
attention it deserved. We hoped to collect extant videotaped inter-
views with deaf informants and supplement them with new inter-
views. We learned quickly that the professional oral historians and
the deaf community oral historians had little knowledge of or con-
tact with each other. The videotaped interviews with deaf informants
at the Fortunoff Archive at Yale University, the Survivors of the Shoah
Visual History Foundation, and the United States Holocaust Memo-
rial Museum were conducted carefully by historians who were ex-
perts on the Holocaust but who had little knowledge of the deaf
community and who usually had to depend on sign language inter-
preters to communicate. The videotapes of community historians such
as Jochen Muhs and Simon Carmel filled in many of those gaps, for
the interviewers, themselves members of the deaf community, had
the confidence of their informants and the knowledge to pose ques-
tions about the experiences of deaf people during the 1930s, includ-
ing some very sensitive questions about sterilization and the exist-
ence of deaf Nazis. But these videotapes were made by individuals
working out of their homes and their own pockets, without the ben-
efits that the large oral history projects enjoyed. We hoped to bring
these two worlds together to encourage an exchange of information
and collaboration.
Between 1993 and 1997, John Schuchman and I undertook sev-
eral research and speaking trips to Germany, France, Great Britain,
the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, the Netherlands, Norway,
Canada, and several cities in the United States. We learned more
about the work of Horst Biesold, a teacher of deaf children whose
groundbreaking interviews with deaf German victims of forced ster-
ilization, published in English as Crying Hands, is the most authori-
tative work on the subject to date. 1 In 1994, during the second Deaf
History International Conference in Hamburg, Germany, a special
exhibition mounted by Vera Bendt and Nicola Galliner on the Israelite
Institution for the Deaf in Berlin-Weissensee focused on the impor-
 Preface ix

tant role of Jewish schools for deaf children, which also existed in
Vienna, Budapest, and London. 2 Likewise, the work of Jochen Muhs
began to highlight the many ways deaf people responded to the dra-
matic events unfolding around them. Gerhardt Schatzdorfer and
Francine Gaudry, producers of the Bayerischer Rundfunk program
for the deaf community, Sehen statt Hören, were kind enough to share
their complete footage of interviews for a special segment on deaf
Jewish Holocaust survivors living at the Helen Keller Institute in
Tel Aviv, Israel.
Several conferences at the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum Research Institute focused on the activities of doctors and
other medical professionals in the Third Reich. They also brought
together researchers in the forefront of Holocaust scholarship, in-
cluding Henry Friedlander, Robert Proctor, Benno Müller-Hill, Gisela
Bock, and Patricia Heberer, all of whose work is central to the story
of the treatment of people with disabilities, even though they do not
focus on deaf people as a separate group. Moreover, the resources of
the museum, from the archives and library to its ever-helpful staff,
have been of immeasurable help in pulling together this story.
Henry Florsheim, Ruth Stern, Eugene Bergman, David Bloch, and
Harry Dunai are among the deaf survivors living in the United States
who shared their stories. During our 1997 trip to Hungary, we en-
countered twelve survivors in Budapest who were willing to share
their harrowing and heroic experiences when the Germans arrived
in March 1944. After meeting them it was clear that we had to bring
together as many of the researchers and survivors as possible. The
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum agreed that this was a
story that needed to be elucidated and told.
The conference included formal academic presentations as well
as witness panels, a screening of the 1932 film Verkannte Menschen
(Misjudged People), an opportunity for deaf Europeans to formally
join the Survivors’ Registry at the museum, and a moving ecumeni-
cal memorial service for deaf Holocaust victims conducted by Fred
Friedman, a deaf rabbi, in the Hall of Witness.
After the conference, it seemed appropriate to publish some of
the presentations. For formal spoken English-language papers, the
x Preface

task was simple. But many of the presentations were made in spo-
ken German, German Sign Language, American Sign Language, and
Hungarian Sign Language. Moreover, some of the most eloquent and
touching moments came during the survivor testimonies. Such pan-
els are not formal presentations and, in this case, there were several
sign languages involved, making translation that maintains the tenor
of the moment difficult. We have decided to incorporate the testi-
mony in a narrative historical form, as an essay by John Schuchman.
A transcript of segments of the interviews appears in the appendix,
so that the survivors can also tell their own stories.
While making the selections for this collection, we found some
gaps, so we asked for a contribution from Patricia Heberer at the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. We also obtained per-
mission to use an article that had appeared in the American Annals of
the Deaf in 1934, and we added a commentary by John Schuchman
about the important film Verkannte Menschen. Thus, this is an an-
thology of essays rather than a proceedings from the 1998 confer-
ence, although the conference was the impetus for this book.
The names of the many people who made the conference, the
research, and this publication possible would fill several pages. Still,
we wish to thank some of them. The staff of the United States Holo-
caust Memorial Museum has been consistently committed to telling
the stories of as many victims of the Nazis as possible. We are espe-
cially indebted to Sara Bloomfield, Director of the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum; Paul Shapiro, Director of the Center
for Advanced Holocaust Studies; Peter Black, Senior Historian at the
Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies; Jaime Monllor, Program
Officer in the Public Programs Division; Sylvia Kay, Conference Co-
ordinator; and Linda Lazar, Special Events Manager. We especially
wish to thank Peter Black for his careful reading of earlier versions
of this book and his thoughtful suggestions.
We are also grateful to Israel Sela, the son of deaf parents, who
put us in contact with the Hungarian survivors with whom he has
worked at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in
Budapest. Joann Rudof of the Fortunoff Video Archives at Yale
University put the collection of deaf survivor interviews from the
 Preface xi

1980s at our disposal and advised us on issues of sensitivity in work-

ing with Holocaust survivors. Jessica Wiederhorn of the Survivors
of the Shoah Visual History Foundation has taken an interest in this
largely unknown story and taken steps to assure that more deaf sur-
vivors’ testimonies will be preserved by the foundation.
Of course, a project like this is important to Gallaudet Univer-
sity, the sole liberal arts college for deaf students in the world. We
wish to thank the Gallaudet Research Institute for much encourage-
ment and for several grants in support of our research and the con-
ference. We are especially grateful to Michael Karchmer, Sally Dunn,
and Thomas Allen. We are indebted to Roslyn Rosen, the university
provost at the time of the conference, for financial support and com-
plete commitment to the project. The conference could not have hap-
pened without the unflagging work of Georgette Lopez, former con-
ference planner for the College of Continuing Education.
We appreciate the support we received from several of our col-
leagues in the Department of History and Government. Department
Chairperson Russell Olson, in particular, worked closely with us for
a full year to ensure the success of the conference. We wish to thank
several university deans who provided scholarships to allow stu-
dents to attend the conference. We are much indebted to Jane
Dillehay, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Science, and Technol-
ogy, who granted release time and financial support for this project.
Finally, we wish to dedicate this work to honor the courageous
deaf survivors of Nazi tyranny, whose stories have touched us pro-
foundly, and to remember the many deaf women and men who were
in Europe from 1933 to 1945 and did not survive the horror.

Notes
1. Horst Biesold, Crying Hands: Eugenics and Deaf People in Nazi Germany,
trans. William Sayers (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 1999).
2. For detailed information about the exhibit, see Vera Bendt and Nicola
Galliner, eds. Öffne deine Hand für die Stummen, die Geschichte der Israelitischen
Taubstummen-Anstalt, Berlin-Weissensee, 1873 bis 1942 (Berlin: Transit, 1993).
 Introduction 1

Introduction

Donna F. Ryan

F ew images of the past half century have haunted the imagina-

tion as much as those emanating from Europe in 1945. Although
much information regarding the brutal treatment of minorities and
Hitler ’s political opponents had filtered out of Nazi-controlled Eu-
rope between 1933 and 1945, the full horror of the torture and mur-
der of Jews and other concentration camp inmates emerged slowly.
For a generation, many Holocaust survivors remained silent about
their experiences, with notable exceptions such as Elie Wiesel and
Primo Levi.1 Fear of recurrence, guilt for surviving when so many
others did not, a sense that no one wanted to hear about such hor-
rors, and a desire to try to forget kept many quiet. For many years,
the Holocaust remained characterized as a uniquely Jewish tragedy.
Scholars in the early years following the war delved into histori-
cal records and published painful accounts of the war against the
Jews.2 Their work was based on an enormous cache of Third Reich
archives, the so-called captured German documents. These records
were divided among the victors and microfilmed and deposited in
Washington, London, and Paris, where they were generally avail-
able to historians, and in the former East Germany and Soviet Union,
where they have only been open since the 1990s. Postwar trials of
Nazi officials in Nuremberg, of Auschwitz criminals during the 1960s
in Frankfurt, and of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem kept the atrocities
of the Holocaust in the public eye.
During the 1970s, a shift in societal awareness took place. Per-
haps the increasing interest in social history and the emergence of a
consciousness of minority group identity and rights, as exemplified
in the civil rights movement in the United States, opened the way

1
2 Introduction

for new investigations into the Holocaust. Popular cultural forms,

such as the American television miniseries Holocaust, raised public
knowledge of the horrors of genocide and spurred a younger gen-
eration of Europeans to begin to question its predecessors about their
culpability for mass murder.
Simultaneously, historians, lawyers, and other researchers un-
dertook a systematic examination of the gradually emerging histori-
cal record from Nazi-occupied countries, such as France, Belgium,
and the Netherlands. While the more famous hunters of war crimi-
nals, including Simon Wiesenthal in Vienna, and Serge and Beatte
Klarsfeld in Paris, continued to focus on crimes against the Jews,
researchers began to discuss how other groups had also been se-
lected for discrimination, segregation, expulsion, and murder. These
groups included Hitler’s political enemies—socialists and commu-
nists, in particular—and, once the war provided a level of cover for
the Nazis’ activities, anyone whom they considered to be members
of inferior races—including Sinti and Roma, commonly called Gyp-
sies, as well as Poles, Russians, and most other Slavic peoples. Ho-
mosexuals, perceived as a threat to the proliferation of the master
“Aryan” race, were singled out in Germany for incarceration and
murder, as were Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose conscientious objection
to war was unacceptable in the Third Reich.
For a long time, the actions undertaken against people with dis-
abilities were categorized as peripheral to the Holocaust. That people
with physical and cognitive disabilities should be selected for forced
sterilization, marriage prohibition, and ultimately extermination was
all too logical an outcome of Nazi racial theories and widely held
eugenics beliefs. These ideas were popular not only in Germany, but
were spearheaded by U.S. medical scientists working in institutions,
such as the facility at Cold Spring Harbor, New York, which was
richly funded by the Carnegie Institute. German eugenicists of the
1920s and the economic hardships that plagued Germany for over a
decade following World War I prepared the way for the passage of
the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases in
July 1933, only months after Hitler came to power, and the Law for
the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German Nation in
 Introduction 3

October 1935, only weeks after the Nuremberg Laws forbade Jews
to marry outside their own group. But the power of the technologi-
cally advanced Nazi state, its commitment to “racial hygiene,” and
the camouflage provided by war were all necessary prerequisites
for the next stage—the murder of infants and children with disabili-
ties. Soon adults with disabilities would be killed as part of the eu-
phemistically designated “euthanasia” program, also known as the
T4 program, so-named because the headquarters for this enterprise
were located at Tiergartenstrasse No. 4 in Berlin.
Noted Holocaust scholar Henry Friedlander has shown that the
attack on people with disabilities was neither peripheral to nor sepa-
rate from the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.”3 Rather it was
an integral element in an overarching Nazi theory of racial hygiene
to purge the German Volk of weak or undesirable elements and per-
mit a purified Aryan people to flourish and dominate Europe and
eventually the world. Nazi eugenics practices played on societal
prejudice and willingness to deem those who were different as “lives
unworthy of life.” Friedlander’s scholarship demonstrates that the
measures imposed on people with disabilities, including deaf people,
were part of the seamless cloth that enshrouded Europe’s Jews, Roma,
and Sinti. Robert Proctor’s essay in this volume documents the cen-
tral role that doctors and other health care professionals played in
determining who should be forcibly sterilized, forbidden to marry,
or murdered. People with disabilities died of starvation, lethal in-
jection, and suffocation in gas chambers, all processes overseen and
administered by well-established and successful medical profession-
als, not by a handful of Nazi ideologues. Patricia Heberer ’s research
shows us that certain cultural assumptions made discrimination
against some social groups tolerable to many ordinary Germans, not
only the Nazi party faithful.
Many deaf Germans were among the victims of Nazi eugenics
policies. Some formed a distinctive deaf community, a cultural mi-
nority distinguished by their use of sign language and their mem-
bership in separate social, athletic, religious, and political organiza-
tions. Some were outspoken champions of their own social justice
cause, as painted in the powerful community self-portrait in Wilhelm
4 Introduction

Ballier’s 1932 film, Verkannte Menschen (Misjudged People). This pro-

paganda piece, discussed in this volume by film and deaf commu-
nity historian John S. Schuchman, is a plea for equal opportunities
for deaf workers and professionals, and a demand for respect for
German Deaf culture. Despite the fact that Misjudged People depicted
deaf people as hard working and athletic—traits prized in Nazi cul-
ture—by 1934, such a positive representation of people who were
targeted for sterilization was unacceptable, and Goebbels’s propa-
ganda ministry pulled it from circulation.
From the work of Jochen Muhs, a deaf community historian re-
covering the history of deaf Berliners since the nineteenth century,
we know that the actions of deaf people during the Nazi era were
complicated and contradictory. Horst Biesold estimates that approxi-
mately 16,000 deaf people were among the 375,000 forcibly steril-
ized people with disabilities. Yet not all deaf people in Germany were
affected by this policy, for only the hereditarily deaf, a diagnosis
often misunderstood and misapplied by doctors of the time, were
targeted for sterilization. Other deaf Germans, notably the leader of
the Reich Union of the Deaf of Germany (Reichsverband der
Gehörlosen Deutschlands–REGEDE), Fritz Albreghs, were, at least
for a time, just as enthralled by Hitler and his promises of a better
future as were their hearing counterparts. When the Nazis, as part
of a program to coordinate and subsume all German social, politi-
cal, and economic institutions (Gleichschaltung) designated the
REGEDE as the sole legal deaf organization and made Albreghs the
liaison between deaf people and the Führer, many deaf Germans—
and even deaf people in neighboring France—exalted Hitler as the
first European leader to pay adequate attention to deaf people and
their needs.4 Photographs of deaf boys in Hitler Youth uniforms, deaf
girls in the Union of German Girls dirndls, and deaf storm troopers
in a Sturmabteilung (SA) motorcycle unit should not be shocking.
Deaf people were frequently cut off from information in mainstream
media, and they cannot fairly be expected to have been more politi-
cally astute than other Germans. If a post-1945 viewpoint is not taken,
it is easier to comprehend that deaf Germans shared in the adula-
tion of the Führer that many citizens expressed in the early days of
 Introduction 5

the Third Reich. Only when we learn more about the nature of deaf
resistance will we have a whole, three-dimensional image of the deaf
experience in Hitler’s Germany.
We do know a good deal about the sterilization of deaf people
from the work of the late Horst Biesold. One of the most important
parts of his research concerns the collaboration of teachers of deaf
students in reporting them for forced sterilizations and forced abor-
tions. To understand, though not condone, their behavior we need
to see the role that eugenics education played in training teachers
for deaf students, not only during the Nazi era, but even before their
assumption of power. The basic concept of eugenics—breeding for
better humans—was part of the cultural assumptions of the day for
many Germans, not just for those who were avowed Nazis. While
many Germans drew the line at murder, as is clear from the resis-
tance mounted by the churches, as suspicions about the T4 program
surfaced, the prevention of “lives unworthy of life” by forced steril-
ization was no less acceptable in Germany than it was in some quar-
ters of the United States.5 Biesold’s essay shows us how this think-
ing permeated deaf education, and the 1934 article by Kurt Lietz,
“The Place of the School for the Deaf in the New Reich,” shows how
educators rationalized it.
If it is difficult to determine the precise number of deaf people
sterilized by the Nazis, it is impossible to know exactly how many
deaf people were murdered in the T4 program. To begin with, some
records of this operation were destroyed; but even if there were com-
plete documentation, gleaning the number of deaf victims from the
files would be a delicate operation. Deaf people were never officially
designated as subjects for the euthanasia project, yet we know from
Friedlander and Biesold that deaf infants, children, and adults were
murdered in the asylums.6 Some were surely misdiagnosed as schizo-
phrenic and cognitively disabled, sometimes as a result of staff fail-
ure to properly communicate with deaf people in sign language or
appropriate written German, and sometimes as the tragic result of
societal prejudice about the intelligence of anyone who is deaf. When
we recall that a patient’s dossier from an asylum often received only
a cursory glance from the doctor who could sign a death warrant, it
6 Introduction

is clear that diagnoses were often meaningless.7 Perhaps only a pains-

taking examination of extant files from hospitals, asylums, schools
for deaf children, and state-run killing centers will elucidate the treat-
ment of deaf people in the T4 program.
The fate of deaf Jews in Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe is a
story of tragic discrimination and heroic survival. Very few deaf Jews
survived in Germany, as Jochen Muhs’ article explains. The research
into their fate has been limited by the dearth of material available.
The story of the Israelite Institution for the Deaf in the Berlin suburb
of Weissensee has been told. 8 Recently, the story of the Weidt factory
in Berlin has emerged from the shadows of the former East Berlin.
Otto Weidt ran a factory that made brooms and brushes for military
use, which was located at Rosenthalerstrasse No. 39. He employed
disabled Jews, most of them blind and a handful of them deaf and
blind. Each night, he hid them behind a false wall in the tiny garret
workshop, until their luck ran out and they were all deported. There
were no survivors.9
Indeed, given Nazi policies toward Jews and people with dis-
abilities, it is astounding that there were any deaf Jewish survivors
at all. We have sifted through the narratives of Holocaust survivors
held in the videotape archives at Yale University, the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Survivors of the Shoah Vi-
sual History Foundation, individual interviews by Jochen Muhs,
Simon Carmel, and those John S. Schuchman and I conducted in 1997.
As the stories unfold, we can only marvel at the physical hardiness,
spiritual and emotional strength, and plain luck that allowed some
of the most despised people in the Nazi worldview to endure the
terrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, and Ravensbrück.
In 1997, with the kind help of Israel Sela of the American Jewish
Joint Distribution Committee in Budapest, John Schuchman and I
met and interviewed a dozen deaf Jewish survivors of the round-
ups, deportations, labor battalions, and massacres that took place at
the Danube River. These survivors were hunted by Adolf Eichmann
and the Hungarian fascists, the Arrow Cross; protected by the Swed-
ish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg; sheltered by decent non-Jewish deaf
friends and neighbors; or assisted by Dezso Kanizsai, director of the
 Introduction 7

Jewish School for the Deaf on Mexico Street. Their touching story is
retold here in John Schuchman’s essay that details their harrowing
experiences and their indomitable spirit. Probably the only reason
they survived was that the deportations occurred so late in the war.
Only further research into other occupied countries will permit a
fully nuanced understanding of the deaf Jewish experience under
Nazi tyranny.
The research and writing in this field have just begun, and many
areas need further investigation in order to describe the lives of deaf
people in European countries on the eve of the Second World War as
well as to document their fate during the war. But the 1998 confer-
ence in Washington, D.C., which launched this study, has introduced
scholars and survivors who might never have met otherwise. We
hope this anthology will spur a new generation of scholars, many of
them deaf, to investigate this era further and to enrich the fields of
deaf studies and Holocaust studies mutually.

Notes
1. See, for example, Elie Wiesel, Night, trans. Stella Rodway (New York:
Hill and Wang, 1960) and Dawn, trans. Frances Frenay (New York: Hill and
Wang, 1961) or Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on
Humanity, trans. Stuart Wolf (New York: Collier, 1961).
2. See Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the
Jews of Europe, 1939–1945 (London: Vallentine, Mitchell, 1953; New York:
Jason Aronson, 1985); and Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews
(Chicago: Quadrangle, 1961; New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985).
3. Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the
Final Solution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
4. See the article “Bravo Hitler” in the Parisian deaf community newspa-
per La Gazette des Sourds-Muets, 1933.
5. The best study of the Catholic Church in Germany and its response to
Nazism is still Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1964).
6. See Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide and Horst Biesold, Crying
Hands: Eugenics and Deaf People in Nazi Germany, trans. William Sayers
(Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 1999).
7. See Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, chap. 4.
8 Introduction

8. See Vera Bendt and Nicola Galliner et al., Öffne deine Hand für die
Stummen: Die Geschichte der Israelitischen Taubstummen-Anstalt, Berlin-
Weissensee, 1873 bis 1942 (Berlin: Transit, 1993).
9. Exhibition description, “Blind Trust, Hidden at the ‘Hackescher
Markt,’” Otto Weidt Werkstatt, Rosenthalerstrasse No. 39, Berlin.
 Introduction 9

Part I
Racial Hygiene
 Introduction 11

Introduction

Donna F. Ryan

B road pseudoscientific theories, social policies, and mental im-

ages of an ideal population for the New Germany governed the treat-
ment of deaf people during Hitler ’s regime. Recent scholarship in
Holocaust studies has fit the wartime experiences of people with
disabilities into the context of popular “eugenics” theories intended
to preserve “Aryan” superiority by eliminating weak links in the
gene pool. Beginning with prohibitions against marriage between
Aryans and “damaged stock” and the forced sterilization of those
judged likely to pass down inferior genes, negative eugenics theo-
ries would eventually lead to gruesome experiments and the mass
murder of those deemed dispensable and dangerous to the heredi-
tary future of Germany. While the willing architects of this social policy
were academics, doctors, lawyers, and judges, the Nazis were also
confronted with the need to popularize their ideas in order to en-
sure compliance and even outright support for their racial practices.
Henry Friedlander has demonstrated the integral connection
between the Nazi treatment of those perceived as disabled and the
planning and implementation of the “Final Solution of the Jewish
Question.”1 In the following essay, he outlines the historical context
for the persecution of deaf people. Based on the theory of eugenics,
which was widely accepted by medical professionals in Europe and
the United States, Nazi “racial hygiene” laws passed in 1933 and
1935 mandated the forced sterilization of the genetically unfit and
forbade them to marry. As in many cases of Nazi injustice, Friedlander
shows how the burden of proof of “innocence” fell on the accused.
In 1939, racial hygiene took a deadly turn. The so-called eutha-
nasia program murdered disabled children first, using barbiturate
overdose or starvation, in fulfillment of the goal of the destruction

11
12 Donna F. Ryan

of “life unworthy of life.” The inclusion of deaf children in this pro-

gram is documented. The effort to eradicate disabled adults entailed
the construction of killing centers and the use of poison gas, precur-
sors to the death camps of the Holocaust. While precise figures for
deaf victims may be impossible to glean from the records, the murder
of deaf adults, often mistakenly diagnosed as feebleminded but
sometimes selected only because they were deaf, places deaf people
among Nazi targets for annihilation within the Greater German Reich.
Robert Proctor ’s essay examines the role of medical profession-
als in the forced sterilization and murder of disabled people during
the Third Reich.2 He argues that racial hygiene, an extreme form of
German eugenics, was the invention of medical scientists even be-
fore Hitler ’s assumption of power. With the institution of a strong
state, doctors were authorized to put those theories into practice.
Like Friedlander, Proctor finds that doctors, nurses, and other
health care professionals were deeply implicated in all assaults on
disabled people. They reported genetic illnesses to the state and they
served as judges for the Hereditary Health Courts. They performed
the sterilizations, whether by surgical procedure, injection of super-
cooled carbon dioxide, or X-rays. They killed disabled babies, in-
cluding deaf infants, by injection or starvation and then undertook
the systematic murder of disabled adults with overdoses of barbitu-
rates or the use of gas chambers. Doctors trained in anthropology
performed all “selections” at the death camps. They plundered
corpses for gold and organs for study. They performed heinous medi-
cal experiments. When much of the apparatus of the euthanasia pro-
gram was moved from Germany to Poland to reduce popular oppo-
sition, gas chambers from psychiatric hospitals were dismantled and
shipped to Majdanek, Auschwitz, and Treblinka. Medical personnel
familiar with operating the gas chambers followed.
Proctor shows that doctors were not Hitler’s pawns but pioneers
in the development of racial hygiene theories and the technology to
carry out monstrous crimes. Medical practitioners and theorists func-
tioned in a world where eugenics theories were valued and where
their personal prestige and economic position were much enhanced
by service to the Nazi state.
 Introduction 13

Patricia Heberer’s essay draws an important linkage in eugen-

ics theory between heredity and social problems in the modern world.
In this way, it was possible to apply this theory not only to those
racially outside the German Volk—the Jews, Roma, and Sinti—but
also those within the community whose social value was question-
able—people with physical and cognitive disabilities, homosexuals,
alcoholics, prostitutes, the illegitimately born, criminals, those suf-
fering from sexually transmitted diseases or tuberculosis, the poor,
and even those considered lazy or work shirkers. The origins of so-
cial ills were believed to be hereditary, and so biological solutions
could be imposed through energetic public health policies carried
out by physicians, social workers, public welfare agencies, and even
educators. These theories were acceptable to a broad German audi-
ence who had seen so many “fit” individuals sacrificed for the Fa-
therland in World War II, while “unfit” members of society were
consuming a disproportionate share of the public treasury in a coun-
try that suffered a long and deep economic depression. Progressively
more severe funding cuts for mental health and long-term-care fa-
cilities fostered deteriorating conditions, leading to malnutrition
and disease.
Heberer characterizes Nazi public health measures as more and
more radical until deliberate murder appeared the logical outcome.
As the T4 program became more widely known, Hitler issued an
order to terminate its operations in August 1941, but it actually con-
tinued, carefully controlled from Berlin. Moreover, the killing op-
erations in the concentration camps broadened the definition of un-
fit to include mentally and physically ill prisoners, those who did
not work, and those the camp administrators deemed troublesome.
As Patricia Heberer argues here, the category of unfit was gradually
expanded from the hereditarily compromised, disabled, and racially
invaluable to all those no longer useful to society, especially during
wartime. Ultimately, even German soldiers and workers from East-
ern Europe, if unable to perform to full potential, found themselves
victims of this curious utilitarianism. National Socialist logic had
been carried to its most extreme conclusion, in which public health
and social policies merged.
14 Donna F. Ryan

Notes
1. Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the
Final Solution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
2. For a full treatment of this subject, see Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene:
Medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988).
 Holocaust Studies and the Deaf Community 15

Holocaust Studies and

the Deaf Community

Henry Friedlander

T he fate of deaf people in Nazi Germany is a neglected aspect of

the Holocaust. Certainly, few would think of them as Holocaust vic-
tims or survivors. In the United States, even in Germany, few are
aware that during the Nazi era, human beings—men, women, and
children—with impaired hearing were sterilized against their will,
and even fewer know that many deaf people were also murdered.
Under Nazi rule, they shared the fate of all persons with mental and
physical disabilities.
First, we must define our terms. The Nazi regime championed
an ideology of human inequality designed to assure the health and
purity of the German national community. Membership in the com-
munity was to be based on biology; race and not culture was to de-
termine inclusion. It thus became the official policy of the German
state to exclude those deemed to pose a threat to the nation’s health
and purity. This exclusion was based on biology and directed against
groups of human beings considered “alien” or “inferior;” heredity
determined the fate of groups and individuals. We therefore can
apply the term “Holocaust” or “genocide” to the fate of all those
human beings whose selection for exclusion and murder was based
on their heredity.1
Although the drive against supposedly alien influences was di-
rected against large numbers of human beings classified as incom-
patible with the Nordic ideal of “Aryan” Germans—for example,
persons of African or Asian descent—only two so-called alien groups
resided in Central Europe in sufficient numbers to require the inter-
vention of the state: Jews and Gypsies. Against them, the Nazi re-
gime inaugurated a concerted policy of isolation, discrimination, and

15
16 Henry Friedlander

repression. Their isolation culminated in the Nuremberg racial laws

of September 1935, which prohibited marriages between Germans
and members of the proscribed groups; it also made any sexual con-
tact between them illegal and punishable by death. During the 1930s,
the exclusion of Jews involved, in addition to isolation and
marginalization, the drive to force them to leave the country, and
the exclusion of Gypsies—that is, Sinti and Roma—involved their
incarceration in so-called Gypsy camps. During the war, the Ger-
man state practiced a far more radical form of exclusion, the mass
murder of all members of the excluded groups, applying the so-called
Final Solution of the Jewish and Gypsy Question in every European
country occupied by or allied with Germany.2
A long tradition of anti-Semitism in Christian Europe had pre-
pared the ground for the popular acquiescence to the isolation of the
Jews. But only the transformation of religious into racial anti-Semitism
during the nineteenth century made possible the exclusion of Jews
regardless of their commitment to German culture. Their heredity,
and not their culture, determined their fate. The same applied to the
Gypsies. As a result of the American and French revolutions, previ-
ously repressed minorities, including Jews and Gypsies, had been
granted citizenship during the nineteenth century, but the equality
engendered by emancipation had been challenged by the rise of sci-
entific theories of race that opposed the absorption of outsiders.3
Disabled people made up the third target of the Nazi policy of
exclusion. Alongside Jews and Gypsies, human beings with physi-
cal or mental disabilities—designated as “unfit”—were also to be
eliminated from the German national community. They too faced a
long tradition of prejudice, which, in the nineteenth century, also
transformed into a racially based theory of their inferiority.
The scientific movement responsible for the harsher view of dis-
abled people was known as “eugenics.” The term had been coined
in 1881 by the British naturalist and mathematician Francis Galton
and described by the leading American eugenicist, Charles B. Dav-
enport, as “the science of the improvement of the human race by
better breeding.” Eugenicists firmly believed that the increase of
foreign and inferior populations prevented human advancement.
 Holocaust Studies and the Deaf Community 17

To deal with so-called inferiors, eugenicists like Davenport called

for the study of specific problems posed by “inferior” humans as,
for example, “deaf-mutism, criminality, hereditary insanity, feeble-
mindedness, epilepsy.”4 At first, eugenicists attempted to achieve
their goals through “positive” eugenics, that is, an increase of the
birth rate of “superior” populations; but, as this approach did not
yield results, the movement turned to “negative” eugenics, that is,
the sterilization and exclusion of inferior populations.5
The political campaign of the eugenics movement in the United
States, designed to prevent members of other races and ethnic groups
from entering the country, was successful after World War I with the
enactment of the 1924 Johnson Immigration Restriction Act. This act
remained the law of the land until after World War II; it restricted
the immigration of ethnic groups considered undesirable through
the establishment of quotas and was one reason that refugees from
Nazi terror and survivors of Nazi genocide had difficulty entering
the United States.
The idea that mentally and physically disabled human beings must
be excluded from the gene pool was a staple argument of the interna-
tional eugenics movement, and the campaign of the American eugeni-
cists in favor of sterilizing the disabled was relatively successful. In
1907, Indiana enacted the first sterilization law, and by the middle of
the 1930s, more than half of the states had passed laws that autho-
rized the sterilization of “inmates of mental institutions, persons con-
victed more than once of sex crimes, those deemed to be feeble-
minded by IQ tests, ‘moral degenerate persons,’ and epileptics.”6
In 1927, one such law, a Virginia statute that authorized direc-
tors of state institutions to order the compulsory sterilization of dis-
abled patients diagnosed as suffering from “an hereditary form of
insanity or imbecility,” reached the U.S. Supreme Court.7 The case
involved an order for the compulsory sterilization of a woman diag-
nosed as feebleminded, whose mother had been classified the same
way, and whose child had also been stigmatized as retarded. In his
prescient plea to the court, I. P. Whitehead, attorney for plaintiff Car-
rie Buck, warned the justices that if the state can impose a procedure
that “violates her constitutional right of bodily integrity,” the results
18 Henry Friedlander

would be ominous. He argued that if the Virginia law were declared

constitutional, “then the limits of the power of the State (which in
the end is nothing more than the faction in control of the govern-
ment) to rid itself of those citizens deemed undesirable according to
its standards, by means of surgical sterilization, have not been set.”
Further, he warned that such a finding by the court would mean
that “a reign of doctors will be inaugurated and in the name of sci-
ence new classes will be added, even races may be brought within
the scope of such regulation, and the worst forms of tyranny prac-
ticed.”8 Oliver Wendell Holmes, speaking for the majority of the
court, including Louis Brandeis and William Howard Taft, pushed
aside such arguments. His justification for upholding the Virginia law
presaged the arguments used later by eugenicists in Nazi Germany:
We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon
the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not
call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these
lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in
order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is bet-
ter for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate
offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, soci-
ety can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing
their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is
broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three genera-
tions of imbeciles are enough.9

In the United States, eugenics eventually lost scientific accep-

tance and public support. New scientific discoveries led to the rejec-
tion of eugenic research results. Moreover, events in Nazi Germany
during the 1930s, and the close cooperation between American and
German eugenicists, seriously damaged the standing of the Ameri-
can eugenics movement, and the revelation of Nazi crimes in the
1940s discredited eugenics theories—at least for the next fifty years.10
The eugenics movement in Germany was in the beginning, prior
to World War I, relatively moderate. It emphasized “positive” eugen-
ics and did not adopt the anti-Semitism popular on the German right.
World War I radicalized the German eugenics movement. Not only
did eugenicists begin to advocate “negative” eugenics, particularly
 Holocaust Studies and the Deaf Community 19

sterilization, but many also adopted a racist viewpoint. During the

Weimar Republic, German eugenicists agreed on “negative” eugen-
ics but divided into a Nordic and anti-Nordic wing on the question
of race. The proponents of the Nordic orientation subscribed to the
belief in the superior qualities of the Nordic or Germanic peoples;
moreover, the Nordic wing, centered in the Munich chapter of the
eugenics movement, did not reject racial anti-Semitism and embraced
this form of racism completely after the Nazis assumed power.11
The Munich chapter was led by Fritz Lenz, who occupied at the
University of Munich the first chair in eugenics, as well as by Eugen
Fischer and Ernst Rüdin. The Freiburg anthropologist Eugen Fischer
had become famous through his book, The Rehoboth Bastards and the
Problem of Miscegenation Among Humans, written on the basis of his
research in German southwest Africa and published in 1913.12 This
study established his reputation and also influenced all subsequent
German racial legislation, including the Nuremberg racial laws.
Fischer not only rejected marriages between whites and blacks but
also objected to “colored, Jewish, and Gypsy hybrids,” the so-called
Mischlinge.13 In 1927, he moved to the University of Berlin as profes-
sor of anthropology and at the same time became director of the
newly established Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Hu-
man Heredity, and Eugenics. The psychiatrist Ernst Rüdin, a Swiss
national who had studied and worked in Germany since the turn of
the century, became in 1913 director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
for Genealogy and Demography of the German Research Institute
for Psychiatry in Munich, and in 1933, he was appointed by the Nazi
regime to head the Society for Race Hygiene. 14
Two younger race hygiene scientists, Hans F. K. Günther and
Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, played leading roles among the next
generation of Nordic supremacists. Günther, the only leading race
scientist who had joined the Nazi party prior to its assumption of
power, was appointed in 1930 to the university chair in racial an-
thropology at Jena by Wilhelm Frick, later Hitler’s minister of inte-
rior, after the Nazis had entered the Thuringian state government.
Verschuer, a physician specializing in genetics and internal medicine,
was known for his eugenic research on twins. A proponent of Aryan
20 Henry Friedlander

supremacy, Verschuer served as a department head in Fischer ’s in-

stitute, left Berlin in 1935 to head the Frankfurt Institute for Heredi-
tary Biology and Race Hygiene, and returned to Berlin as Fischer ’s
successor in 1942.
The opposition to the Nordic faction was centered during the
Weimar Republic in the Berlin chapter of the eugenics movement,
led by the Social Democrat Alfred Grotjahn, who occupied the chair
for social hygiene at the University of Berlin. The differences be-
tween the two factions were symbolized by their battle over the name
of the German eugenics movement. The anti-Nordic wing wanted
to retain “eugenics,” while the Nordic wing opted for “race hygiene.”
After Adolf Hitler’s appointment as chancellor on January 30, 1933,
race hygiene became the official designation for German eugenics.
The assumption of power by the Nazis assured the victory of
the Nordic wing; the anti-Nordic wing disappeared. The new regime
provided for the practitioners of race hygiene unlimited opportuni-
ties to implement their program. In turn, the race scientists provided
the legitimacy the regime needed for its policies. Already in 1931,
two years before Hitler ’s assumption of power, Fritz Lenz provided
the Nazi leader with the following testimonial: “Hitler is the first
politician with truly wide influence who has recognized that the cen-
tral mission of all politics is race hygiene and who will actively sup-
port this mission.”15
As soon as the Nazis had assumed power, they moved with alac-
rity to implement their racial and eugenics program. Disabled people
were among the first victims targeted by exclusionary legislation.
On July 14, 1933, just four-and-a-half months after assuming power,
Hitler and his cabinet promulgated a sterilization law for persons
suffering from a variety of mental and physical disabilities, and in
the process defined the groups to be excluded from the national com-
munity. This law, issued with the cumbersome name of Law for the
Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases, served as the cor-
nerstone of the regime’s eugenics legislation.16 A sterilization law
had already been prepared in Prussia, the largest of the German fed-
eral states, during the final years of the Weimar Republic, but had
never been passed by the legislature. The new German government
 Holocaust Studies and the Deaf Community 21

simply adopted this Prussian law; but, unlike the Prussian model,
the new law included provisions for compulsory sterilization. Tak-
ing effect on the first day of 1934, the law eventually led to the ster-
ilization of approximately 375,000 German nationals. 17
The law created a legal structure for enforcement. Newly cre-
ated Hereditary Health Courts were attached to the lowest courts of
general jurisdiction, the magistrate courts, to decide all cases in cham-
ber; three members—a judge of the magistrate court as chair, a physi-
cian of the public health service, and another physician with expert
knowledge about the laws of heredity—made up this court. The law
also created appellate courts of hereditary health that were attached
to the regional circuit courts, again composed of two physicians—
one in the public health service—and chaired by a judge of the cir-
cuit court. The decision of the appellate courts was final.18
The sterilization law was designed to deal with hereditary dis-
eases and persons carrying such diseases. The opening of the law
proclaimed its content: “Any person suffering from a hereditary dis-
ease can be sterilized if medical knowledge indicates that his off-
spring will suffer from severe hereditary physical or mental dam-
age.” The law defined a person “suffering from a hereditary disease,”
and thus a candidate for sterilization, as anyone afflicted with one
of the following disabilities:19

1. congenital feeblemindedness,
2. schizophrenia,
3. folie circulaire (manic-depressive psychosis),
4. hereditary epilepsy,
5. hereditary St. Vitus’s dance (Huntington’s chorea),
6. hereditary blindness,
7. hereditary deafness,
8. severe hereditary physical deformity, or
9. severe alcoholism on a discretionary basis.

Official statistics collected by the Reich Interior Ministry show

that during 1934, the first year the law was in force, 32,268 men
and women were sterilized against their will. This figure was still
22 Henry Friedlander

relatively low because the capability to perform sterilizations was

limited; the number increased during the following years. In 1934,
persons judged feebleminded made up the largest group sterilized:
17,070, or 52.9 percent. The next largest group, 8,194 or 25.4 percent,
were persons diagnosed as schizophrenic, followed by 4,520 or 14.0
percent of persons suffering from epilepsy. The group of blind per-
sons—201 or 0.6 percent—and that of deaf persons—337 or 1.0 per-
cent—was much smaller.20 But these categories could all be expanded.
The emphasis on the congenital nature of the disability was often
disregarded, and intervention was often expanded to include per-
sons whose disability was not severe; thus sterilization was not al-
ways confined to persons blind or deaf, but was also applied to those
with a more limited visual or hearing impairment.
In the years following the promulgation of the law, several
amendments sharpened its provisions, closed loopholes, and
radicalized implementations. One 1935 amendment closed the loop-
hole involving pregnancies that commenced prior to sterilization.
The amendment authorized abortions performed to prevent births
of children with disabilities; this would apply not only if the mother
was disabled but also if the mother was healthy but the father suf-
fered from a disability. This amendment is particularly noteworthy,
because, for persons judged healthy, German law continued in the
Nazi era to impose heavy penalties for abortions. The abortion
amendment was rigorously enforced. For example, in May 1940, the
public health office in Feldkirch, Upper Austria, ordered an abor-
tion for a pregnant young woman because “of concern that her off-
spring might suffer from congenital deafness.”21
The next logical step in erecting a legal structure designed to
exclude those judged biologically deficient was the passage of a law
regulating marriages. The Nuremberg racial laws, prohibiting mar-
riages and any sexual contact between Jews and Germans, were en-
acted in the middle of September 1935. One month later, on October
18th, the German government enacted a similar law directed against
disabled people: the Law for the Protection of the Hereditary Health
of the German Nation. This so-called Marriage Health Law prohibited
a marriage if either party suffered from a mental derangement or
 Holocaust Studies and the Deaf Community 23

hereditary disease specified in the sterilization law. Before marriage,

a couple had to prove that no impediment existed under this law by
securing a Marriage Fitness Certificate from the public health office.
An essential prerequisite for the exclusion of minorities was the
ability of the state to define and identify members of the groups tar-
geted for persecution.22 Defining people as disabled proved simple,
as the sterilization law listed the disabilities that would define the
members of the excluded group. Identification, however, required
greater effort. No national register of disabled individuals existed
in 1933. Still, the state could use some existing data at the start of the
sterilization campaign: lists of persons who were committed to in-
stitutions or who attended special schools. But this was not enough,
and the authorities had to rely on denunciations, which came pri-
marily from the professionals in the health care, education, and wel-
fare system. The database of disabled people collected as part of the
sterilization campaign was augmented by the data collected after
passage of the Marriage Health Law. The information thus collected
by the public health service grew enormously. The final aim, how-
ever, was a comprehensive system of registration to provide eugenic
information on all individuals. The state wanted to establish an in-
ventory on race and heredity, which would have enabled the au-
thorities to identify every disabled person and, equally important,
their suspect relatives. War and defeat, however, did not permit
completion of this task.
The coming of war in 1939 radicalized the exclusionary policies
of the Nazi regime. In the winter of 1939–1940, the regime initiated a
killing program targeting disabled German nationals, euphemisti-
cally labeling this mass murder as “euthanasia,” but also designat-
ing it “the destruction of life unworthy of life.” 23 To implement the
decision to kill disabled people, Hitler appointed two plenipoten-
tiaries: his escorting physician, Dr. Karl Brandt, and the chief of the
Chancellery of the Führer, Philipp Bouhler. These two selected Vic-
tor Brack, a senior official of the Chancellery, to organize and direct
the killings. To hide the involvement of the Chancellery, Brack cre-
ated various front organizations. The offices of the fronts were located
in Berlin on Tiergartenstrasse No. 4, and the killing enterprise was
24 Henry Friedlander

therefore known as “Operation T4.” But neither the Chancellery,

whose participation had to remain secret, nor T4, which masquer-
aded as a nongovernmental organization, had the power of enforce-
ment. Therefore, the Reich Interior Ministry, especially its health
department, had to serve as enforcer to ensure cooperation. Dr.
Herbert Linden, the official in charge of the department dealing with
state hospital, race, and heredity, served as the ministry’s liaison to
the T4 operation.
Hitler labeled the T4 killings euthanasia or “mercy death,” al-
though this term did not apply to these killings; the victims did not
suffer from a painful terminal condition and could have continued
to live pain-free for many years. The scientific and medical commu-
nity did not oppose Hitler ’s radical decision to murder disabled
people, in part because the idea had circulated since 1920, the year
the legal scholar Karl Binding and the psychiatrist Alfred Hoche
published a polemic advocating such a radical step with the title
“Authorization for the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life.”24 They
had argued, along a line later also advanced by Oliver Wendell
Holmes, that “if one thinks of a battlefield covered with thousands
of dead youth . . . and contrasts this with our institutions for the
feebleminded with their solicitude for their living patients—then one
would be deeply shocked by the glaring disjunction between the
sacrifice of the most valuable possession of humanity on one side
and on the other the greatest care of beings who are not only worth-
less but even manifest negative value.”25 Dismissing the Hippocratic
oath as a “physician’s oath of ancient times,” they argued that to
protect “higher values,” physicians must be freed to destroy “un-
worthy lives.”26
The killings started with the murder of infants and young chil-
dren born with mental or physical disabilities. For this purpose, Brack
created his first T4 front organization, equipping it with the impres-
sive-sounding name of Reich Committee for the Scientific Registra-
tion of Severe Hereditary Ailments. Physicians, midwives, and hos-
pitals reported disabled infants and young children to the public
health service, which transmitted the reporting forms to the Reich
Committee. Using these forms, physicians working for the Reich
 Holocaust Studies and the Deaf Community 25

Committee selected the children for the killing program. The chil-
dren were transferred to children’s wards for expert care, which T4
had established at selected state hospitals. Parents often voluntarily
surrendered their children because they were deceived through
promises that new medical procedures would lead to a cure. Against
those who refused, the Reich Ministry employed various forms of
coercion. In the wards, the children were killed through the use of
medication, usually overdoses of standard barbiturates, but some-
times also through starvation. The physicians and nurses in the
children’s wards continued the killings, often accompanied by self-
serving experiments, throughout the war.27
Children with hearing impairment were included among those
killed in the children’s wards. After the war, the psychiatrist
Hermann Pfannmüller, director of the Eglfing-Haar state hospital in
Munich as well as the physician in charge of its children’s ward,
testified at the Nuremberg medical trial about the disabled children
brought to his killing ward, including those suffering from “con-
genital blindness, deafness, dumbness.” 28 Pfannmüller ’s postwar
successor as director of Eglfing-Haar reported that surviving case
histories showed that deaf children were among those killed by
his predecessor. He reached the following conclusion about “ten
deafmutes from the Ursberg institution” killed at Eglfing-Haar: “Al-
most all were active, a few were mildly feebleminded, but others—
considering their skill at work—possessed normal intelligence.” He
added that even when they were diagnosed as moderately feeble-
minded, that diagnosis was not reliable because it was probably due
to their hearing and speaking impairments. 29
Even before the murder of the children had been fully imple-
mented, Hitler also ordered the killing of disabled adults, and gave
this job as well to Brandt and Bouhler. The larger task to kill dis-
abled adults was both easier and more complex. It was easier be-
cause only the institutionalized disabled were to be included. Un-
like the small number of infants and young children, a far larger
number of adults could not be enticed to commit themselves. Fur-
ther, any attempt to conduct round-ups of disabled adults, taking
them from their homes by force, would have breached the wall of
26 Henry Friedlander

secrecy surrounding the killings and would have caused popular

unrest in the middle of the war. In any event, the number of adults
judged disabled was sufficiently large to satisfy the killers; the rest
could be dealt with after victory.
The system of selecting the disabled victims followed the
scheme applied to disabled children. Backed by the authority of
the Reich Interior Ministry, T4 requested that all state hospitals
complete a questionnaire for each disabled patient. T4 approached
the public through newly created front organizations, including the
Reich Cooperative for State Hospitals and Nursing Homes
(Reichsarbeits-gemeinschaft Heil- und Pflegeanstalten) and the
Charitable Foundation for Institutional Care (Gemeinnützige
Stiftung für Anstalts-pflege). Teams of psychiatrists serving as con-
sultants selected the victims on the basis of these questionnaires.
The disabled patients were never even seen, much less examined,
by the psychiatrists deciding their fate.30 At first victims were se-
lected only from state and private mental hospitals, but soon the
search for victims was widened to include psychiatric clinics, nurs-
ing homes, old age homes, as well as specialized homes as, for ex-
ample, Zieglers Institution for Deafmutes in Wilhelmsdorf,
Württemberg, a special education boarding school.31
The task of secretly killing large numbers of human beings and
disposing of their bodies posed additional problems. The method
used to kill the children—medications in regular hospitals—was
deemed too slow to accomplish the job. T4 decided to use gas as the
killing method, and created for this purpose the “killing center,” an
invention that Nazi Germany has bequeathed to the world. T4 es-
tablished six killing centers—Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Hartheim,
Bernburg, Sonnenstein, and Hadamar—equipped with gas chambers
and crematoria. There, the T4 operatives killed their victims in as-
sembly line fashion in the gas chamber and burned their bodies in
the crematorium. And prior to cremation, they looted the corpses,
taking gold teeth for the enrichment of the German state and body
organs for the research of German scientists. Later, they exported
their invention to the East, where killing centers like Treblinka and
Auschwitz applied the same method to kill Jews and Gypsies. 32
 Holocaust Studies and the Deaf Community 27

It has long been known that the looting of corpses for dental
gold was routinely practiced in the killing centers of the Final Solu-
tion in Poland, but it is less known that this practice was first intro-
duced in the killing centers for disabled people in Germany. A
Hadamar secretary testified in court after the war about this looting:
Gold teeth? They were handed to us in the office, whenever there
was someone who had gold teeth. Many handed to us? No. They
were brought to me in a bowl by one of the stokers. He had a book
and I had a book, and we thus confirmed accuracy. We had a little
carton, and that is where we kept them until we had accumulated
a sufficiently large amount, and we then sent them by courier to
Berlin.33

The perpetrators not only looted gold but also human organs.
The brain was in greatest demand. Julius Hallervorden, director of
the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research in Berlin, and Carl
Schneider, director of the Psychiatric Clinic of the University of
Heidelberg, were most prominent in this final violation of the vic-
tims. 34 Eventually, the looting scientists traveled to find victims who
could be murdered for their brains. Thus Schneider wrote to T4 af-
ter one of such trips: “We have found many wonderful idiots in
Hirth’s Alsatian institution in Strasbourg. Transfer requests will fol-
low.”35 The same violation of the victims for so-called research took
place in the East. Of these, the Auschwitz experiments of Josef
Mengele undoubtedly remain the most egregious example of the
collaboration of unscrupulous researchers with equally unscrupu-
lous senior scientists and prestigious scientific institutions. 36 Thus,
Verschuer of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute included the following in
one of his progress reports to the German Research Foundation: “My
assistant Dr. Mengele is another contributor who has joined this re-
search project. He was posted to the Auschwitz concentration camp
as an SS captain and camp physician. With approval of the Reich
leader SS, he has conducted anthropological research on various ra-
cial groups in the camp, and has transmitted blood samples to my
laboratory for testing.” 37
On August 24, 1941, Hitler ordered an end to the gassing of dis-
abled people. In the preceding twenty months, about 80,000 disabled
28 Henry Friedlander

human beings had been murdered. A change of heart did not cause
Hitler to issue this order. Instead, he was reacting to the growing
popular opposition to the killings. The secrecy surrounding the
murders had not lasted, and the outrage of relatives of victims had
become too public. Catholic and Protestant church leaders, who for
more than a year had privately petitioned the government without
success, finally spoke out in public. The regime could not afford such
public disquiet in the middle of the war.
Hitler ’s order, which applied only to the killing centers, did not
end the murders. The T4 centers were thereafter used to kill concen-
tration camp prisoners, and underemployed T4 operatives were
posted to Poland to operate killing centers for Jews and Gypsies.
The killing of disabled people continued unabated in Poland and
the occupied Soviet Union where public opinion did not matter. Even
inside Germany, where the murder of disabled children had not been
stopped, the murder of disabled adults soon resumed. But hence-
forth, they were killed in selected state hospitals through starvation,
overdoses of medication, or deadly injections. As these killings oc-
curred in regular hospitals and were spread over a longer period of
time, public knowledge was limited and popular opposition was
muted. The T4 operatives used the term “wild” euthanasia to de-
scribe these decentralized killings; the number of victims was just
as large as before.38
As the war continued, the decentralized killings became even
more arbitrary, and the killing hospitals came to resemble concen-
tration camps. In the Pomeranian state hospital Meseritz-Obrawalde,
one of the leading killing institutions of wild euthanasia, the staff
not only killed those unable to work, but in addition also patients
“who increased the workload of the nurses, were deafmute, sick, or
disobedient.” 39
After the war, disabled victims were not recognized as persons
persecuted by the Nazi regime. Survivors received no restitution for
time spent in the killing hospitals; neither did they receive restitu-
tion for compulsory sterilization. Although the sterilization law had
been declared invalid by the Allies, the postwar German state did
not recognize sterilization under the Nazi-era law as racial persecu-
 Holocaust Studies and the Deaf Community 29

tion, and postwar German courts held that compulsory sterilization

under the law had followed proper procedures. Disabled persons
challenging such rulings lost their cases in court when they could
not prove that the finding that led to their sterilization had been
medically wrong. The appeal of a sterilized deaf person was thus
denied in 1950 after two court-appointed physicians certified that
the original finding of congenital deafness had been accurate. In 1964,
the appeal for restitution from a sterilized person, who during the
Nazi period had been a student at the former Israelite Institution for
the Deaf in Berlin, was denied. The postwar German court found
that while the appellant as a Jew belonged to a group recognized as
persecuted under the restitution law, his sterilization as a deaf per-
son did not constitute Nazi persecution.40 To this day, the German
state has not fully recognized and compensated disabled people,
including deaf persons, for their persecution in the Nazi period.

Notes
1. See Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to
the Final Solution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
2. See Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago:
Quadrangle, 1961); and Sybil Milton, “Holocaust: The Gypsies,” in Genocide
in the Twentieth Century: An Anthology of Critical Essays and Oral History, ed.
Samuel Totten, William S. Parsons, and Israel Chamy (New York: Garland,
1995), 209–64.
3. See Benno Müller-Hill, Murderous Science: Elimination by Scientific
Selection of Jews, Gypsies and Others. Germany, 1933–1945, trans. George R.
Fraser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); Peter Pulzer, The Rise of
Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria (New York: Wiley, 1964); and
Donald Kenrick and Grattan Puxon, The Destiny of Europe’s Gypsies (New
York: Basic Books, 1972).
4. Garland E. Allen, “The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor,
1910–1940: An Essay in Institutional History,” Osiris, 2 (1986): 232–33.
5. See Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: W. W.
Norton, 1981) and Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the
Uses of Human Heredity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).
6. Garland E. Allen, “The Misuse of Biological Hierarchies: The American
Eugenics Movement, 1900–1940,” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 5,
no. 2 (1983): 122.
30 Henry Friedlander

7. Buck v. Bell, 274 US 200 (1927).

8. 274 US 202, cited in Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 8.
9. 274 US 207, cited in Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 8–9.
10. See, for example, Allen, “Eugenics Record Office,” 250–53; and Gould,
The Mismeasure of Man, 22
11. On the eugenics movement in Germany, see Friedlander, The Origins
of Nazi Genocide, chap. 1; Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the
Nazis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988); and Sheila Faith
Weiss, “The Race Hygiene Movement in Germany,” Osiris, 3 (1987): 193–236.
12. Eugen Fischer, Die Rohoboter Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem
beim Menschen: anthropologische und ethnographische Studien am Rehoboter
Bastardvolk in Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1913).
13. Cited in Anna Bergmann, Gabriele Czarnowski, and Annegret
Ehmann, “Menschen als Objekte humangenetischer Forschung: Zur
Geschichte des Kaiser Wilhelm-Instituts für Anthropologie, menschliche
Erblehre und Eugenik in Berlin-Dahlem, 1927–1945,” in Der Wert des
Menschen: Medizin in Deutschland, 1918–1945, ed. Christian Pross and Goetz
Aly (Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1989), 130.
14. See Matthias M. Weber, Ernst Rüdin: Eine kritische Biographie (Berlin:
Springer Verlag, 1993).
15. Cited in Loren R. Graham, “Science and Values: The Eugenics
Movement in Germany and Russia in the 1920s,” American Historical Review
82 (1977): 1143, note 24.
16. For an English translation, see Control Commission for Germany
(British Element), Legal Division, British Special Legal Research Unit,
“Translations of Nazi Health Laws Concerned with Hereditary Diseases,
Matrimonial Health, Sterilization, and Castration (8 Nov. 1945).”
17. For the most detailed account, see Gisela Bock, Zwangssterilisation im
Nationalsozialismus: Studien zur Rassenpolitik und Frauenpolitik (Opladen:
Westdeutscher Verlag, 1986).
18. See Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, chap. 2.
19. For a discussion of the categories defined as hereditary diseases, see
Arthur Gütt, Ernst Rüdin, and Falk Ruttke, Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken
Nachwuchses vom 14. Juli 1933 nebst Ausführungsverordnungen, bearbeitet und
erläutert (Munich: J. F. Lehmanns Verlag, 1934), 119ff.
20. “Übersicht über die Durchführung des Gesetzes zur Verhütung
erbkranken Nachwuchses,” Bundesarchiv, Koblenz (BAK), R18/5585.
21. Elisabeth Klamper, ed., Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen
Widerstandes, Vienna, vol. 19 of Archives of the Holocaust, ed. Henry Fried-
lander and Sybil Milton (New York: Garland, 1992), doc. 50.
22. See Henry Friedlander, “Registering the Handicapped in Nazi
Germany: A Case Study,” Jewish History 11, no. 2 (1997): 89–98; Sybil Milton
 Holocaust Studies and the Deaf Community 31

and David Luebke, “Locating the Victim: An Overview of Census-Taking,

Tabulation Technology, and Persecution in Nazi Germany,” IEEE Annals of
the History of Computing 16, no. 3 (fall 1994): 25–39; and Götz Aly and Karl
Heinz Roth, Die restlose Erfassung: Volkszählen, Identifizieren, Aussondern im
Nationalsozialismus (Berlin: Rotbuch Verlag, 1984).
23. See Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide; Müller-Hill, Murderous
Science; Ernst Klee, “Euthanasie” im NS-Staat: Die “Vernichtung lebensunwerten
Lebens” (Frankfurt: S. Fischer Verlag, 1983); and Michael Burleigh, Death and
Deliverance: “Euthanasia” in Germany, c. 1900–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995).
24. Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche, Die Freigabe der Venichtung
lebensunwerten Lebens: Ihr Mass und Ihre Form (Leipzig: Verlag von Felix
Meiner, 1920)
25. Ibid., 27.
26. Ibid., 45–47, 49–50.
27. Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, chap. 3.
28. U.S. Military Tribunal, Official Transcript of the Proceedings in Case 1,
United States v. Karl Brandt et al., 7304.
29. Gerhard Schmidt, Selektion in der Heilanstalt, 1939–1945, 2d ed.
(Frankfurt: Edition Suhrkamp, 1983), 67.
30. See Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, chap. 4.
31. Ibid., 158.
32. See ibid., chap. 5.
33. Landgericht (LG) Frankfurt, Verfahren Wahlmann, Gorgass Huber, 4a
kls 7/47 (4a Js 3/46), Protokoll der öffentlichen Sitzung der 4. Strafkammer, 3
March 1947, 32, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv (HHStA), 461/32061/7.
34. See Müller-Hill, Murderous Science, 66–69; and Pross and Aly, Wert des
Menschen, 248–49.
35. Carl Schneider to Paul Nitsche, 15 Oct. 1942 (handwritten adden-
dum), Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen, Ludwigsburg (ZStL),
Heidelberg doc. 127, 434–35.
36. See, for example, Müller-Hill, Murderous Science, 70-74. See also
Hermann Langbein, Menschen in Auschwitz (Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1980), 380–85
37. Verschuer to Reichsforschungsrat, 20 March 1944, BAK, R73/15342.
38. See Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, chap. 8.
39. Staatsanwaltschaft (StA) Hamburg, Anklageschrift gegen Friedrich
Lensch und Kurt Struve, 147 Js 58/67, 24 April 1973, 377–78.
40. Sabine Krause, “Wiedergutmachung: Die Nachkriegsgeschichte,” in
“Öffne deine Hand für die Stummen”: Die Geschichte der Israelitischen
Taubstummen-Anstalt Berlin-Weissensee, 1873 bis 1942, ed. Vera Bendt and
Nicola Galliner (Berlin: Transit, 1993), 170–71.
32 Robert N. Proctor

Eugenics in Hitler’s Germany

Robert N. Proctor

W e like to think that medicine is a force for healing in the world,

but we should also not forget that, in the wrong political climate,
medicine can join with evil to produce monstrosities.1 Such was the
case in the Nazi era. As we shall see, scientists and physicians col-
laborated in the most horrific crimes of the Nazis—including the
sterilization of disabled people, cruel medical experiments, perni-
cious racial theories, and industrial-scale murder such as the world
had never seen before.2
History is never simple, however, and there are also aspects of
Nazi medicine and public health that are much less known: the fact
that Germany under Hitler had the world’s most powerful anti-smok-
ing movement, for example, along with policies designed to encour-
age organic farming, species protection, animal rights, and vegetari-
anism. The normal and the monstrous are twisted together in the
science of this time, and it is important to understand both aspects—
the monstrous and the prosaic—if we are not to underestimate the
appeal of the Nazi view of the world. This chapter explores some of
the historical origins of the crimes committed in the guise of medi-
cine and how these horrors could have been avoided. We begin with
what is known as “eugenics,” or “racial hygiene.”

Racial Hygiene
At the end of the nineteenth century, German Social Darwinists,
fearing a “degeneration” of the human race, set about to establish a
new kind of hygiene—a racial hygiene (Rassenhygiene)—that would
turn the attention of physicians away from the individual or the

32
 Eugenics in Hitler ’s Germany 33

environment toward the human “germ plasm.” In the eyes of its

founders (e.g., Alfred Ploetz and Wilhelm Schallmayer), racial hy-
giene was supposed to complement personal and social hygiene;
racial hygiene would provide long-run, preventive medicine for the
German germ plasm by combating the disproportionate breeding of
“inferiors,” the celibacy of the upper classes, and the threat posed
by feminists to the reproductive performance of the family.
Interestingly, the early racial hygiene movement was primarily
nationalistic and meritocratic, more than it was anti-Semitic or Nor-
dic supremacist. Eugenicists worried more about the indiscriminate
use of birth control (by the “fit”) and the provision of inexpensive
medical care (to the “unfit”) than about the breeding of “superior”
with inferior races, or many of the other themes we associate with
the Nazis. Anti-Semitism actually played a relatively minor role in
early racial hygiene. In fact, for Ploetz, father of the German move-
ment (his 1895 treatise, in which he coined the term Rassenhygiene,
served as the most important early book on this topic), Jews were to
be classified along with the Nordics as one of the superior, “cultured”
races of the world.3
By the mid-1920s, however, this had changed, and the right-wing
faction of racial hygiene had merged with National Socialism. The
conservative, anti-Semitic publishing house, J. F. Lehmann Verlag,
took over publication of the Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie
(the main racial hygiene journal) shortly after World War I, and Nazi
ideologues began to incorporate eugenics rhetoric into their discourse.
There was a time when historians stressed the romantic origins
of National Socialism: the links to German idealism, the nihilism of
Nietzsche, or the “Aryan” supremacy ideology of Gobineau, Cham-
berlain, and Lapouge. Recent research has also shown, though, that
biology (and especially biologism) was important in Nazi ideology.4
Fritz Lenz, Germany’s first professor of racial hygiene, praised Hitler
in 1930 as “the first politician of truly great import who has taken
racial hygiene as a serious element of state policy.” Hitler himself
was lauded as the “great doctor of the German people;” he once called
his revolution “the final step in the overcoming of historicism and
the recognition of purely biological values.”
34 Robert N. Proctor

Biological imagery was central in Nazi literature. Schutzstaffel

(SS) journals spoke of the need for “selection” to replace “counter-
selection,” borrowing their language directly from the social Dar-
winist rhetoric of the racial hygienists. Nazi leaders commonly re-
ferred to National Socialism as “applied biology”; indeed it was Lenz
who originally coined this phrase in the 1931 edition of his widely
read textbook on human genetics.5
The Nazi state itself was supposed to be biologisch, or organic, in
two separate senses—in its suppression of dissent (the organic body
does not tolerate one part battling with another), and also in its em-
phasis on “natural” modes of living. Natural modes of living were
highly prized by Nazi philosophers. Women were not supposed to
wear makeup, and legislation was enacted to protect endangered
species. Hitler was a vegetarian and did not smoke or drink, nor
would he allow anyone to do so in his presence.
Given the importance of biology in Nazi discourse, it is not sur-
prising that doctors were among those most strongly attracted to
the Nazi movement. In 1929, several physicians formed the National
Socialist Physicians League to coordinate Nazi medical policy and
purify the German medical community of “Jewish Bolshevism.” The
organization was an immediate success, with nearly 3,000 doctors,
representing 6 percent of the entire profession, joining the league by
January 1933—that is, before Hitler ’s rise to power. Doctors in fact
joined the Nazi party earlier and in greater numbers than any other
professional group: By 1942, more than 38,000 doctors had joined
the party, representing about half of all doctors in the country. In
1937, doctors were represented in the SS seven times more often than
was average for the employed male population; doctors assumed
leading positions in German government and universities.

Pawns or Pioneers?
One often hears that National Socialists distorted science, that
doctors perhaps cooperated more with the Nazi regime than they
should have, but that by 1933 it was too late, and scientists had no
alternative but to cooperate or flee. There is certainly some truth in
this, but I think it misses the more important point that it was medical
 Eugenics in Hitler ’s Germany 35

scientists who invented racial hygiene in the first place. Many of the
twenty-odd university institutes for racial science and racial hygiene
were established at German universities before the Nazi rise to power,
and by 1932, it is fair to say that racial hygiene had become a scien-
tific orthodoxy in the German medical community. Racial hygiene
was taught in the medical faculties of most German universities and
was the subject of countless lectures and seminars. The major ex-
pansion in this field occurred before Hitler came to power; most of
the dozen or so journals of racial hygiene, for example, were estab-
lished long before the rise of National Socialism.
Racial hygiene was recognized as the primary research goal of
two separate institutes of the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft:
the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and
Eugenics in Berlin (1927–1945), directed by Eugen Fischer, and the
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Genealogy and Demography of the Ger-
man Research Institute for Psychiatry in Munich (1919–1945), di-
rected by the psychiatrist Ernst Rüdin. Both institutes performed
research in the fields of criminal biology, genetic pathology, and what
we today would call human genetics. Both also helped train SS phy-
sicians; both helped construct the “genetic registries” later used to
round up Jews and Gypsies. Twin studies (that is, of identical twins
raised apart) were among the leading preoccupations of these and
other racial hygiene institutes, the purpose being to sort out the rela-
tive influence of nature and nurture in human character and institu-
tions. This was one of the major priorities of Nazi medical research.
In 1939, Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick ordered all twins born in
the Reich to be registered with public health offices for purposes of
genetic research.
The largest racial hygiene institution was Otmar von Verschuer’s
Frankfurt Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene. This
institute had sixty-seven rooms and several laboratories; this was
where Josef Mengele did his doctoral research on the genetics of cleft
palates, working under Verschuer. Mengele was also appointed as-
sistant to Verschuer and provided “experimental materials” to the
institute (including eyes, blood, and other body parts) from
Auschwitz as part of a study on the racial specificity of blood types
36 Robert N. Proctor

(funded by the German research community). This was one of the

reasons blood groups were so actively studied in the 1930s: When
Otto Reche founded the German Society for Blood Group Research
in 1926, one of the main reasons he gave for this was to see if he
could find a reliable means of distinguishing various races in the
test tube. Scientists, in other words, were not simply “pawns” in the
hands of Nazi officials. But without a strong state to back them, ra-
cial hygienists were relatively impotent. It was not until 1933 that
the programs of the pre-Nazi period gained the support of officials
willing to move aggressively in this area

The Sterilization Law

What were the practical results of Nazi racial hygiene? Three
main programs—the sterilization law, the Nuremberg racial laws,
and the “euthanasia” operation—formed the heart of the Nazi pro-
gram of medicalized “racial cleansing.” These, especially the eutha-
nasia program, were the programs that cleared the path for subse-
quent efforts to eliminate entire peoples from European soil.
On July 14, 1933, the Nazi government passed the Law for the
Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases, or sterilization
law, allowing the forcible sterilization of anyone suffering from “ge-
netically determined” illnesses, including feeblemindedness, schizo-
phrenia, manic depressive insanity, hereditary epilepsy, Huntington’s
chorea, hereditary blindness, deafness, or “severe alcoholism.” The
measure was drawn up after a series of meetings by several of
Germany’s leading racial hygienists, including Fritz Lenz, Alfred
Ploetz, Ernst Rüdin, Heinrich Himmler (who had been active in breed-
ing chickens prior to 1933), Gerhard Wagner, “Führer” of the National
Socialist Physicians’ League, and Fritz Thyssen, an industrialist.
In 1934, 181 Hereditary Health Courts and Appellate Hereditary
Health Courts were established throughout Germany to adjudicate
the sterilization law. The courts were usually attached to local civil
courts and presided over by two doctors and a judge, one of whom
had to be an expert on “genetic pathology.” According to the provi-
sions of the law, doctors were required to register every case of ge-
netic illness known to them; physicians could be fined 150 Reich
 Eugenics in Hitler ’s Germany 37

marks (RM) for failing to register any genetic defective.6 Physicians

were also required to undergo training in genetic pathology at one
of the numerous racial institutes established throughout the coun-
try. Also in 1934, the German Medical Association founded a jour-
nal, Der Erbartz (The Genetics Doctor), to help physicians determine
who should be sterilized; the journal also described the latest steril-
ization techniques.
Estimates of the total number of people sterilized in Germany
range from 350,000 to 400,000. In some areas, more than 1 percent of
the total population was sterilized. Compared with the demands of
some racial hygienists, this was relatively modest: Lenz, for example,
had argued that as many as 15 percent of the entire population was
defective and ought to be sterilized.
As a consequence of the law, sterilization research and engineer-
ing rapidly became one of the largest medical industries. Medical
supply companies designed sterilization equipment; medical stu-
dents wrote more than 180 doctoral theses exploring the criteria,
methods, and consequences of sterilization. There were obvious in-
centives for developing rapid sterilization techniques, especially for
women, for whom the standard tubal ligation could involve a hos-
pital stay of more than a week. The most frightening of these was an
“operationless” technique involving scarification of the fallopian
tubes through injections of super-cooled carbon dioxide. In 1943, the
gynecologist Clauberg announced to Himmler that, using such a tech-
nique and with a staff of ten men, he could sterilize more than 1,000
women per day. Sterilizations were also performed with X-rays, a
technique also used in the United States at this time.
The United States provided the most important model for Ger-
man sterilization laws.7 By the late 1920s, 15,000 individuals had been
sterilized in the United States—most while incarcerated in prisons
or institutions for the mentally ill. Nearly half of these took place in
California—most of the others in northern states (not, as one might
have expected, in the South). German racial hygienists throughout
the Weimar period expressed their envy of American achievements
in this area, warning that unless the Germans made progress in this
field, America would become the world’s racial leader.
38 Robert N. Proctor

The Nuremberg Laws

In the fall of 1935, Hitler signed into law the so-called Nuremberg
laws—excluding Jews from many privileges of citizenship and pre-
venting marriage or sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews. A
further measure, the Marriage Health Law, required couples to sub-
mit to medical examination before marriage to see if “racial pollu-
tion” might be involved.
The Nuremberg laws were considered public health measures
and were administered primarily by physicians. In early 1936, when
the Marriage Health Law went into effect, responsibility for admin-
istering it fell to marital counseling centers established in the Weimar
period. The centers were greatly expanded beginning in 1935; they
were renamed “genetic counseling centers” and attached to low-level
public health offices. The Nuremberg laws, along with the steriliza-
tion law, were two of the primary reasons expenditures and person-
nel for public health actually expanded under the Nazis.
As they had with the sterilization law, German racial theorists
learned from the Americans. In 1932, Bavarian Health Inspector
Walter Schultze noted that the United States must be regarded as a
nation where “racial policy and thinking has become much more
popular than in other countries.” Schultze was referring not just to
sterilization laws, but to American immigration restriction laws—
especially the 1924 Immigration Restriction Act, which cut annual
immigration into the United States by some 95 percent.
In subsequent years, racial hygienists looked to other aspects of
American racial policy for instruction. Nazi physicians on more than
one occasion argued that German racial policies were relatively “lib-
eral” compared with the ways blacks were treated in the United
States. Evidence for this was usually taken from the fact that in sev-
eral southern states, a person with 1/32nd black ancestry was le-
gally black, whereas if someone was 1/8th Jewish in Germany (and
for many purposes, 1/4th Jewish), he or she was legally Aryan. Nazi
physicians spent a great deal of time discussing American miscege-
nation legislation. German medical journals reproduced charts show-
ing the states in which blacks could or could not marry whites, could
or could not vote, and so forth.
 Eugenics in Hitler ’s Germany 39

In 1939, Germany’s leading racial hygiene journal reported that

the University of Missouri had refused to admit black students. The
same year, the journal reported that the American Medical Associa-
tion refused to admit black physicians to its membership. German
physicians had only recently (in 1938) barred Jews from practicing
medicine (except on other Jews); racial theorists were thereby able
to argue that Germany was “not alone” in its efforts to preserve
racial purity. 8

Euthanasia
In early October 1939, Hitler issued orders that certain doctors
be commissioned to grant “a mercy death (Gnadentod) to patients
judged incurably sick by medical examination.” By August 1941,
when the gas chamber phase of the so-called euthanasia operation
was largely brought to a close, more than 70,000 people judged men-
tally or physically disabled had been killed in an operation that
served as a rehearsal for the subsequent destruction of the Jews and
Gypsies.
The idea of the destruction of “lives unworthy of life” did not
begin with the Nazis, but had been discussed in legal and medical
literature long before the Nazi rise to power, and not just in Ger-
many. In 1935, the same year Egas Moniz invented the lobotomy, the
French-American Nobel Prize winner Alexis Carrel suggested in his
book, Man the Unknown, that the criminal and mentally ill should be
“humanely and economically disposed of in small euthanasia insti-
tutions supplied with proper gases.” Six years later, as German psy-
chiatrists were sending the last of their patients into the gas cham-
bers, an article appeared in the Journal of the American Psychiatric
Association calling for the killing of mentally disabled children. 9
The fundamental argument for forcible euthanasia was economic:
Euthanasia was justified as a kind of “preemptive triage” to free up
beds. This became especially important in wartime, when things can
happen that would not be tolerated in peacetime. In fact, the eutha-
nasia operation was consciously timed to coincide with the invasion
of Poland. The first gassing of mental patients occurred at Posen, in
Poland, on October 15, 1939, just forty-five days after the invasion
40 Robert N. Proctor

of that country marked the beginning of World War II.10 In Germany

itself, after the end of the first phase of euthanasia in August 1941,
euthanasia became part of normal hospital routine: Disabled infants
were regularly put to death; persons requiring long-term psychiat-
ric care and judged “incurable” suffered a similar fate. The war
economy claimed many victims: After bombing attacks made space
short, psychiatric institutes were cleared out (their patients mur-
dered) to make up for lost space. In at least one instance, a home for
the elderly was emptied in this fashion—its inhabitants sent to
Meseritz-Obrawalde, in Poland, where they were killed.11
Precedents for these policies began during World War I, when
half of all German mental patients starved to death (45,000 in Prussia
alone, according to one estimate)—they were simply too low on the
list to receive rations. In the Nazi period, the starvation of the men-
tally ill, the homeless, and other “useless eaters” became official state
policy, after a prolonged propaganda campaign to stigmatize men-
tally ill and disabled people as “lives unworthy of life.” 12
The euthanasia program was planned and administered by lead-
ing figures in the German medical community. When the first ex-
periments to test gasses for killing took place in Brandenburg Hospi-
tal in January 1940, Viktor Brack, head of the operation, emphasized
that such procedures “should be carried out only by physicians.” Brack
cited the motto: “The needle belongs in the hand of the doctor.”
It is also important to appreciate both the banality and the popu-
larity of the euthanasia operation. In 1941, for example, the psychi-
atric institution at Hadamar celebrated the cremation of its ten-thou-
sandth patient in a special ceremony, where everyone in attendance—
secretaries, nurses, and psychiatrists—received a bottle of beer for
the occasion. The operation was also popular outside the medical
community. Parents were made to feel shame and embarrassment at
having to raise an abnormal or malformed child. Hospital archives
are filled with letters from parents writing to health authorities re-
questing their children be granted euthanasia.
Historians exploring the origins of the Nazi destruction of “lives
unworthy of life” have only in recent years begun to stress the link
between the euthanasia operation and the Final Solution. As Henry
 Eugenics in Hitler ’s Germany 41

Friedlander and others have shown, the two programs were joined
in both theory and practice. The most important theoretical link was
what might be called the “medicalization of anti-Semitism,” part of
a broader effort to reduce a host of social problems to medical or
ideally surgical problems.
The “Jewish question,” for example, was commonly cast as a
public health problem; in fact, the official journal of the German
Medical Association (Deutsches Ärzteblatt) published a regular col-
umn during the war years on “Solving the Jewish Problem.” One of
the leading research priorities in this period was to study the racial
specificity of disease, which was the purpose behind the blood group
research mentioned earlier. In 1935, when Gerhard Wagner, Führer
of the National Socialist Physicians League, addressed the
Nuremberg Party Congress, he was able to cite extensive medical
research proving that various “diseases,” including homosexuality,
insanity, feeblemindedness, hysteria, suicide, gallstones, bladder and
kidney stones, neuralgia, chronic rheumatism, and flat feet, were
more common among Jews than non-Jews. In the same speech at
which he proposed the destruction of mentally ill people, Wagner
declared that “Judaism is disease incarnate.”
The medicalization of deviance continued into the war years. The
first Nazi-administered Jewish ghettos in Poland, for example, were
justified in terms of a quarantine; only medical authorities could grant
permission to enter or leave the ghettos. This of course eventually
became a self-fulfilling prophecy: Medical journals in the early 1940s
denounced the Jewish “race” as a diseased race and invoked statistics
on typhus levels in the Warsaw ghetto to prove their contention.
In the course of the late 1930s, German scientists proposed a
number of different solutions to the Jewish question. The agrono-
mist Dr. Hefelmann suggested exporting all Jews to Madagascar. Dr.
Philip Bouhler proposed sterilizing all Jews by X-rays. Viktor Brack
recommended the sterilization of the two to three million Jews ca-
pable of work, who might be put to use in German factories.
The ultimate decision to gas the Jews emerged from the fact that
the necessary technical apparatus already existed for the destruc-
tion of mentally ill people. In the fall of 1941, with the bulk of the
42 Robert N. Proctor

euthanasia operation completed, the gas chambers at psychiatric

hospitals were dismantled and shipped east, where they were rein-
stalled at Majdanek, Auschwitz, and Treblinka. The same doctors,
technicians, nurses, and managers often followed the equipment. In
this sense, there was a continuity in both theory and practice be-
tween the destruction of the “lives unworthy of life” in Germany’s
mental hospitals and the destruction of German ethnic and social
minorities.

Conclusion
Most leading German physicians supported the Nazis. Physi-
cians commonly boasted that their profession had shown its alle-
giance earlier and in greater strength than any other professional
group. But why?
First of all, the medical profession at this time was quite conser-
vative. Prior to 1933, the leadership of the profession was dominated
by the Deutschnationalen—a German nationalist party that subse-
quently threw its support to Hitler. Not all physicians, of course,
were conservative. The profession was politicized and polarized af-
ter the economic collapse in the late 1920s and early 1930s; physi-
cians moved from the center to the left or the right. The socialists
and communists, however, were always a minority in the German
medical community. By the end of 1932, the National Socialist Phy-
sicians League was twice as large as the Association of Socialist Phy-
sicians (3,000 versus 1,500 members). In the Reichstag elections lead-
ing to the Nazi seizure of power, nine physicians were elected to
represent the Nazi Party, while only one physician was elected to
represent the socialists.
Apart from this conservatism, it is possible to argue that there
was a certain ideological affinity between medicine and Nazism at
this time. Many physicians were attracted by the importance given
to race in the Nazi view of the world. Race at this time was gener-
ally considered a medical or anthropological concept (most anthro-
pologists were trained as physicians); physicians were intrigued
by the Nazi effort to biologize, or medicalize a broad range of social
 Eugenics in Hitler ’s Germany 43

problems, including crime, homosexuality, the falling birth rate,

the collapse of German imperial strength, and the “Jewish and
Gypsy problems.”
The Nazis, in turn, were able to exploit both the intimacy and
the authority of the traditional physician–patient relationship.
Crudely put, enacting their policies became much easier with doc-
tors’ support. Doctors served as executioners on German submarines;
they routinely performed “selections” of people to be killed in con-
centration camps. Himmler recognized the special role of physicians
in this regard: On March 9, 1943, the Reichsführer of the SS issued
an order that henceforth only physicians trained in anthropology
could perform selections at concentration camps.13 Medicine also
served as a disguise: In Buchenwald seven thousand Russian pris-
oners of war were executed in the course of supposed “medical ex-
ams,” using a device disguised as an instrument to measure height.
There is a further element. The rise of the Nazis coincided with
a period of concern about what was widely known as the “crisis” in
modern science and in medicine: a crisis associated with the increas-
ing specialization and bureaucratization of science, a crisis traced
alternatively to urbanization, capitalism, Bolshevism, materialism,
or any of a host of other real and/or apparent threats to human health
and well-being. The Nazis promised to restore Germany to a more
natural (biologische) way of living: Nazi philosophers rejected sepa-
rate sciences “for the laboratory and the bedside;” science in the new
state would challenge Galileo’s claim “to measure what is measur-
able, and make measurable what is not.” Nazi philosophers prom-
ised a future with “more Goethe, and less Newton.”
In such a climate, Jews became convenient scapegoats for all that
was wrong in modern medicine. This was especially easy because
Jews were in fact quite prominent in the German medical profes-
sion: 60 percent of Berlin’s physicians, for example, were either Jew-
ish or of Jewish ancestry. Jews were blamed for the bureaucratization
and scientization of medicine; Jews were accused of transforming
medicine from a “calling” into a “trade,” from an “art” into a “busi-
ness.” National Socialism promised to eliminate the Jews, restoring
the honor and status of the doctor.
44 Robert N. Proctor

People with disabilities were also easily perceived as a menace

to German society. Given the emphasis on conformity, normalcy,
speed, and performance, disability was easily tarred as an obstacle
in the quest for German “health.”
Doctors who embraced National Socialism were considered
“guardians of the nation’s health.” The Nazi state rewarded them,
and the medical profession prospered—after the banishment of the
Jews and communists, of course. It may even be true that physicians
achieved a higher status in the Nazi period than any time before or
since. During the twelve years of Nazi rule, for example, the office
of Rektor (president) at German universities was occupied by phy-
sicians about half of the time. This contrasts with 19 percent for the
decade prior to the rise of the Nazis, and 18 percent for the two de-
cades following the Third Reich. Doctors also prospered financially
under the Nazis. In 1926, lawyers earned an average annual salary
of 18,000 RM, compared with only 12,000 RM for physicians. By
1936, doctors had reversed this and were earning 2,000 RM more
than lawyers.
The Nazis were, it is true, hostile to certain forms of theoretical
science, especially certain forms of physics and mathematics. But
they did support many areas of the sciences, including the applied
and engineering sciences, and social sciences such as psychology and
anthropology.14 More than 150 German medical journals were pub-
lished continuously through the Nazi period—more than 100 meters
of shelf space of journals. Few medical journals ceased publication
in the early years of the regime; most of those which did cease pub-
lication did not close until the mid-war years. In fact, more than thirty
new medical journals began publishing during the Nazi period, sev-
eral of which are still published today.
Biomedical science was not, in other words, simply destroyed
by the Nazis—the story is more complex. The Nazis suppressed some
areas and encouraged others. They supported extensive research into
ecology, public health, carcinogenesis, human genetics, criminal bi-
ology, and (of course) racial and sociobiology. The Nazi government
funded elaborate research on the effects of exposure to X-rays and
heavy metals; some of the first reliable studies of the health effects
 Eugenics in Hitler ’s Germany 45

of asbestos were done in this period. Nazi scientists were the first to
show that tobacco is the major cause of lung cancer and the first to
realize that asbestos was also a cause of lung cancer.15 Nazi leaders
organized massive support for midwifery, homeopathy, and a num-
ber of other areas of heterodox medicine. Nazi physicians recognized
the importance of a diet high in fruit and fiber, passing laws requir-
ing bakeries to produce whole-grain bread. Nazi physicians restricted
the use of DDT, and denied pregnant women tobacco-rationing cou-
pons on the grounds that nicotine could harm the fetus. Nazi physi-
cians stressed the importance of preventive rather than curative
medicine. Racial hygiene was supposed to provide long-term pre-
ventive care for the German germ plasm, complementing shorter-
term social and individual hygiene.
I have stressed the continuity with pre-1933 traditions; I do not
have space here to discuss the important postwar continuities. Let
me simply note that it is important to appreciate not just the extent
to which the Nazis were able to draw upon the imagery and author-
ity of science, but also the extent to which Nazi ideology informed
the practice of science. Scientists were not bystanders, or even pawns;
many (not all, but not a few) helped to construct the racial policies
of the Nazi state. It is probably as fair to say that Nazi racial policy
emerged from the scientific community as to say that it was imposed
from within the scientific community.
It is commonly said that the Nazis politicized science, and that
much of what went wrong under the Nazis can be traced to this
politicization. The argument made here is that one cannot consider
the experience of the medical profession in terms of a simple “use
and abuse” model of science. Among physicians, there were as many
volunteers as victims; no one had to force physicians to support the
regime. Hefelmann testified to this effect in the euthanasia trial at
Limburg in 1964: “No doctor was ever ordered to participate in the
euthanasia program; they came of their own volition.” 16
The Nazis did not have to politicize science; in fact, it is prob-
ably fair to say that the Nazis “de-politicized science” in the sense
that they removed from science the political diversity that makes the
politics of science, or medicine, or technology, interesting. The Nazis
46 Robert N. Proctor

destroyed a vigorous socialist medical tradition that had transformed

Weimar medical practice by establishing local outpatient clinics, self-
help networks, and so forth. National Socialism was supposed to be
a “movement,” not a “party.” The Nazis sought to transform prob-
lems of racial, sexual, or social deviance into “medical problems;”
Germany’s social and political problems would be solved by “cleans-
ing,” “disinfection,” and “surgery.” Murder was practiced in the
name of quarantine, apartheid in the name of public health.
The horrors of this period cannot be attributed to anything in-
herent in science or in medicine, or even in “technocracy” or the rule
of technical elites. It took a powerful state to concentrate and un-
leash the destructive forces within German medicine, and without
that state, science would have remained impotent in this sphere. In
the midst of a war engineered by an aggressive, expansionistic state,
Nazi ideologues were able to turn to doctors and scientists to carry
out programs that even today stand as unexcelled exemplars of evil.
If there is a lesson to be learned, it is that there are tragic conse-
quences to defining certain classes of people as “useless” or “defec-
tive” or “lives unworthy of life.” That is a message that often bears
repeating.

Notes
1. Parts of this essay have appeared before in my “Nazi Doctors, Racial
Medicine, and Human Experimentation,” in The Nazi Doctors and the
Nuremberg Code: Human Rights in Human Experimentation, ed. George J. Annas
and Michael Grodin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 17–31.
2. See Robert J. Lifton, Nazi Doctors (New York: Basic Books, 1986);
Michael H. Kater, Doctors under Hitler (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1989); Hendrik van den Bussche, ed., Medizinische
Wissenschaft im “Dritten Reich” (Hamburg, 1989); Heidrun Kaupen-Haas, ed.,
Der Griff nach der Bevölkerung (Nördlingen: F. Greno, 1986); Benno Müller-
Hill, Murderous Science: Elimination by Scientific Selection of Jews, Gypsies, and
Others, Germany 1933–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Karl
Heinz Roth, ed., Erfassung zur Vernichtung, von der Sozialhygiene zum “Gesetz
über Sterbehilfe” (Berlin: Verlagsqesellschaft Gesundheit, 1984); Achim Thom
and Horst Spar, eds., Medizin im Faschismus (East Berlin, 1983); Michael
Burleigh, Death and Deliverance: “Euthanasia” in Germany, c. 1900–1945 (New
 Eugenics in Hitler ’s Germany 47

York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); also my Racial Hygiene: Medicine

under the Nazis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988).
3. Alfred Ploetz, Die Tüchtigkeit unser Rasse und der Schutz der Schwachen
(Berlin, 1895).
4. Biologism (or biological determinism) is the view that “nature” is
more important than “nurture” in the formation of human character and
institutions. Typically it is the view that men and women, or different races,
have different inborn talents or disabilities—that certain individuals, for
example, are “born criminals,” or that the occupations people choose are
largely determined by their inherited capacities. See Richard Lewontin,
Steven Rose, and Leon J. Kamin, Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology and
Human Nature (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984).
5. Fritz Lenz, Menschliche Auslese und Rassenhygiene (Eugenik), 3d ed.
(Munich, 1931), 417.
6. Physicians, dentists, nurses, midwives, and directors of mental
institutions were all required to register anyone suffering from infirmities
named in the law. Children under the age of fourteen were not to be forcibly
sterilized, but a petition for sterilization could be issued anyone over the age
of ten. See the Reichsgesetzblatt 1 (1933): 1021. Local health offices were
empowered to inspect municipal and private institutions to guarantee that
everyone falling within the rubric of the law would be brought before the
courts. On February 25, 1935, the hereditary health courts were granted
powers to disbar any attorney who persisted too vigorously in arguing that
their clients should not be sterilized. See the Reichsgesetzblatt 1 (1935): 289.
7. The fact that Americans had pioneered forcible sterilization was
important in postwar deliberations concerning whether the German steril-
ization program should be considered a “war crime.” Nuremberg authorities
generally did not consider forcible sterilization criminal. After the war,
individuals who had been sterilized received compensation as victims of
Nazi oppression only if they could prove they had been sterilized illegally—
that is, only if they could prove they were not in fact genetically feeble-
minded, alcoholic, epileptic, deaf, etc. The reason for this was obvious—
similar programs had been widespread in the United States.
8. See “Keine Negerärzte in der amerikanischen Standesorganisation,”
Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie, 33 (1939–1940): 276; also 33 (1939–
1940): 96.
9. Foster Kennedy, “The Problem of Social Control of the Congenitally
Defective: Education, Sterilization, Euthanasia,” American Journal of Psychia-
try 99 (1942): 13–16 (see also 141–43).
10. Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Medizin im Nationalsozialismus (Munich,
1988), 24–25.
11. Ibid., 25–26.
48 Robert N. Proctor

12. Cited in Friedrich Kaul, Nazimordaktion T4: Ein Bericht über die erste
industriemäßig durchgeführte Mordaktion des Naziregimes (Berlin: VEB Verlag
Volk und Gesundheit, 1973), 77–78.
13. Benno Müller-Hill, Murderous Science: Elimination by Scientific Selection
of Jews, Gypsies, and Others, Germany 1923–1945 (New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1988), 18.
14. For the case of anthropology, see my “From Anthropologie to
Rassenkunde: Concepts of Race in German Physical Anthropology,” in Bones,
Bodies, Behavior: Essays on Biological Anthropology, ed. George Stocking
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988).
15. See my “The Nazi War on Tobacco,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine,
1997.
16. Frederic Wertham, A Sign for Cain: An Explanation of Human Violence
(New York: Macmillan, 1966), 167.
 Targeting the “Unfit” and Radical Public Health Strategies 49

Targeting the “Unfit” and Radical Public

Health Strategies in Nazi Germany

Patricia Heberer

N azi ideology identified Jews and Gypsies living within and

without the Reich borders as foreign and parasitic elements that
threatened the German body politic, and targeted them on biologi-
cal bases for discrimination and destruction. Yet, even within the
German “racial community,” there were components of that popu-
lation that constituted a biological and economic danger: “heredi-
tarily compromised” (erblich belastet), “asocial,” and “unproductive”
people who ostensibly made no significant “contribution” to soci-
ety and whose existence placed a genetic and financial burden upon
the state. Thus, Nazi political and medical authorities increasingly
divided their community (Volksgemeinschaft) into its “fit” and “un-
fit” members.1 In the twelve years of the National Socialist dictator-
ship, the government promoted measures that sought to nurture and
maintain the genetically, racially, and socially “valuable,” while on
a parallel course, it embraced strategies aimed at marginalizing the
“unvaluable” and reducing the cost these people placed upon the
social welfare network. The targets for these efforts against the unfit
were various and fluctuated over time, but included congenitally
and hereditarily ill people, institutionalized mentally and physically
disabled people, the learning-impaired and “work-shy,” and those
“asocials” who did not conform to Nazi Germany’s societal or po-
litical norms. Because the definition of “unfit” had genetic or bio-
medical implications, the National Socialist leadership adopted a
series of radical public health measures—usually implemented by
public or private medical professionals—to accomplish these ob-
jectives (see Friedlander and Proctor, this volume). These strate-
gies began with compulsory sterilization and escalated with the

49
50 Patricia Heberer

radicalization of racial and territorial policies, ending in the regime’s

first program of systematic mass murder.
Much of Nazi ideology and policy focusing on the “unfit” grew
from eugenic theories, which gained currency with the flourishing
of the natural sciences in the last decades of the nineteenth century.
The term “eugenics” (or “good birth”) was coined by the English
naturalist and mathematician Sir Francis Galton in 1883; its German
corollary, Rassenhygiene (racial hygiene), was first invoked by the
economist Alfred Ploetz in 1895. At the core of the movement’s be-
lief system was the conviction that human heredity was fixed and
immutable, a concept that gained adherence with the advance of
Darwinism—especially Social Darwinism—and with the rediscov-
ery in the late nineteenth century of Mendelian genetics. For eugeni-
cists, the ravaging social ills that attended modern society—mental
illness, alcoholism, illegitimacy, prostitution, sexually transmitted
diseases, tuberculosis, criminality, and even poverty—stemmed from
hereditary factors. It scarcely occurred to many proponents of eu-
genics that the societal problems that they perceived burgeoning
about them might have their origins in social or environmental fac-
tors, or that these evils in fact did spring in large part from the rapid
industrialization and urbanization that marked the last half of the
nineteenth century in Western Europe and the United States. Adher-
ents of eugenic theories noted only that in this new age of progress,
society itself seemed to languish in a state of degeneration and hoped
to mobilize “modern” science to arrest the perceived cycle of decay.
Eugenics advocates championed three primary objectives: to discover
and enumerate “hereditary” characteristics that contributed to the
social ills that plagued Western society, to develop biological solu-
tions for these scourges, and to campaign actively for public mea-
sures that might combat them.
While the “science” of eugenics was to find its most radical in-
terpretation in Germany, its influence was by no means limited to
that nation alone. Eugenic research institutions sprang up through-
out most of the industrialized Western world, most notably in the
United States and Great Britain.2 Whether in England, America, or in
Wilhelmine Germany, most eugenicists lobbied for “positive” eugenic
 Targeting the “Unfit” and Radical Public Health Strategies 51

measures aimed at supporting and maintaining physically, racially,

and hereditarily “healthy” individuals through social welfare for
“deserving” families, marriage counseling, and motherhood train-
ing to encourage the “better” (generally middle class) families to
have more children.
Dovetailing with efforts to sustain and cultivate the “fit” and
“productive” came initiatives to hinder and circumscribe society’s
“unproductive” elements and to redirect social and economic re-
sources from the “less valuable” to the “worthy.” Many members of
the eugenics community, in Germany as well as in the United States,
promoted strategies that might marginalize segments of society with
limited mental or social capacity and limit their reproduction through
voluntary or compulsory sterilization. Eugenicists focused on the
mentally ill, the learning impaired, and those with subnormal intel-
ligence, attempting to forge a link between diminished capacity and
depravity, promiscuity and criminality. They viewed as a menace
the racially “inferior,” the “shiftless” and “unemployable,” and those
who engaged in “asocial” or “antisocial” behavior, for they ostensi-
bly transmitted their poverty, “worthlessness,” and dependency on
the public till through the modus of heredity.3 Likewise, disabled
people—especially those whose conditions were considered to be
congenital or inherited—were seen to endanger the national heredi-
tary community and to place an undue financial burden on the soci-
ety that paid for their upkeep.
We know, with the advantage of hindsight, that the German eu-
genics effort pursued a terrible and separate course after 1933; but
before 1914, the German racial hygiene movement did not differ
appreciably from its British and American counterparts.4 A genuine
radicalization of the German eugenics community, however, began
shortly after the World War I. Here, the unprecedented carnage that
accompanied the “Great War” and the economic hardships of the
interwar years served in tandem to underscore in popular concep-
tion the division between the healthy, “fit,” and “useful” Germans
who had died on the battlefield, and the “unfit,” “unproductive”
Germans institutionalized in prisons, hospitals, and welfare facilities
on the home front. While their racially and hereditarily “valuable”
52 Patricia Heberer

countrymen had sacrificed their lives for the fatherland, these “im-
paired” and “compromised” individuals had remained behind to
survive and propagate, their sustenance drawn from the slender re-
sources of the state. A genetic allegory of the “stab-in-the-back” leg-
end, such argumentation resurfaced again and again in the Weimar
and early Nazi eras to justify increasingly extreme measures against
institutionalized and “socially disabled” persons.
In the early 1930s, eugenics began to lose favor within the inter-
national scientific community, following advances in biology, the
natural sciences, and medicine.5 But eugenics, or racial hygiene in
the German context, had by this time been worked into the ideology
of the Nazi Party and had prepared the German terrain for its ex-
treme measures. When the National Socialists came to power in 1933,
their leaders possessed not only the conviction of a eugenic
worldview, but the volition to implement such an ideology in very
concrete terms. Thus, in the years between 1933 and 1945, eugenic
concepts found expression in their most radical forms. A significant
portion of these measures were aimed at circumscribing and eradi-
cating “unfit” members living within the German Volksgemeinschaft.
Targeting the “unfit” began in the early months of the Nazi dic-
tatorship, when a rapid Gleichschaltung of the medical and juridical
communities, as well as that of the civil bureaucracy, ensured that
the eugenic and racial theories embedded in National Socialist ide-
ology translated into state policy.6 On June 2, 1933—less than six
months after Hitler ’s appointment as chancellor—an Expert Advi-
sory Council on Questions of Population and Racial Policy
(Sachverständigen-Beirat für Bevölkerungsfragen und Rassenpolitik)
formed at the invitation of Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick.
Chaired by Arthur Gütt, head of the Interior Ministry’s Department
IV for Public Health Affairs, the council assembled the foremost fig-
ures of the nation’s eugenics movement, including Alfred Ploetz, the
father of German racial hygiene; Ernst Rüdin, director of the Kaiser
Wilhelm Institute for Genealogy and Demography of the German
Research Institute for Psychiatry in Munich; and Gerhard Wagner,
who would be named Reich Physician Leader (Reichsärzteführer),
the leading medical post in the Nazi Party. At its inaugural meeting,
 Targeting the “Unfit” and Radical Public Health Strategies 53

Frick enjoined the group to forge a new population policy that

would reverse the dwindling birth rate, stem the tide of Jewish im-
migration from eastern and central Europe, and halt the birth of
“degenerate,” “hybrid,” and “genetically diseased” offspring that
polluted Germany’s hereditary gene pool and burdened its social
welfare network.7
A comprehensive strategy of “gene and race cultivation” was
envisioned; at its core stood measures intended to advance the re-
productive capacity of racially and genetically “healthy” Germans
and to proscribe the propagation of the “hereditarily compromised.”
On July 14, 1933, with the encouragement of Gütt’s advisory coun-
cil, the Hitler cabinet approved the Law for the Prevention of Off-
spring with Hereditary Diseases (Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken
Nachwuchses, or the GzVeN). The new legislation ordered the com-
pulsory sterilization of persons with certain afflictions. Five of the
diseases specifically designated in the ordinance represented psy-
chiatric or neurological disorders, including schizophrenia, manic-
depressive (or bipolar) disorder, hereditary epilepsy, Huntington’s
chorea, and “hereditary feeblemindedness.” 8 Physical conditions or
diseases that warranted sterilization under the new legislation were
congenital blindness, congenital deafness, serious physical deformity,
and severe alcoholism. Medical professionals, including doctors,
dentists, nurses, and midwives, were now duty-bound to report pa-
tients with these illnesses or disabilities in the exercise of their of-
fice. Directors of hospitals, mental institutions, schools, prisons,
workhouses, and concentration camps also proposed candidates for
sterilization. Denunciation by ordinary citizens was not uncommon.
Yet the overwhelming number of proposals dispatched to the newly
constructed sterilization courts came through the state medical of-
fices, which received and compiled information from physicians,
social workers, and public welfare agencies.
The new law took effect in January 1934, and its impact was im-
mediate, with 388,400 proposals for sterilization advanced in the first
year alone. The flood of petitions from medical authorities and other
sources created an immediate backlog of active cases, so that the
hereditary health courts (Erbgesundheitsgerichte) managed to adjudge
54 Patricia Heberer

only 84,604 of these suits in the first twelve months of the law’s ap-
plication. Of these, the overwhelming number of cases—62,463, or
92.8 percent—were approved.9 Reliable statistics exist only for the
first years of the sterilization program.10 Yet it is clear that the num-
ber of cases brought before the hereditary health courts in subse-
quent years closely matched 1934 figures. The most careful study of
available data suggests that from January 1, 1934 until war’s end in
May 1945, some 400,000 Germans were forcibly sterilized under the
terms of the Nazi sterilization law.11 This figure does not include the
thousands of Jews, Gypsies (Roma and Sinti), Poles, and other vic-
tims sterilized extra-legally in Nazi concentration camps during the
war years.12
Who were the victims of National Socialist sterilization policy?
Naturally, the majority were those who suffered from mental illnesses
or from other congenital diseases outlined in the Law for the Pre-
vention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases. For the first year the
measure was in place, a breakdown of sterilization cases by disease
is available. Such statistics illustrate that congenital feebleminded-
ness [angeborener Schwachsinn] and schizophrenia (52.9 percent and
25.4 percent, respectively) represented the chief bases for sterilization,
at least in this initial period. Those individuals suffering from heredi-
tary epilepsy comprised another 14 percent of compulsory procedures,
while manic-depressive disorder and chronic alcoholism combined
to make up another 5.6 percent of sterilization victims. Those physi-
cal disorders or disabilities outlined in the legislation comprised a
small percentage of sterilization cases, with congenital deafness at 1
percent, congenital blindness at 0.6 percent, severe physical malfor-
mation at 0.3 percent, and the rare Huntington’s chorea at 0.2 per-
cent.13 These figures clearly indicate a preponderance of enforcement
of sterilization policy in instances of mental illness. Likewise, they
demonstrate that those disorders whose definition implied a certain
elasticity of application allowed inclusion of a broader range of vic-
tims. Nowhere was this more true than in the case of hereditary
feeblemindedness, whose ambiguous definition permitted physicians
and psychiatrists to include not only those diagnosed as mentally
retarded or learning-impaired but also the socially aberrant, or those
 Targeting the “Unfit” and Radical Public Health Strategies 55

whom National Socialist medical officials deemed “asocial”: vagrants,

prostitutes, sexually promiscuous women (especially if these had had
more than one illegitimate child), petty criminals, local “ne’er-do-
wells,” and juvenile delinquents who experienced trouble with school
authorities or the police. More and more often, labels like asozial (“aso-
cial”), arbeitsscheu (“work-shy”), and gemeinschaftsunfähig (“unable to
function in the broader community”) took on a pseudoscientific con-
text, with the sterilization law seen as the method by which to combat
and prevent these characteristics.14
Another piece of legislation linked to the eugenic sterilization
law was the Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals and Con-
cerning Measures for Detention and Rehabilitation (Gesetz gegen
gefährliche Gewohnheitsverbrecher und über Massregeln zur
Sicherung und Besserung, or GgGSB), which allowed castration of
those convicted of sexual offenses, including male homosexuality,
and the compulsory sterilization of mentally ill felons, based not
upon their status as criminals but their psychiatric condition. Just as
the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases
envisioned a biomedical solution intended to curb the reproduction
of “hereditarily compromised” individuals, tenets of the Law against
Dangerous Habitual Criminals aimed to prevent the “propagation”
of persons evincing recidivist criminal behavior, a trait long held by
adherents of eugenic theory to be hereditary. The sterilization law
and the Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals had been pro-
mulgated at the same cabinet session, but because Nazi authorities
did not wish to tie the sterilization of the congenitally ill to that of
criminals, the two laws were not combined in the same legislation
nor published at the same time.15 The German historian Gisela Bock
successfully argues that both of these laws dovetailed within a
broader and mutually reinforcing network of pro-natal and anti-na-
tal policies.16 Measures like the promotion of marriage loans and
children’s allowances and the introduction of the Mutterkreuz in 1939,
an honor given to German mothers who had four or more children,
were geared to promote Germany’s “fit” and “valuable” citizens and
to encourage them to bear racially desirable offspring. 17 While these
financial and honorary entitlements were tied to racial hygiene
56 Patricia Heberer

qualifications, anti-natal measures like the Marriage Health Law

(Ehegesundheitsgesetz) took the Nazi campaign against the heredi-
tarily “unfit” to its next logical step. Parallel to the infamous Law
for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, one of the
so-called Nuremberg Laws of September 1935, the Marriage Health
Law of October 18, 1935, prohibited the marriage of “diseased, infe-
rior, or dangerous genetic material with those of superior material.”18
Just as the aforementioned “Blood Protection Law” banned marriage
or sexual contact between German “Aryans” and Jews, the Marriage
Health Law forbade marriage between consenting adults if either
partner suffered from mental illness or from chronic or severe alco-
holism; had a hereditary disease such as epilepsy, congenital deaf-
ness, or blindness; or if one of the affianced stood under legal guard-
ianship on medical grounds. Likewise, permission to marry might
be denied if either party had a serious contagious illness. Before mar-
riage, German couples had to prove that no such impediment ex-
isted by obtaining a Certificate of Marital Fitness. Individuals who
were refused such a certificate could appeal to their local hereditary
health courts, but those who violated the final decision of health
officials by marrying without certification could be sentenced to
prison. With the prohibition of marriage for the biologically defi-
cient, the anti-natal policies aimed at the “unfit” had come full circle.
The Marriage Health Law and, more significantly, compulsory
sterilization, proved the opening salvo in the attack upon
Germany’s mentally and physically disabled population. This at-
tack continued throughout the first decade of the National Social-
ist dictatorship. In the mid-1930s, Nazi medical and racial hygiene
authorities headed by Walter Gross, director of the Information
Office for Population Policy and Race Cultivation (Aufklärungsamt
für Bevölkerungspolitik und Rassenpflege), initiated a full-scale
propaganda campaign against institutionalized and hereditarily
unfit people. In large part, Gross and his colleagues undertook such
action in order to garner grassroots support for the Nazi steriliza-
tion policy, but it is clear that these steps also served to underpin the
foundations of more radical eugenic strategies and to prepare the
public for such measures. “Documentary” films—usually shorts
 Targeting the “Unfit” and Radical Public Health Strategies 57

shown before feature films—like Das Erbe (The Inheritance) (1935),

Erbkrank (Congenitally Ill) (1936), and Opfer der Vergangenheit (Vic-
tims of the Past) (1937) sought to dehumanize and marginalize se-
verely mentally and physically disabled people in the eyes of their
fellow Germans. In tandem with these propaganda efforts, Nazi of-
ficials organized public tours of asylums and other custodial facili-
ties with the express intention of horrifying visitors and showcasing
the most distressing aspects of mental illness and physical disability.
Such public excursions also served to promote Nazi ideology and party
eugenics policy. In 1936, the Bavarian sanatorium Eglfing-Haar, near
Munich, hosted forty representatives from the Reich Leadership School
of the Sturmbteilung (SA), two hundred racial “experts” from the SS
Oberabschnitt Munich-South, fifty leaders and instructors of the SS-
Standarte “Julius Schreck,” as well as several delegates from the
German Labor Front (DAF). Between 1933 and 1939, 21,000 indi-
viduals—including 6,000 SS members—toured the Eglfing-Haar in-
stitution alone. 19
Popular and professional magazines like Weg und Ziel, Neues Volk,
and Volk und Rasse echoed such sentiments. In one issue, the latter
publication presented a photographic layout pairing severely con-
genitally ill and institutionalized mental patients with healthy coun-
terparts. The caption instilled a clear message: “This three year old,
born deaf, crippled, and completely retarded, costs the city of Berlin
eight Marks a day [while] the family of five with an unemployed
family father receives only 24 Marks a week and spends half of that
on rent.” Readers were reminded that they were ultimately the fi-
nancial bearers of these hereditarily impaired “ballast existences.”20
Arguments such as these even surfaced in children’s textbooks. A
mathematics primer for thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds contained
the following story problem:
The costs for one hereditarily ill patient today amount to 4.5–6
Reichsmark [RM] per day. Calculate the total sum of the cost per
day, per month, per year. . . . In the year 1930, approximately 1
billion RM were spent for the hereditarily ill. In contrast, only 730
million RM were spent for the Reichswehr in 1930 and only 713 mil-
lion RM for the whole Reich administration. . . . How many farm
58 Patricia Heberer

settlements, of which each should cost 32,000 RM, could have been
constructed with the amount used for the hereditarily ill? How
many homesteads could have been erected with this sum, if the
aggregate building cost was 6,000 RM per house? 21

Such sentiments underpinned and elucidated a chief goal of Nazi

public health policy throughout the middle and late 1930s: the re-
duction of costs for institutional care. In a sense, a circumspect cost-
cutting policy in public spending proved necessary following
Germany’s disastrous financial crises of the 1920s and 1930s. Local
governments had introduced austerity measures at state sanatoria
and public nursing homes already during the Weimar years, yet by
1939, expenditures for institutionalized patients and for those liv-
ing in custodial settings had been reduced so dramatically that in
facilities for mentally ill and physically disabled people, patients in
many regions died from malnutrition, infection, and disease.22 Star-
vation had occurred too, on a massive scale, during World War I,
when facility officials consciously deprived inmates of dwindling
rations, but what had then proved an emergency measure was now
public health policy.23 In the former Prussian state of Hessen-Nassau,
for example, where local public health officials proved particularly
zealous in advocating the Nazi Sparpolitik (“politics of economiz-
ing”), directors of state-run facilities for disabled and chronically ill
people slashed already rock-bottom expenditures while filling their
institutions to overflowing. At Hadamar, a public mental health fa-
cility near the Hessian city of Limburg on the Lahn, per diem cost
allowances for most patients confined at the facility reached .44 RM
in December 1937, compared to a Depression-era low of 2.94 RM per
day in 1932—a sum that had then drawn criticism from Communist
Party members of the local communal assembly on the grounds that
such a daily expenditure subjected institutionalized individuals to
“starvation conditions.”24 Similar conditions prevailed at Hadamar’s
sister facility, Eichberg, the institution that had housed 753 persons
in 1934 and held 1,137 inmates in 1939, while personnel cuts meant
that each physician on staff cared for approximately 300 patients.25
Disintegrating conditions at German mental health and long-term
care facilities produced a kind of marginalization of institutionalized
 Targeting the “Unfit” and Radical Public Health Strategies 59

individuals. In the same manner in which disenfranchisement, ex-

propriation, and discrimination had severed German Jews from their
points of support in the community and undercut potential sympa-
thy for their plight, the wretched existence of institutionalized pa-
tients further dehumanized them in the eyes of their caretakers and
German society as a whole, a distancing that would hasten their
destruction.
On August 31, 1939, on the eve of the Polish campaign that
launched World War II, the National Socialist leadership issued a
decree that effectively dismantled the bureaucratic apparatus imple-
menting the Marriage Health Law and that limited compulsory ster-
ilizations to cases “with particularly great danger in propagation.”26
In part, German authorities may have initiated a scaling back of the
sterilization measure in order to secure public support for the re-
gime in the upcoming conflict. The Law for the Prevention of Off-
spring with Hereditary Diseases had proven genuinely unpopular,
particularly in Catholic circles. Sterilization policy and the cumber-
some procedures attendant to the Marriage Health Law likewise
drained vital human resources—doctors, jurists, and civil officials—
which were now needed for the war effort. Yet, perhaps the decel-
eration of these efforts may also have figured as a component in a
decision to achieve the same public health goals by more radical
means. By diverting medical professionals and administrators from
the halted sterilization campaign, the way was now clear to extend
Nazi eugenic measures against the “genetically unfit” to their logi-
cal conclusion: to the killing of institutionalized mentally and physi-
cally disabled people.
The so-called “euthanasia” program was the National Socialist
government’s first campaign of mass murder, preceding the “Final
Solution” by approximately two years. More radical, certainly, than
previous public health strategies marshaled against Germany’s un-
fit, the euthanasia effort aimed at freeing the nation’s economic and
genetic resources from the drain of severely mentally and physically
ill people and was thus in keeping both with Nazi racial policy, as
well as with its utilitarian doctrine. The reduction of essential ser-
vices for disabled people, which preceded wholesale murder, had
60 Patricia Heberer

represented an effort to divert vital resources from those deemed

unproductive to valuable German citizens. This policy had long been
advocated by adherents of the eugenics movement, but as state policy
radicalized, voices within the Nazi hierarchy began to call not only
for the prevention and preclusion of the “hereditarily unfit,” but the
elimination of these elements from German society.
In the spring months of 1939, euthanasia strategists—led by
Philipp Bouhler, the director of Hitler’s private chancellery, and Karl
Brandt, Hitler’s attending physician—began to organize a secret kill-
ing operation targeting disabled children.27 On August 18, 1939, the
Reich Interior Ministry circulated a decree, “Requirement to Regis-
ter Deformed, etc. Newborns,” stipulating that all physicians, nurses,
and midwives must report newborn infants and children under the
age of three who showed signs of “idiocy”; mongoloidism, now
called Down’s Syndrome (especially in those cases with attendant
blindness or deafness); microcephaly; severe or progressive hydro-
cephaly; deformities of all kinds, especially missing limbs or severe
malformation of the head or spine; and paralysis, including Little’s
Disease, formerly spastic diplegia. 28 According to the eyewitness tes-
timony of euthanasia doctor Fritz Mennecke at the Nuremberg Doc-
tors’ Trial, the age of the children in question was first raised to eight,
then twelve years, and finally included juveniles up to seventeen
years of age. 29 Conservative estimates suggest that at least 5,000
physically and mentally disabled children were murdered through
starvation or lethal overdoses of medication at some thirty special
pediatric units throughout the Reich. 30
By 1940, an adult killing operation was established that paral-
leled the murder program of disabled German infants and children.
Code-named Operation T4, the effort took its epithet from the street
address of its central office in Berlin’s Tiergartenstrasse. Using a prac-
tice developed for the child euthanasia program, T4 planners began
in the autumn of 1939 to distribute carefully formulated question-
naires to all public health officials, public and private hospitals,
mental institutions, and nursing homes for chronically ill and aged
people. The limited space and wording on the forms, as well as the
instructions in the accompanying cover letter, combined to convey
 Targeting the “Unfit” and Radical Public Health Strategies 61

the impression that the survey was intended to gather statistical data.
The form’s sinister purpose was suggested only by the emphasis that
the questionnaire placed upon the patient’s capacity to work and by
the categories of patients that the inquiry required health authori-
ties to identify: those suffering from schizophrenia, epilepsy, demen-
tia, encephalitis, and other chronic psychiatric or neurological dis-
orders; those not of German or “related” blood; criminally insane
people or those committed on criminal grounds; and those who had
been confined to the institution in question for more than five years.31
At first, many directors and medical staff at German custodial facili-
ties appear to have filled out the registration forms without grasp-
ing their significance; yet it is apparent that as the secret killing
program became common knowledge, most chief physicians and
directors continued dutifully to fill out the paperwork even though
they clearly knew the purpose of the form.
The so-called registration forms were reviewed by three specially
appointed “medical experts” (Gutachter); and beginning in January
1940, those persons whose selection for the euthanasia program was
confirmed by a central medical commission in Berlin were trans-
ported to one of six killing centers throughout Germany and Aus-
tria: Brandenburg on the Havel, near Berlin; Grafeneck in the Swabian
Alb; Bernburg and Sonnenstein/Pirna, both in Saxony; Hartheim,
near Linz on the Danube; and Hadamar in Hessen-Nassau. Within
hours of arrival at such a facility, patients selected for extermination
were taken to a reception area, where they were instructed to un-
dress and received a superficial medical examination from one of
the institution’s attending physicians. Finally, they were gassed in
specially designed gas chambers. The long-established motto of the
T4 program was that the “handle of the gas valve belongs in the
hands of the physician.”32 Thus, it was the attending physician who
examined the doomed “patients” in the reception room, conducted
the actual gassing, and supplied the fictive causes and dates of death,
which appeared on the victims’ death certificates and official papers.
Despite elaborate efforts to conceal its deadly designs, the eu-
thanasia program quickly became an open secret. Presumably fear-
ing public unrest at a critical point in the war effort, Adolf Hitler
62 Patricia Heberer

himself gave orders to halt the T4 operation on August 24, 1941.

According to T4’s own internal calculations—the so-called Hartheim
Statistics—70,273 institutionalized mentally and physically disabled
persons perished at the six killing centers between January 1940 and
August 1941.33 Yet Hitler ’s order for the termination of the action
did not mean an actual end to the killing. The child euthanasia pro-
gram continued throughout the so-called euthanasia pause. More
significantly, a drive to reinitiate the adult euthanasia program crys-
tallized in the summer of 1942 into a second murder phase, and its
perceived lack of coordinated activity led many scholars to label the
period—inaccurately—as the era of “wild” euthanasia. Although
more decentralized than the initial program, the renewed effort was
still carefully choreographed in Berlin. There the Führer Chancel-
lery, the engine which drove the T4 apparatus, continued to select,
transport, and process its victims, while local authorities determined
the pace of the killing. Employing drug overdose and lethal injec-
tion as a more covert means of killing, the murderous machinery of
Operation T4 continued to claim victims at several custodial institu-
tions throughout the Reich until the arrival of Allied troops in the
spring of 1945. In all, historians estimate that 200,000–250,000 insti-
tutionalized mentally and physically disabled persons were mur-
dered under Operation T4 and its corollaries between 1939 and 1945.34
The second killing phase not only expanded the number of vic-
tims far beyond the parameters initially foreseen by T4 planners,
but also added new dimensions to the definition and targeting of
the unfit. Beginning in April 1941, the so-called Sonderbehandlung 14f13
extended the killing operations to the concentration camps of Nazi-
occupied Europe.35 The program’s code name stemmed from file num-
bers regularly utilized by the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps:
“14f” marked those dossiers concerning prisoner deaths, while the
number “13” denoted transfer to a T4 facility. Sonderbehandlung, or
“special treatment,” was the euphemism for murder used in SS and
police reports.36 Also called the Invalid Operation (Invalidenaktion), 14f13
specifically targeted mentally or physically ill prisoners: the exhausted
and critically injured, those unwilling or unable to work, but also those
considered troublesome or asocial by the camp administration.
 Targeting the “Unfit” and Radical Public Health Strategies 63

Throughout the early war years, Germany’s maze of concentra-

tion camps had grown substantially, as had its prisoner population;
but in 1940, these camps still lacked the facilities to murder inmates
in large numbers. In early 1941, Heinrich Himmler decided to tap
the euthanasia program’s extensive killing capabilities and turned
to Führer Chancellery Director Philipp Bouhler to determine whether
T4 personnel and gassing installations might be used for the con-
centration camp system.37 From the spring of 1941 until the winter
months of 1944–1945, prisoners too ill or exhausted to work were
murdered at T4 killing centers—their selection, deportation, and
murder carried out by T4 planners and functionaries. The program
found application at several concentration camps on Reich territory,
including Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen,
Flossenbürg, Gross-Rosen, Niederhagen, Neuengamme,
Ravensbrück, and, in a few instances, at Auschwitz. After Hitler ’s
1941 order to halt the program, only prisoners from concentration
camps were supposed to be gassed at T4 centers. Of those four cen-
ters still in operation at the time of the halt, Hartheim, Sonnenstein,
and Bernburg accepted these victims for killing.
Physicians from the euthanasia program reprised their roles as
medical experts, selecting victims for the operation. The selection
process for concentration camp inmates followed in two phases. First,
SS camp physicians selected a pool of prisoners whom they deter-
mined to be suffering from disabling physical or psychiatric illnesses.
At least these were their official instructions; but in practice, local
camp administrators also requested the inclusion of criminal, aso-
cial, or Jewish inmates as well.38 Panels of T4 physicians then trav-
eled to the various camps to review the registration forms and carry
out the final selection. As with the euthanasia program, Aryan pa-
tients were technically supposed to receive a perfunctory physical
examination, while Jews in the potential victim pool did not. Based
on the decisions of the medical experts, officials from the T4 pro-
gram organized the transfer of the doomed prisoners to the killing
centers, while the individual camps in question reported the trans-
fers—with each prisoner coded “14f13”—to the SS Economic and
Administrative Main Office.
64 Patricia Heberer

Because contemporary documentation concerning the 14f13 ac-

tion is fragmentary, precise mortality statistics for the operation are
difficult to assess. The most reliable data suggest that the program
claimed the lives of 10,000–20,000 concentration camp prisoners be-
tween 1941 and 1945, with the highest figure the most likely. Five thou-
sand victims were presumably murdered at Bernburg, and at least
5,500 inmates of Mauthausen and its satellite Gusen perished at
Hartheim alone.39 Administered by SS physicians and T4 medical and
technical personnel, Operation 14f13 could be viewed as a biomedical
solution to the growing dilemma of ailing and severely injured pris-
oners in concentration camps now designed to garner the greatest
economic benefit from forced labor. It was precisely with 14f13’s in-
troduction that medical and sociological indices for killing began de-
finitively to cross, a confluence that forewarned the expansion of T4
during its second murder phase and presaged the Final Solution. Po-
litical, ideological, and racial indicators mingled with physical, psy-
chological, and social criteria in the selection process that targeted
prisoners for death. The lesson posed by 14f13 was clear: It was cheaper
to murder the incapacitated than to provide care for their recovery.
Operation 14f13 was perhaps the juncture at which policy mak-
ers in National Socialist Germany began to redefine what it was to
be unfit. Unfit members of German society were no longer just those
who were hereditarily compromised, mentally or physically disabled,
asocial, or racially unvaluable, but increasingly became those who
did not prove “useful” to the community. Prior to 1942, the euthana-
sia program had targeted mentally and physically disabled people
for killing because they ostensibly compromised Germany’s genetic
and economic resources. 40 In the final years of the war, however, the
web of the killing apparatus expanded dramatically to embrace a
diverse spectrum of victims. More and more, these individuals
tended not to represent the “incurably ill”—once T4’s principal fo-
cus—but rather included those persons who for one reason or an-
other could no longer contribute to wartime society and who pre-
sented a drain on national or local economies.
Under the auspices of Operation Brandt, which synchronized
the euthanasia program with local and regional disaster planning,
 Targeting the “Unfit” and Radical Public Health Strategies 65

hundreds of geriatric and nursing home patients were dispatched to

T4 killing centers in order to free emergency bed space for military
casualties and the victims of Allied bombings.41 In several instances,
these same transports included German air raid victims themselves.
Disoriented or suffering from shock as a result of intensive bom-
bardment or the loss of home or family, many such persons were
temporarily housed in custodial or welfare institutions for observa-
tion or until relatives could collect them. Unable to locate friends or
family members who might take them in, municipal authorities of-
ten admitted these individuals—almost invariably female and eld-
erly—to local asylums, whence they were deported to their deaths
at T4 sites.42
The killing centers also claimed the lives of members of the armed
forces who had defended Germany in the field. During T4’s gassing
phase—from January 1940 until August 1941—euthanasia plenipo-
tentiaries Philipp Bouhler and Karl Brandt had specifically proscribed
the killing of all servicemen who had fought on the front lines, in-
cluding those veterans of World War I.43 Yet there exists no doubt
that from 1943 to 1945, a number of military personnel fell victim to
killing operations at the Hadamar T4 installation near Limburg. In-
variably, those German soldiers murdered at the facility had suf-
fered sufficient physical or psychiatric impairment to preclude fur-
ther military service; in these cases, the individuals’ transfer to
Hadamar succeeded their formal release from the Wehrmacht or other
branch of the armed services and inevitably followed the individual’s
entry into the state welfare network.44
Finally, beginning in 1944, a number of T4 sites served as collec-
tion points and killing centers for physically and mentally incapaci-
tated foreign forced laborers, principally from Poland and the So-
viet Union.45 Once restricted from the euthanasia action, these ailing
and exhausted “Eastern workers” now found themselves included
in the killing campaign when military exigencies and a rapidly ad-
vancing Red Army made it impossible to repatriate them. The
Hadamar institution in particular earned an infamous reputation in
the postwar period for the murders of 468 Eastern workers suffering
from varying degrees of tuberculosis. It is clear that, in this case, the
66 Patricia Heberer

local labor offices facilitated the murders of the tubercular workers

on their own initiative, with the tacit consent of T4 officials, when
they perceived that the laborers’ illness generated a public health
risk in the Frankfurt area.46 In its final spiral of destruction, Opera-
tion T4 consumed not only the institutionalized and “incurable,” but
increasingly “ordinary” individuals whose physical or mental con-
ditions—often ephemeral or treatable—made them unproductive.
At the first Nuremberg proceedings, the so-called Doctors’ Trial
in 1946, the chief medical perpetrators were tried for their participa-
tion in the planning and implementation of state-sponsored medi-
cal crimes. On this occasion, the world discovered the dangers of
untrammeled medicine at work in a totalitarian state. Radical pub-
lic health strategies against the unfit figured prominently among
these crimes. Beginning with anti-natal policies in the early years of
the Nazi dictatorship, these strategies had escalated into mass mur-
der. And Operation T4, the most extreme of these measures, was in
itself a rehearsal for National Socialist Germany’s genocidal poli-
cies. Both the ideological justification and the technologies of de-
struction conceived by medical perpetrators were extended to other
categories of biological “enemies,” most notably to Jews and Gyp-
sies. The marginalization of the unfit, the compulsory sterilization
of the hereditarily compromised, euthanasia, and the Final Solu-
tion were components of the same biomedical and organic vision
of a pure society, and built upon each other synthetically through a
process of radicalization.

Notes
1. The ethnic, or racial, community, interpreted by National Socialists to
be the true community, above the interests of the “artificial” national
structure of state.
2. Indeed, in the first years of the twentieth century, the United States
was seen as the most progressive force in the racial hygiene movement, with
the predominant American research center at the Eugenics Record Office
(ERO) in Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. See Garland Allen, “The
Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, 1910–1940,” Osiris 2 (1986):
225–64.
 Targeting the “Unfit” and Radical Public Health Strategies 67

3. Gisela Bock, “Racism and Sexism in Nazi Germany: Motherhood,

Compulsory Sterilization, and the State,” in When Biology Became Destiny:
Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany, ed. Renate Bridenthal, Atina
Grossmann, and Marion Kaplan, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984),
275.
4. See Sheila Faith Weiss, “Die rassenhygienische Bewegung in
Deutschland, 1904–1933,” in Der Wert des Menschen: Medizin in Deutschland,
1918–1945, ed. Christian Pross and Götz Aly, (Berlin: Edition Hentrich,
1989), 153–73.
5. See Stefan Kühl, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and
German National Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
6. Gleichschaltung means “coordination”; here it refers to the alignment
of political organizations, cultural and professional associations, and
individual citizens to the goals of National Socialist policy.
7. Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), 95–96.
8. The term feebleminded was utilized throughout the nineteenth and first
half of the twentieth century to describe various degrees of mental defi-
ciency from “backwardness” to severe mental retardation. In the German
(and English-language) context, feeblemindedness was defined medically in
three grades: Schwachsinn (moronism), its mildest form; Imbezilität (imbecil-
ity), and its most severe degree, Idiotie (idiocy).
9. Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the
Final Solution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 27.
The extraordinarily large number of sterilizations ordered produced a
backlog at the implementation stage as well, with only half of the procedures
carried out in the first year.
10. In 1935 the National Socialist government and its public health offices
ceased publication of sterilization statistics, presumably in order to avoid
negative public reaction to the measure. After 1936, public health records are
fragmentary, and court records provide the most reliable form of documenta-
tion. Unfortunately, a significant percentage of these records are still
protected by German privacy laws (Datenschutz) and remain sealed.
11. Gisela Bock, Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus: Studien zur
Rassenpolitik und Frauenpolitik (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1986), 230–46.
12. For a discussion of sterilization experiments conducted by German
doctors in the Nazi concentration camp system, see Ernst Klee, Auschwitz:
Die NS-Medizin und ihre Opfer (Frankfurt/Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1997).
13. Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 29.
14. Cornelia Hoser and Birgit Weber-Dieckmann, “Zwangssterilisation an
Hadamarer Anstaltsinsassen,” in Psychiatrie im Faschismus: Die Anstalt
68 Patricia Heberer

Hadamar, 1933–1945, ed. Dorothee Roer and Dieter Henkel (Bonn:

Psychiatrie-Verlag, 1986) 126–27.
15. Hoser and Weber-Dieckmann, “Zwangssterilisation,” 131.
16. Bock, “Racism and Sexism,” p. 276ff.
17. The “Promotion of Marriages” section of the 1933 Law to Reduce
Unemployment provided marriage loans of up to 1,000 RM to those
German men whose wives remained outside the workforce. An added
provision to this law, promulgated three weeks later, forgave one fourth of
the debt with the birth of each child. The legislation’s aim was to reduce
female pressure on the labor market and to return jobs to male heads of
households. In practice, however, the law failed to produce the intended
effect because men rarely filled jobs commonly perceived as “women’s
work”; and the condition of female non-employment for marriage loans
was soon dropped. German authorities instituted children’s allowances
(Kindergeld) in 1936.
18. Quoted in Proctor, Racial Hygiene, 175.
19. Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliverance: Euthanasia in Germany, 1900–
1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 43.
20. Claudia Koonz, “Ethical Dilemmas and Nazi Eugenics: Single-Issue
Dissent in Religious Contexts,” Journal of Modern History, 64 suppl. (Decem-
ber 1992): 8–31.
21. Rechenbuch für Volksschulen, Regierungsbezirk Köln u. Aachen, 7. und 8.
Schuljahr, quoted in Ute Hoffmann, Todesursache: “Angina”:
Zwangssterilisation und “Euthanasie” in der Landes-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt
Bernburg (Magdeburg: Eigenverlag des Ministeriums des Innern des Landes
Sachsen-Anhalt, 1996), 74f.
22. Dorothee Roer and Dieter Henkel, “Funktion bürgerlicher Psychiatrie
und ihre besondere Form im Faschismus,” in Psychiatrie im Faschismus: Die
Anstalt Hadamar, 1933–1945, ed. Dorothee Roer and Dieter Henkel (Bonn:
Psychiatrie-Verlag, 1986), 23.
23. For a discussion of widescale starvation of psychiatric patients in both
World Wars, see Heinz Faulstich, Hungersterben in der Psychiatrie, 1914–1949:
Mit einer Topographie der NS-Psychiatrie (Freiburg im Breisgau: Lambertus
Verlag, 1998).
24. Excerpt from the proceedings of the 1932 Kommunallandtag, quoted in
Gerhard Baader, Johannes Cramer, and Bettina Winter, “Verlegt nach
Hadamar”: Die Geschichte einer NS-“Euthanasie”-Anstalt. Historische
Schriftenreihe des Landeswohlfahrtsverbandes Hessen, Catalogue vol. 2 (Kassel:
Eigenverlag des LWV Hessen, 1991), 32.
25. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, 49.
26. Decree for the Implementation of the GzVeN and the Marriage Health
Law (Verordnung zur Durchführung des GzVeN und des
 Targeting the “Unfit” and Radical Public Health Strategies 69

Ehegesundheitsgesetzes), quoted in Hoser and Weber-Dieckmann,

“Zwangssterilisation,” 165. Compulsory sterilization procedures did
continue, particularly in annexed Austria and the Protectorate of Bohemia
and Moravia, where the measure had found only brief application at the
time of the decree.
27. Ernst Klee, “Euthanasie” im NS-Staat: Die “Vernichtung lebensunwerten
Lebens,” 2d ed. (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1985), 79.
28. Auszug aus dem Runderlass des Reichsministers des Innern vom
18.8.1939-Ivb 3088/39, 1079Mi-, betr. Meldepflicht für missgestaltete usw.
Neugeborene, reprinted in Hoffmann, Todesursache, 36.
29. Susanne Scholz and Reinhard Singer, “Die Kinder in Hadamar,” in
Psychiatrie im Faschismus: Die Anstalt Hadamar, 1933–1945, ed. Dorothee Roer
and Dieter Henkel (Bonn: Psychiatrie-Verlag, 1986) 216.
30. Kinderfachabteilung means “children’s ward,” but used in the National
Socialist context it denotes a secret killing center belonging to the child
euthanasia program. Also, see Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann,
The Racial State: Germany, 1933–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991), 144.
31. Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Wiesbaden, 461/32061//2
(Staatsanwaltschaft Frankfurt, 4a Kls 7/47), Merkblatt zu Meldebogen 1,
(blank), n.d.
32. Ernst Klee, “‘Den Hahn aufzudrehen war ja keine grosse Sache’:
Vergasungsärzte während der NS-Zeit und danach,” Dachauer Hefte: Studien
und Dokumente zur Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager 4
(November 1988), 2.
33. “Die Zahl der Vergasten, verteilt auf die einzelnen Anstalten für die
Monate der Jahre 1940/1941” (Hartheim Statistics), reprinted in Ernst Klee,
Dokumente zur “Euthanasie” (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1985), 233.
34. Gerhard Baader, “Die sogenannte ‘Euthanasie’-Aktion: Ihre
Voraussetzungen und ihre Realitäten,” in “Verlegt nach Hadamar”: Die
Geschichte einer NS-“Euthanasie”-Anstalt, ed. Gerhard Baader, Johannes
Cramer, and Bettina Winter (Kassel: Eigenverlag des LWV Hessen, 1994), 24.
35. It should be noted that Operation 14f13 preceded the wholesale
gassing of Jews as envisioned in the Final Solution, with its killing apparatus
run under the auspices of the Führer Chancellery, in cooperation with the SS.
36. Hoffmann, Todesursache, 87.
37. Walter Grode, Die “Sonderbehandlung 14f13” in den
Konzentrationslagern des Dritten Reiches: Ein Beitrag zur Dynamik faschistischer
Vernichtungspolitik (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1987), 82.
38. Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 144–45; Karin Orth, Das
System der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager: Eine politische
Organisationsgeschichte (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1999), 114–21.
70 Patricia Heberer

39. Grode, Die “Sonderbehandlung 14f13,” 253; Friedlander, The Origins of

Nazi Genocide, 150; Hoffmann, Todesursache, 87.
40. Deaf persons who could not speak were an obvious exception to this
rule, for although otherwise physically and mentally unimpaired and
generally able to work and function “normally,” such individuals were often
erroneously categorized as “retarded” because of their inability to speak
comprehensibly. An unknown number of patients residing in institutions for
deaf-mute people were murdered during Operation T4. See Horst Biesold,
Crying Hands: Eugenics and Deaf People in Nazi Germany, trans. William Sayers
(Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 1999).
41. For a detailed study of Operation Brandt, see Götz Aly’s, “Die ‘Aktion
Brandt’: Bombenkrieg, Bettenbedarf und ‘Euthanasie,’” in Aktion T4, 1939–
1945: Die “Euthanasie”-Zentrale in der Tiergartenstrasse 4, ed. Götz Aly (Berlin:
Edition Hentrich, 1989), 168–78.
42. Ibid., 174–75.
43. Memorandum von Philipp Bouhler and Karl Brandt, betr.
Entscheidungen der beiden Euthanasie-Beauftragten hinsichtlich der
Begutachtung, 10 March 1941, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde, R 96 I//2.
44. Bettina Winter, “Die Geschichte der NS-‘Euthanasie’-Anstalt
Hadamar” in “Verlegt nach Hadamar”: Die Geschichte einer NS-“Euthanasie”-
Anstalt, Historische Schriftenreihe des Landeswohlfahrtsverbandes Hessen,
Kataloge, vol. 2, ed. Gerhard Baader, Johannes Cramer, and Bettina Winter
(Kassel: Eigenverlag des LWV Hessen, 1991), 149.
45. These euthanasia facilities included Kaufbeuren in Bavaria, Mauer-
Öhling in Lower Austria, Hadamar in Hessen-Nassau, and Tiegenhof near
Gnesen in the Warthegau. See Runderlass des Reichsministers des Innern,
betr. Geisteskranke Ostarbeiter und Polen, 6 September 1944, Bundesarchiv
Berlin-Lichterfelde, R 1501/3763. An unknown number of Eastern workers
(Ostarbeiter) were also murdered at Meseritz-Obrawalde, Eglfing-Haar,
Eichberg, Pfaffenrode, Haina, and Merxhausen.
46. See Holker Kaufmann and Klaus Schulmeyer, “Die polnishchen und
sowjetischen Zwangsarbeiter in Hadamar,” in Psychiatrie im Faschismus: Die
Anstalt Hadamar, 1933–1945, ed. Dorothee Roer and Dieter Henkel (Bonn:
Psychiatrie-Verlag, 1986), 264.
 Introduction 71

Part II
The German Experience
 Introduction 73

Introduction

Donna F. Ryan

T he Nazis were concerned primarily with the racial and genetic

purity of the so-called Aryans, so they applied the most dramatic
racial and eugenics policies first within the borders of Germany be-
fore moving on to the rest of the rapidly expanding Reich. Thus, our
discussion of the impact that marriage prohibitions, forced steriliza-
tions, and the T4 program had on the deaf community must focus
on Germany and those parts of Middle Europe incorporated into
the Third Reich. Written documentation, while fragmented by the
destruction of records during the war and sometimes kept from pub-
lic scrutiny during the Cold War, is most extensive for the German
deaf community. It is important to remember that access to informa-
tion about the deaf community is always circumscribed by the need
to understand its language and cultural assumptions, yet historians
from within and outside are delving into this period and exposing
important new information and nuanced interpretations.
The deaf community historian Jochen Muhs has interviewed
many deaf Berliners who were eyewitnesses to the Third Reich. He
reports that the experiences of deaf people were varied, not only as
victims of National Socialism, but sometimes as active members of
the Nazi Party and as perpetrators of injustice against other deaf
people, especially Jews. He provides valuable details of how all deaf
organizations were subsumed into one Nazi-controlled association—
the Reich Union for the Deaf of Germany (Reichsverband der
Gehörlosen Deutschlands or REGEDE)—an experience that all po-
litical, social, and professional groups in Germany shared.
Muhs’s research is based on archival records that have only been
available to scholars since the reunification of Germany and on

73
74 Donna F. Ryan

videotaped interviews that would have been very difficult for any-
one except a member of the German deaf community to obtain. He
provides information about the careers of several deaf Nazi adher-
ents, including Fritz Albreghs and Heinrich Siepmann, as well as
vivid images of deaf Brownshirts and Hitler Youth imitating their
hearing counterparts by goose-stepping and singing the “Horst
Wessel” song, the anthem of the Sturmabteilung (SA). Ignorance,
fear, and the benefits of party affiliation—honors, fancy uniforms,
and employment opportunities—lured deaf people to adhere to a
philosophy that relegated them to second-class citizenship and sub-
sequent persecution.
Finally Muhs shows how deaf people suffered forced steriliza-
tion when their teachers denounced them to the authorities. Deaf
Jews in Germany, doubly outcast, first suffered expulsion from the
deaf community, then segregation from the larger society, and ulti-
mately deportation to the death camps. The experience of deaf Ger-
man Jews is an area that requires further investigation, for very few
survived the war to bear witness to their persecution, except those
lucky enough to emigrate in the 1930s.
The racial and eugenics policies of the Third Reich damaged and
destroyed communities as well as individual lives. As the Nazis co-
erced and consolidated deaf organizations and clubs into the
REGEDE, they destroyed the rich diversity enjoyed by the deaf so-
cial, athletic, and political clubs before 1933. Fortunately, a portrait
of that society survives in the 1932 silent film Verkannte Menschen
(Misjudged People), written by Wilhelm Ballier, a Nazi sympathizer,
and produced by Alfred Kell. Film historian John S. Schuchman de-
scribes and analyzes this important document and artifact.
Faced with widespread unemployment and pervasive eugenics
theories calling for the eradication of hereditary physical and men-
tal disabilities, the makers of Verkannte Menschen hoped to dissemi-
nate a positive representation of deaf citizens to hearing Germans
through the popular medium of film. Showing industrious deaf
workers, enthusiastic deaf children learning speech and vocational
training, and beautiful deaf athletes paying homage to the cult of
physical perfection, Verkannte Menschen tried to counter stereotypes
 Introduction 75

that linked deafness with low intelligence and poor achievement.

The film closed with the figure of a muscular, blonde deaf Aryan
and the plea, “Don’t pity; give them their rights: work and bread,”
an image and an entreaty likely to resonate with a 1932 audience.
With Hitler ’s seizure of power in 1933, the Nazi Party entered
into a period of consolidation of its authority, known as the
Gleichschaltung. By persuasion, coercion, and cajolery, the Nazis
sought support, while simultaneously preparing the groundwork for
their intended policy, the perfection of the German Volk and the elimi-
nation of hereditary defects and the reduction of the financial bur-
den attributed to people with disabilities.
As Schuchman explains, Nazi actions were often piecemeal and
contradictory. They named Fritz Albreghs, leader of the REGEDE,
as a direct deaf representative to the Führer; permitted deaf people
to be members of the SA and the Hitler Youth; and sent deaf athletic
teams to London in 1935 and Stockholm in 1939 to compete on be-
half of Germany in the International Games for the Deaf. They also
issued the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Dis-
eases, which allowed forcible sterilization, forbade deaf people to
marry each other, and initiated the murder of deaf children and adults.
Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propa-
ganda, banned Verkannte Menschen, presumably because it contra-
dicted the depiction of people with disabilities that Nazi racial hy-
gienists broadcast. The productive, creative and in many ways,
self-sufficient deaf community that Schuchman and the film describe
simply could not coexist with Nazi eugenics theories and programs.
The document included in this section, “The Place of the School
for the Deaf in the New Reich,” provides graphic insight into the
thinking of some educators of the deaf in Germany about the finan-
cial burden schools for the deaf placed on the nation, while holding
out little promise of a profitable return. Deaf men could not serve in
the military and deaf women might not provide healthy progeny,
two services demanded of the good German citizen. Kurt Lietz re-
garded such “biologically inferior” people as unworthy of the pref-
erential treatment they were accorded by the state, which cheated
healthy children of their educational rights. Moreover, he explicitly
76 Donna F. Ryan

states that only children with intelligible speech were worth the ef-
fort and expense of education, an example of social utility being con-
fused with biological value.
The late Horst Biesold began to collect data about the forced ster-
ilization of deaf people when he noticed the existence of a large co-
hort of deaf adults who had no children and who became uncom-
fortable when this fact was observed. As a teacher of deaf students,
Biesold was eventually able to win the confidence of enough deaf
subjects to begin to compile a significant archive of confidential ques-
tionnaires about forced sterilization during the Third Reich.
Many German educators of deaf children emerge from Biesold’s
article about teacher collaborators as callous and cruel. Teacher train-
ing classes were so deeply imbued with eugenics theories and pro-
paganda that few dissented from the dominant belief system. Dur-
ing the Third Reich, only teachers who were party members and loyal
to racial hygiene theories were likely to prosper, so the party faith-
ful and opportunists often played a powerful role in determining
who would be sterilized.
By examining the records of several state-run and private, usu-
ally religious, schools, Biesold has demonstrated that teachers and
school directors were at the forefront of the effort to identify candi-
dates for sterilization, and were rarely rescuers as a few historians
had portrayed them. Even when a director of a Catholic girls school
tried to protect one of her students on the grounds that such private
institutions were not required to report their students, and on the
basis of the 1930 official church stand against eugenics sterilizations,
her efforts were thwarted by the actions of a director of another state-
run institution.
Finally, Biesold has shown that the diagnosis of hereditary deaf-
ness and hereditary feeblemindedness were often used interchange-
ably in some institutions. Equally disturbing is his finding that so-
cially unacceptable behavior, especially that considered sexually
flirtatious, increased the likelihood of forced sterilization. Gender-
defined actions and social expectations could merge with false
biological theories to grant the state broad powers. Biesold’s exten-
sive work on the role of educators in forced sterilization provides an
 Introduction 77

excellent model for future research. Only when a similar institu-

tion-by-institution examination of records is undertaken will we
know how deaf people in institutions fared when the T4 program
imposed systematic murder.
78 Jochen Muhs

Deaf People as Eyewitnesses

of National Socialism

Jochen Muhs
Translated by Robert Harmon

I n 1995, for the fiftieth anniversary of German liberation from

Hitler ’s dictatorship, I presented an exhibition in the Berlin Center
for the Deaf, called “Fifty Years Later: Deaf People Under Hitler ’s
Dictatorship, 1933–1945.” The exposition consisted of cables from
1930 to 1945, excerpts from contemporary deaf newspapers, photo-
graphs, and other documents. This was the first presentation by a
deaf person on the lives of deaf people in Berlin during the era of
National Socialism. There were both negative and positive reactions.
Some older deaf people criticized and reproached the exhibition,
while many others remained silent. The younger generation, both
deaf and hearing, proclaimed their interest in this subject and praised
the exhibition. The National Socialist period had long been a taboo
topic in deaf circles. In May 1996, for a conference titled “Deaf
People During the Nazi Period,” supportive hearing teachers of
the Berlin Ernst-Adolf-Eschke School for the Deaf invited me to
lecture on this topic.
There are many general accounts of National Socialism’s disas-
trous period, but unfortunately very few from deaf people. Deaf in-
dividuals found it difficult to record their observations and experi-
ences because they lacked the necessary writing skills. Clearly they
were unaware of how useful and important their reports would be
for future generations of deaf people.
Even today, many eyewitnesses lack the courage to come to terms
with the injustice of the past. Many deaf people were fellow travel-
ers—voluntary or involuntary partisans of the Nationalsozialistische
Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party
[NSDAP], i.e., the Nazi Party). Because deaf people had difficulty

78
 Deaf People as Eyewitnesses of National Socialism 79

gaining access to news, often they were poorly informed or knew

nothing about Nazi war crimes or the persecution of Jews. Reports
of such actions were dismissed as enemy propaganda. Like other
Germans, deaf citizens were confused by the systematic lies of the
National Socialists and deceived by censorship and manipulation of
the press. They, too, feared the Gestapo.
Since 1992, I have interviewed several deaf eyewitnesses to Na-
tional Socialism. I recorded my interviews using a small video cam-
era in order to create a relaxed, comfortable atmosphere. Using such
techniques, I was able to document the experiences of many deaf
eyewitnesses, especially in the Berlin area. After some initial hesita-
tion, most of my informants signed openly and quickly forgot about
the camera. Because of their advanced age, however, many had for-
gotten some details. I began my conversations with questions about
my informants’ school days before moving to political topics or anti-
Semitism. Informants were not always prepared to give testimony.
Thus one Berlin deaf Jewish man of Polish descent, who had been in
a concentration camp where he lost his family, and another deaf wit-
ness who lost his Jewish mother in a camp, declined to discuss such
painful personal experiences. Because of the small size of the Berlin
deaf community, I have frequently declined to fully identify my in-
formants, even by citing the date and place of the interview, in order
to protect their anonymity.
The following excerpt illustrates how naive and uncritical many
of the witnesses I questioned were. It should be noted, however, that
such naivete was common to many Germans at the time, and not
just a result of the isolation of many deaf people.
Jochen Muhs: Did you ever personally see Adolf Hitler?

Informant: Yes, he was pale-looking, but he was very appealing.

When he would drive down the street or was in the Olympic
Stadium, everyone swarmed around him and called out repeat-
edly, “Heil Hitler!” and the deaf joined in.

He made Germany strong. Under Hitler, there was order, work,

and no hunger. Every year we attended a huge youth camp.
We were able to do military exercises, enjoy a nice camp life
80 Jochen Muhs

under open skies, evenings around a romantic campfire, and

very good organization. I became familiar with discipline there
and learned how to darn socks. All that was useful, and I’m
thankful for it. It was nice!

Jochen Muhs: But what do you think about forced sterilization and
the war?

Informant: Yes, but that wasn’t so bad.

Jochen Muhs: And the Jews?

Informant: Well, we didn’t know about that. No one told me that—

not even the church. We were told they were in the East and
had to work in the countryside.

Deaf Organizations Before and After 1933

Political, social, and athletic associations for the deaf abounded
in Weimar Germany and some were influential chapters of interna-
tional organizations. In 1932, Berlin had about twenty-five deaf so-
cieties and other political groups, such as the Deaf NSDAP, the Ger-
man Deaf Workers’ Alliance, the Deaf Labor Union Group of the

Fritz Albreghs, leader of the Reich Union of the Deaf of Germany

 Deaf People as Eyewitnesses of National Socialism 81

Workers’ Alliance, the Deaf Labor Union Group in the Social Demo-
cratic Party of Germany, the German Nationalist Group, and the larg-
est deaf political group, the Greater Berlin Deaf Section of the Com-
munist Party of Germany.1 Before 1933, the numerous deaf sport clubs
were organized under parent sports associations. Attempts to form
an umbrella association for all German deaf sports failed repeatedly
because of quarrels over skill qualifications. Only in the period of
Gleichschaltung (coordination of German social, political, and cul-
tural organizations in 1933 and 1934 through infiltration, intimida-
tion, and violence), would the Association of German Deaf Gym-
nastic and Sports Clubs be designated as the sole association for all
deaf sports.2 Heinrich Siepmann from Essen was named chairman
of the new deaf sports association.3
As early as 1927, when the sterilization of disabled people was
being discussed more and more, the Reich Union of the Deaf of
Germany (Reichsverband der Gehörlosen Deutschlands—REGEDE)
was founded in Weimar to take a stand against such proposals. Fritz
Albreghs of Berlin became chairman, but there was little unity among
the state associations of the REGEDE. 4 Because of his National

Officials of the Reich Union of the Deaf of Germany in 1937 (Fritz

Albreghs is on the right)
82 Jochen Muhs

Socialist sympathies, Albreghs was dismissed as chairman in 1928.5

However, after Hitler’s takeover, at the third session of the REGEDE
in Berlin on April 14, 1933, he was nominated by acclamation to be
the leader of the “deaf branch” of the NSDAP.6 As the deaf newspa-
per Die Stimme (The Voice) reported, a hearing teacher of the deaf,
Ludwig Herzog of Munich, was declared National Commissioner of
the Deaf Affairs branch and thereby took up the highest position in
the REGEDE. 7 (Herzog committed suicide in 1945.) Thereafter,
Albreghs became federal commissar for only the smaller division,
“Deaf People.” However, in the writings of deaf witnesses of the
period, only Albreghs is ever mentioned as head of the REGEDE.8

The Coordination of the Deaf Associations

When Hitler became chancellor on January 30, 1933, deaf mem-
bers of the Sturmabteilung (SA), or storm troopers, marched through
the Brandenburg Gate alongside their hearing comrades, carrying
torches past the new Führer.9 Voting rights, freedom of the press,
and freedom of expression were all suspended. Political opponents
were prosecuted and taken into so-called protective custody. Those
who expressed different thoughts, including many professors and
artists, were expelled from their jobs. Intellectuals, journalists, au-
thors, people of liberal convictions, including many of Jewish de-
scent, emigrated from Germany. Modern paintings and sculptures
were banned from the museums and declared degenerate. Liberal
books were burned. Eyewitness Hermann D. reported how, as a li-
brary assistant, he had to go through an official list and remove books
by Jewish and liberal authors from the shelves and throw them into
a bonfire.10 Ideas and images that did not fit the Nazi worldview
had to be eliminated.
In 1932, the REGEDE made the hour-long film Misjudged People
(Verkannte Menschen) under the direction of Wilhelm Ballier, who was
both deaf and a Nazi sympathizer. This was intended to be an apo-
litical film, calling for an improvement in the lot of deaf people. It
documented deaf people hard at work and demonstrated their artis-
tic and athletic talents, all virtuous activities, according to the Nazis.
 Deaf People as Eyewitnesses of National Socialism 83

Yet, in 1934, the Reich Ministry for Propaganda and Education of

the Masses banned the film and placed it under lock and key. After
the promulgation of the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with
Hereditary Diseases in July 1933, it was simply impolitic to show
any disabled people in such a positive light.11
The Nazi government also ordered all associations, including
sports clubs, to dissolve and reorganize within regional districts. The
associations of deaf people shared the same fate as those of hearing
Germans, and so at Easter 1933, Albreghs combined all deaf associa-
tions in the thirty-five districts of Germany into one. The number of
deaf members of the new national REGEDE climbed from 4,700 to
12,600. The REGEDE then joined the National Socialist Welfare As-
sociation, and overnight all deaf Germans automatically became
members of the NSDAP. Members of the Nazi Party were rewarded
with jobs, promotions, and the issuance of trade permits and so for
many deaf people, party membership was enticing.
After the coordination of deaf associations between May and
July of 1933, the following text appeared in the deaf newspaper
Die Stimme:
In the future there will be no more long debates, no voting, and no
elections. . . . In time, only one party will be allowed in our Ger-
man Fatherland: that is the people. From now on there can be only
one opinion. . . . Revolutions know no compromise! . . . Associa-
tions which oppose coordination will be denied participation in
our destiny.12

After the Gleichschaltung, many articles in deaf newspapers re-

flected National Socialist convictions. Both the foundation of new
and the suppression of old deaf organizations were much-discussed
topics. The following headlines illuminate the times: “To the Leader
(Führer) of Germany’s Deaf, Party Member Fritz Albreghs!”; “First
Deaf SA Unit in Germany”; and “Sterilization Becomes the Law.”
Ultimately, openly anti-Semitic points of view and propaganda ar-
ticles also appeared in deaf newspapers, under headlines such as:
“The Battle Against Judaism!” and “The True Face of Judaism.”13
The two oldest deaf newspapers, Die Stimme, successor to Der
Taubstummenfreund (The Deaf Mute’s Friend), which was founded in
84 Jochen Muhs

1872, and Der Deutsche Gehörlose (The Deaf German), were merged in
1935 under pressure from the REGEDE. On July 6, 1935, Heinrich
Siepmann began publishing this newspaper under the name Der
Deutsche Gehörlose.14
Not all leaders of the German deaf community approved of Nazi
ideas and actions. William Gottweiss, born in 1874 or 1875, was an
early activist in one of the first deaf welfare associations, which had
a membership of more than 800 deaf people. For twenty-eight years,
he served as its chairman.15 As president of the Ninth German Deaf
Congress, he had reached an influential position by 1910. During
the Gleichschaltung, the REGEDE seized all association assets. These
included, for example, the holdings of the Berlin Central Associa-
tion, which owned three houses and at least 250,000 Reichsmarks.16
In 1933, Gottweiss lost the chairmanship he had held for many years
and then his job in the welfare office. Still, he remained a strong
opponent of the NSDAP. As a result, on two occasions, his wife Emma
was denied access to deaf associations and thus publicly humiliated.17

Deaf People in Nazi Organizations

As early as 1921, the Nazis had begun to build up a private army,
the SA, in Munich and all over southern Germany. The SA system-
atically controlled cities and neighborhoods by forcibly ousting their
political opponents. They often came into conflict with local police
because of their commitment to creating their own violent “order.”
By June and July of 1932, there were 461 violent altercations in Prussia
alone, resulting in 82 dead and 400 injured.18
Some deaf people also volunteered for the SA. Fritz Albreghs,
who possessed brilliant rhetorical skills in both speech and sign lan-
guage, assembled an SA unit of eight deaf people, which grew to
296 members by 1933. In 1931, Goebbels, at that time National So-
cialist party leader for the Berlin district and later minister of propa-
ganda, had given his personal approval to this enterprise.19 In his
letter of appointment, he stated: “I hereby name party member Fritz
Albreghs section leader of the deafened and hard-of-hearing group
with all attendant rights and duties.” Strikingly, congenitally deaf
 Deaf People as Eyewitnesses of National Socialism 85

people are not mentioned here, a fact that may reflect National Social-
ist concern about “hereditary diseases,” including inherited deafness.20
However, in the fall of 1933, not long after Hitler seized power,
the NSDAP outlawed the deaf storm troopers and a deaf SA motor
unit.21 A teacher of deaf people named Peglow complained about
this to the Reich Interior Ministry. According to rumor, Albreghs him-
self had instigated the ban on the deaf storm troopers. The order
was issued by top SA leadership, presumably the Berlin SA com-
mander, Hermann Goering. According to Wilhelm Gehring, a deaf
storm trooper, Goering noticed the deaf unit at a parade review on
the Reich athletic field.22 The unit displeased him and so it had to
disappear, just as the National Socialist People’s Welfare Organiza-
tion would later demand the dissolution of the convalescent homes
for so-called hereditarily diseased people. The disbanding of the Deaf
and Hard-of-Hearing Storm Troop Unit of Berlin took place in 1935.
Soon after, Albreghs was relieved of command of a local SA group.23

All deaf motorcycle unit, Nazi SA. Courtesy of Jochen Muhs, Berlin.
86 Jochen Muhs

Nevertheless, as late as 1937, Der Deutsche Gehörlose proudly reported

on National Socialist deaf groups and published photos of the deaf
men Werner Thomas and Gerhard Lück wearing SA uniforms.24 Lück,
who had long been unemployed, had joined the SA in 1929. Like
Thomas, he took part in several brawls and street battles. Even
though he was arrested by the Weimar police, he continued to dis-
tribute outlawed Nazi propaganda posters.
The years from 1933 to 1945 were marked by nationalistic dem-
onstrations, celebrations, and commemoration days in the schools.
In 1937, 90 percent of the pupils in grades five through nine belonged
to the Hitler Youth. Deaf children, too, were to be incorporated into
“Adolf Hitler marching groups.” The Hitler Youth flag waved on
school buildings. Deaf members of the Hitler Youth or the Union of
German Girls wore the same uniforms as hearing youngsters, but
put a regimental “G” on the shoulder for “Gehörgeschadigte,” or “hear-
ing-impaired.” In addition to regiment “G,” the Hitler Youth con-
tained regiment “B” for the blind, and regiment “K” for
Körperbehinderte, the physically handicapped.25

Deaf Hitler Youth of the Institution for the Deaf, Osnabrück, 1936
 Deaf People as Eyewitnesses of National Socialism 87

The Careers of the Deaf Functionaries Albreghs

and Siepmann
Fritz Albreghs (1892–1945) became chairman of REGEDE in 1927.
The next year in Prague, he was elected president of the Interna-
tional League for the Preservation of the Rights of Deaf People of
the World, forerunner of the World Federation of the Deaf.26 Owing
to Nazi agitation in Prague, however, he was forced to leave the
meeting and later was deposed as chairman of the REGEDE. In 1931,
Albreghs joined the NSDAP and the future minister of propaganda
Goebbels appointed him section leader.27
Military-style discipline prevailed in the associations of the deaf
during the Nazi era. An NSDAP statistical survey from 1939 noted
that Albreghs, an active party member, was entitled to wear a uni-
form and carry weapons. Albreghs also apparently enjoyed interna-
tional prestige. At the World Congress of the International Associa-
tion of the Deaf in Paris in 1937, Albreghs was elected president by
the twenty-five members present.28 The organization and secretariat
were located in Berlin, which was also chosen as the site for the
meeting of the International Association of the Deaf in 1940, although
World War II prevented this gathering.29
In 1942, Albreghs was removed as leader of the REGEDE. His
immediate successor was Karl Brunner from Vienna, followed by
the leader of the Deaf Hitler Youth, Karl Engelmann, in 1943. The
behavior of Albreghs remains contradictory. In an interview with
the author, informant Lovis Varges reported that his parents were
incredulous at Albreghs’s offer as “Führer of the deaf” to arrange
for their emigration papers and rejected his proposal. After the war,
however, they learned that he had apparently helped other Jews.30
In 1926, Heinrich Siepmann had become vice president of what
was then called the International Committee of Silent Sports (Comité
International des Sports Silencieux—CISS). In the course of the
Gleichschaltung, when all German deaf sport associations were
merged during 1933, he became the chairman of the German Deaf
Sports Association, which he presided over until 1945. At the same
time, Siepmann served as the district association leader of the
88 Jochen Muhs

REGEDE. In spite of this, he maintained relationships with Felix

London, Paul Kroner, and A. Levy, who were all Jewish, and for
twenty years remained a member of the World Association of Deaf
Sports.31 After the war, Siepmann was reproached repeatedly because
as chairman of the German Deaf Sports Association he had tolerated
the National Socialist despots. Nevertheless, Siepmann was reelected
as chairman of the German Deaf Sports Association in 1947, and as
vice president of the German Deaf League in 1950. He also appar-
ently retained the trust of deaf people outside Germany, as he was
elected vice president of the World Federation of the Deaf when it
was founded in 1951.32

Deaf Schools Under National Socialism

Tradition has it that the directors of the three Berlin schools for
deaf people maintained good relations and exchanged much practi-
cal information. After 1933, Gotthard Lehmann, director of the State
Institution for the Deaf at Berlin–Neukölln, turned to National So-
cialism; Ernst Schorsch, director of the City Institution for the Deaf
in Berlin, was dismissed from his post; and Felix Reich, director of
the Israelite Institution for the Deaf in the Berlin suburb of
Weissensee, was interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp
in 1939. Upon his release, Reich, who was Jewish, brought ten chil-
dren from his school to safety in London. Although Reich wished to
return to Germany to get his own children to England, the outbreak
of war prevented his return to Berlin.33 Schorsch, who was also chair-
man of the League of German Teachers of the Deaf, clearly articu-
lated his opinion about the political ideas of most teachers. Before
the education journal Blätter für Taubstummen was suppressed, in an
article called “Transformation,” Schorch wrote, “I myself was subject
to the bitterest and most cowardly attacks by left-leaning people,
but I never gave in to them. The attackers had very little support
from our colleagues because most teachers of the deaf stood on the
political right.” Later he charged, “This was the meanest time that the
League of German Teachers of the Deaf had experienced since its foun-
dation; it was the most dishonorable period we ever lived through.”34
 Deaf People as Eyewitnesses of National Socialism 89

Schorsch was also a personal friend of Felix Reich. When the

Nazis took over, Schorsch refused to raise the Nazi Party flag over
the school, an action for which he was dismissed from his job and
pensioned. Schorsch had to vacate his chair for the diehard Nazi
Max Müller, whom the students hated.35 The Berlin daily newspa-
pers reported that at the same time that he lost the chairmanship of
the teachers’ union, Schorsch had to give up the editorship of the
association newspaper. Informant Hermann D. called Max Müller a
bad director, suggesting that made him a better Nazi. Müller died in
disgrace in 1947.36
Deaf students were integrated into the National Socialist Hitler
Youth. Two hundred pupils from Berlin, Munich, Leipzig, Frankfurt
am Main, and other German cities participated in the first summer
camp of the Deaf Hitler Youth in Rottenbach (Thüringia). Like hear-
ing youngsters, the deaf boys and girls stood in formation, marched
to the morning and evening flag-raising and -lowering ceremonies,
and even sang—as well as they were able—the “Horst Wessel Song,”
the hymn of the National Socialist movement.37 Every year, the deaf
schools in Germany organized a two-week camp for more than 500
deaf boys and girls. Teachers of deaf children always led the camps.
Boys and girls who had distinguished themselves with outstanding
performances the previous year became troop leaders. 38 According
to eyewitnesses, when a high-ranking Nazi representative visited
the camps, teachers instructed most of their deaf pupils not to speak
or to salute “Heil Hitler.” Only those with late-onset deafness, who
could speak well, were presented to the visitors.39 The conspicuous
voices of profoundly deaf children were not to reach the ears of the
high-ranking authorities.
Fear and division prevailed in the schools for deaf children. Di-
rectors and teachers alike forbade Jewish pupils to attend school.
The Reich Ministry for Science, Education, and Culture ordered that,
in the interest of eugenics and the party, teachers were to report “he-
reditarily diseased” pupils to the school administration or, alterna-
tively, to the health office.40
Eyewitnesses reported that lists of names of hereditarily diseased
and “hereditarily healthy” pupils hung in all classrooms. They also
90 Jochen Muhs

attested to the fear the pupils had for one loyal Nazi teacher named
Ruckau. The siblings Hilde Behr and Kurt Eisenblatter reported on
the reprisals and the scorn they had to bear from teachers and fel-
low pupils because their father was a political prisoner in the
Sachsenhausen concentration camp.41
There were also teachers who protected Jewish students from
reprisals by other students. Wilhelm Heitfuss, for example, a mem-
ber of the NSDAP and leader of the Deaf Hitler Youth for the North-
ern District, always made sure that the Jewish pupil Gerhard Mayer
was not harassed by his classmates. On October 21, 1939, the State
Senior Administration Councilor Laging called for the closing of all
schools for deaf children for the duration of the war in order to econo-
mize for the war effort. And indeed, several schools were converted
into military hospitals.42
Fifty-two years after the end of the war, I contacted the Profes-
sional Association of German Teachers of the Hearing-Impaired, suc-
cessor organization to the League of German Teachers of the Deaf, to
ask about the immoral participation of teachers of the deaf in imple-
menting Nazi marriage and sterilization laws. In response, the Asso-
ciation simply asserted on May 9, 1997, that during the Gleichschaltung
it had been subsumed into a larger organization for all special educa-
tion teachers. If it did not exist as a separate entity, the association ap-
parently felt it bore no responsibility for its members’ shameful actions!43

The Persecution of Deaf Jews

In 1933, all Jewish deaf people already had been removed from
the public life of the deaf community. Many Jews were highly tal-
ented people and active members of deaf organizations. After the
NSDAP seizure of power and the coordination of all deaf organiza-
tions, deaf Jews were certainly the first to experience persecution.
Many depended entirely on deaf organizations for social contact.
Some, for example, used the three homes for deaf people in Berlin as
places to seek advice and social interaction.44
In 1933, the REGEDE ordered all deaf organizations to expel their
Jewish members, who were told to join the Organization for the
 Deaf People as Eyewitnesses of National Socialism 91

Advancement of the Jewish Deaf.45 In 1933, there were some 25 deaf

associations in Berlin alone. Thirty-three Jews lost their membership
in the General Association for Support of the Deaf, and twenty-two
lost their membership in the Berlin Deaf Swimming Club. Those ex-
pelled included treasurer Paul Kroner, who for twenty-three years
had administered the finances of the swimming club and the Berlin
Central Association of the Deaf.
In 1935, the REGEDE published a warning in the Deutsche
Gehörlose under the title “The REGEDE and the Jewish Question”:
The REGEDE, too, joins the struggle to carry the movement for-
ward. The leadership of the Reich most emphatically calls atten-
tion to the fact that, in accordance with paragraph 11, no Jew or
person of Jewish descent, may be accepted as a member of the
REGEDE. . . . Furthermore, any contact with Jews is strictly forbid-
den to every member of the REGEDE. Anyone who maintains con-
tact with Jews in spite of this warning proves his un-German con-
victions and no longer has any place in the REGEDE. German girls
who associate or live with Jews will have to atone in the concen-
tration camp for having forgotten race.46

Deaf people often received fragmentary information about what

was happening to deaf Jews around them. In 1929 or 1930, eyewit-
ness Friedrich W. had three Jewish students who had come from the
Israelite Institution for the Deaf in Berlin-Weissensee to his second-
ary school class at the Berlin State Institution for the Deaf. They got
along very well with the other pupils. But later, all three were ban-
ished from the school without any explanation. 47
In November 1938, informant Harry Förster witnessed the po-
grom known as Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. On his way
to the swimming pool with a group from school, he saw the looting
of stores on Karl Marx Street in Berlin. When he asked his teacher
for an explanation for what he had seen, his teacher merely told him
to read the newspaper.48
Eyewitness Rudi K. mentioned that he met a deaf Jewish man
wearing a yellow star on the street. When I asked whether he had
talked to the man, he answered, “no.” He feared the National So-
cialist terror and said it was forbidden to sign with Jews on the
92 Jochen Muhs

street.49 Informant Hedwig Ballier reported that her Jewish girlfriend

Ruchama Markus had advised her to break off their friendly con-
tact. She feared retaliation, or worse. Ruchama Markus later mar-
ried an older man and both were deported.50
Several eyewitnesses told the story of a Berlin Jewish woman,
Sara E., who was abducted one Sunday from the factory where she
worked, unobserved by her colleagues, and deported to Auschwitz.
Her non-Jewish husband had already left her and filed for divorce.
She left behind two deaf children who waited in vain for their
mother. A deaf shoemaker and his wife took both children in and
cared for them. 51
On 18 October 1941, the first transport of Jews from Berlin to
Poland and the Baltic states took place.52 Because there had been little
contact between Jewish and non-Jewish deaf people since 1933, very
little was known in the deaf community concerning these events and
the terrible fate of Jewish deaf people. Perhaps 1,000 deaf Jews were
living in Germany. Of these, about 600 lived in and around Berlin,
according to estimates by informants. 53 Of these 600, barely three
dozen deaf Jews survived the horrors of National Socialism—among
them twenty-two who succeeded in fleeing abroad in 1939, includ-
ing Felix Reich, the Director of the Israelite Institution for the Deaf,
who went to London with ten of his pupils. The Israelite Institution
for the Deaf and the Jewish Home for the Aged in Berlin were closed
during the war, and little trace of deaf Jews remained at the end of
the war.
Every month, restrictions on the Jews intensified and conditions
deteriorated. Gisela G., a deaf eyewitness, traveled with her mother
in a darkened streetcar through the Jewish ghetto in Lódź, Poland,
and recalls to the present day seeing the emaciated Jewish citizens.54
The daily morning roll call in the concentration camps was unbear-
able for those deaf inmates whose lives depended on obeying com-
mands. Hearing prisoners helped their comrades in suffering by giv-
ing them signals. I asked two former Polish camp prisoners from
Mauthausen and Ravensbrück whether they had informed the over-
seers of their deafness: “No! Good heavens, no. They weren’t to know
that we were deaf. Who knows?”55
 Deaf People as Eyewitnesses of National Socialism 93

Conclusion: Explanations and Self-Justifications

by Deaf Germans
Virtually no deaf Germans have yet come to terms with their
own National Socialist past. It can therefore be no surprise that the
same kinds of denial and self-justification that were widespread in
German postwar society (especially during the 1950s) are to be found
among deaf people. Many deaf civil servants, too, like millions of
hearing Germans, were willing tools of Hitler. Until the end, they
were firmly convinced they were doing what was good for Germany,
and considered their activity as a great mission and honor. The to-
talitarian manipulation of the Nazi state permitted the dissemina-
tion of much disinformation. Strict censorship prevailed. There were
no opposition voices or opinions permitted in the press. Propaganda
in newspapers, films, and other media influenced hearing and deaf
people alike. Opponents of the regime quickly ended up in jail or in
“correctional institutions,” as the concentration camps were called
at first.
As an athlete in the Fourth World Games of the Deaf in London
in 1935, Wilhelm G. first learned of the Nazis’ crimes from foreign
athletes. Eyewitness Günther Wöller reported a similar experience
at the world games in Stockholm in 1939. The air at the world games
was filled with rumors of war. The German athletes in fact had to
return home in a convoy, since Hitler had declared war on Poland.56
After his liberation from a concentration camp by the English in
1945, a deaf Polish resistance fighter who had joined the British army
met two young deaf women on the street in Hamburg. They still
reproached him for Poland invading Germany and thus starting the
war. These deaf women clearly believed Hitler’s propaganda. In fact,
news of the border incidents staged by SS men in 1939 had been sent
out from the German radio station at Gleiwitz as a provocation, to
provide Germany with a motive for starting World War II. But many
deaf people only learned the truth much later.57
It is still hard to understand why so many men who spoke well
and in many cases had late-onset deafness, such as Albreghs, Ballier,
Siepmann, and others, tolerated the Nazi despots in spite of forced
94 Jochen Muhs

sterilization, persecution of the Jews, and the war of conquest. How-

ever, like many teachers of deaf children, they were allowed to wear
smart uniforms, act as welfare assistants for the “poor deaf,” and
distinguish themselves as spokespersons and advocates for the Ger-
man nation. They were undoubtedly convinced that they were act-
ing for the good of Germany, and at the time, they were honored as
“fighters” or “old fighters,” a Nazi term of distinction.58
Gottfried W. from southern Germany stated in a videotaped in-
terview his belief that before 1933, 95 percent of the population was
unemployed. When Hitler came to power, the unemployment num-
bers dropped, and thus many Germans considered Hitler to be the
country’s savior. During the war, a large percentage of hearing men
had been drafted, creating better job opportunities for many deaf
workers who stayed at home. They were even allowed to supervise
and give orders to foreign workers.59
Eyewitness Alfred Reifke, who came from a rural area of
Pomerania, at first leaned toward Marxism and was skeptical of the
brown-shirted rulers. Some years after Hitler had created his new
order, possibilities for employment really had opened up. During
rearmament, many were employed in support of what was one of
Europe’s most modern military forces. In 1938, after the annexation
of Austria and the Sudetenland, like many others, Reifke became a
supporter of Hitler. Following the war, it took a long period of read-
ing books and newspaper accounts for him to learn what freedom
and democracy meant, and what crimes the National Socialists had
committed in his country. For many years, Reifke was the secretary
of the REGEDE. After the war, he dedicated himself to social services
on behalf of deaf people. However, he firmly rejected a proposal to
honor him for his philanthropy with the National Service Cross, since
he could not and would not forget his National Socialist past.60
The following story is characteristic of the contradictory rela-
tionship between Jewish and non-Jewish deaf people. After the war,
the municipal authorities of Berlin identified another Alfred Reifke
as “severely disabled” because he had his leg amputated. His dis-
ability provided him with some privileges. But as a former National
Socialist who had been identified for de-Nazification, he was not
 Deaf People as Eyewitnesses of National Socialism 95

permitted to file applications for his deaf friends. Therefore, he asked

a Jewish survivor, Felix London, to help obtain similar privileges
based on disability for deaf people. If we can believe Reifke, Felix
London stated that he, too, would have become a Nazi had he not
been a Jew. London successfully applied for an identity card as a
disabled person. As a result, all the deaf people of Berlin came to
enjoy the advantages that had originally been intended only for those
who had been injured in the war.61
The fate of deaf people who had been forcibly sterilized long
remained neglected in postwar Germany. Not until 1981 did the
German Bundestag, on the basis of a proposal by the Social Demo-
crats and the Greens, resolve to pay forcibly sterilized persons com-
pensation in the amount of 5,000 Deutschmarks (DM). An increase
of 100 DM in 1985 enhanced the settlement a trifle. In 1995, Berlin
was the only federal state of the German Federal Republic to recog-
nize deaf victims of forced sterilization as having been persecuted
by the Nazis and therefore eligible for the government compensa-
tion. In 1998, a German law finally declared the decisions of the he-
reditary health courts to be null and void, providing a real victory
for people with disabilities, who have long called for the removal of
the stigma of having been involuntarily sterilized.
With my research, I would like to contribute to preventing Ger-
many from forgetting that part of the National Socialist past in which
deaf people participated as both victims and perpetrators. It is my
hope that a process of clarification will begin and that deaf Germans
will become aware of their own past.

Notes
1. Deutsche Taubstummen-Kalender 1932 (Leipzig: Taubstummen-Verlag
Hugo Dude).
2. Ernst Schorsch, “Umformung,” Blätter für Taubstummenbildung, no. 10
(1933).
3. “Amtliche Bekannmachung,” Die Stimme, no. 27 (1933): 169.
4. Fritz Albreghs, “Die Gründungssitzung der REGEDE,” Die Stimme, no. 3
(1927).
5. “Die Lösung,” Allgmeine Deutsche Gehörlosen-Zeitschrift, no. 22 (1928): 99.
6. Protokoll der REGEDE, 1933, Charlottenburg Court Record: 98-99.
96 Jochen Muhs

7. Schorsch, “Umformung.”
8. Gottfried Hock, interview by author.
9. 10 Jahre Reichverband, 1937.
10. Hermann D., interview by author. For a description of such Nazi
policies, see Martin Broszat and Norbert Frei, Das Dritte Reich im Überblick
(Munich: R. Piper, 1989).
11. For more information about the film Misjudged People and Ballier, see
John S. Schuchman, “Misjudged People: The German Deaf Community in
1932” in this volume.
12. “Gleichschaltung,” Die Stimme, no. 13 (1933): 66.
13. Die Stimme, 1933–1935.
14. “Einheit in der Gehörlosen-Presse,” Die Stimme, no. 9 (1933).
15. “Wilhelm Gottweiss,” Illustrierte Gehörlosen-Welt, no. 2 (1930).
16. “Gleichschaltung.”
17. “Amtliche Bekannmachung,” Die Stimme, no. 23 and 27 (1933).
18. Fritz Albreghs, “Enstehen und Werdegang,” Der Wekruf!, ser. 5 (1938).
19. “Aus dem Leben und den Kämpfen gehörlosen Parteigenossen, R.,”
Der Deutsch Gehörlosen (1937).
20. Fritz Albreghs, “Enstehen und Werdegang des ersten
nationalsozialistischen Gehörlosen-Ortsgruppe in Berlin,” Der Wekruf!, ser. 1
(1938): 2.
21. “Was der Gehörlosen wissen muss,” Die Stimme, no. 30 (1933).
22. Wilhelm Gehring, interview by author.
23. Albreghs, “Enstehen und Werdegang.”
24. “Aus dem Leben und den Kämpfen gehörlosen Parteigenossen, R.”
Der Deutsche Gehörlose (1937).
25. “Die Organisation der Gehörlosen in der Hitler-Jugend,” Die Stimme,
nos. 18 and 19 (1934).
26. “Internationaler Taubstummen-Kongress in Prag,” Die Stimme, nos. 14
and 15 (1927).
27. Albreghs, “Enstehen und Werdegang.”
28. “Amtliche Bekannmachung,” Der Deutsche Gehörlose, ser. 9 (1938).
29. “Der Weltkongress der Gehörlosen in Berlin 1940,” Der Deutsche
Gehörlose, ser. 13 (1938).
30. Lovis Varges, interview by author.
31. Deutsche Taubstummen-Zeitschrift, 1926.
32. Friedrich Waldow, “Heinrich Siepmann,” Deutsche Gehörlosen-Zeitung,
no. 23/24 (1974).
33. For more information on Reich and the school at Weissensee, see Vera
Bendt and Nicola Galliner, eds., Öffne deine Hand für die Stummen, Die
Geschichte der Israelitischen Taubsummen-Anstalt, Berlin-Weeissensee, 1873 bis
1942 (Berlin: Transit, 1993).
 Deaf People as Eyewitnesses of National Socialism 97

34. Schorsch, “Umformung.”

35. Siegfried Hahn, interview by author.
36. Ibid.
37. Herta Gehring, interview by author.
38. Rother, “Der Bann G in der Hitler-Jugend,” Der Deutsche Gehörlose,
ser. 17 (1937).
39. Friedrich W., interview by author.
40. Paul Jaworek, “Tätigkeits-Bericht,” Blätter für Taubstummenbildung, no.
9 (1933): 134.
41. Hilde Behr and Kurt Eisenblatter, interviews by author.
42. Laging, Reichsverwaltungsblatt, 21 October, 1939.
43. Christiane Harrtmann-Börner, “Heidelberger Erklärung,”
Hörgeschadigten Pädegogik, no.5 (1997): 329.
44. This information comes from several interviews, including interviews
with Erwin Stemmler and Martin Matuschewski.
45. REGEDE order of 1 April, 1933.
46. “REGEDE-Nachtrichten,” Der Deutsche Gehörlose, no. 35 (1935): 33.
47. Friedrich W., interview by author.
48. Harry Förster, interview by author.
49. Rudi K., interview by author.
50. Hedwig Ballier, interview by author.
51. Norbert E., interview by author.
52. Gedenkbuch Berlins der jüdischen Opfer des Naionalisozialismus, (Berlin:
Edition Hentrich, 1995), 1420.
53. The number 600 was cited in several interviews, for example, the
interview with Lovis Varges. Martin Matuschewski estimated over 400 Jews
living in Berlin.
54. Gisela G., interview by author.
55. Stanislaw Sila-Nowicki, interview by author.
56. Günter Wöller, interview by author.
57. G.I., interview by author in Warsaw.
58. Hedwig Ballier, interview by author.
59. Gottfried Weileder, interview by author.
60. Alfred Reifke, interview by author.
61. Ibid.
98 John S. Schuchman

Misjudged People: The German Deaf

Community in 1932

John S. Schuchman

I n August 1932, the German deaf community released a film en-

titled Verkannte Menschen (Misjudged People) written by Wilhelm
Ballier and produced by Alfred Kell. Financed by the members and
organizations of REGEDE, the German national deaf association, with
a contribution by the association of teachers of deaf children, the
film is an important document of the German deaf community at
the moment of Hitler ’s emergence as chancellor and Führer of the
Third Reich.1 The film’s subtitle, “A Film of the Hearing-Impaired,”
implies that the audience for the film’s message was the majority
hearing population of Germany.
The fact that the German deaf community chose the medium of
film to communicate its message was deliberate. Throughout the
world, deaf communities generally communicate through the use of
sign language, gesture, and the manual alphabet. Until the invention
of motion picture technology at the turn of the twentieth century,
however, these communities had no way to demonstrate the power,
beauty, or efficiency of their respective national sign languages.2
Prior to the use of motion picture film, deaf persons depended
on speech, sign language interpreters, or the written word to com-
municate with people who could hear. For a variety of historical and
educational reasons, these forms of communication often were frus-
trating or inadequate for profoundly deaf individuals in their inter-
actions with the hearing majority. As a consequence, the deaf com-
munity viewed itself as an oppressed class or a minority even though
these terms would not come into wide use until later in the cen-
tury.3 Reflecting a view of deaf Germans as a subculture of the hear-
ing German majority, the deaf film producers used the phrase

98
 Misjudged People: The German Deaf Community in 1932 99

Verkannte Menschen, translated into English as “Misjudged People,”

for the title of their film.
Why did they use this phrase in 1932? If the Nazi regime would
implement a program of racial hygiene that had a devastating effect
on deaf Germans, then its policies fit within a pre-existing and larger
worldwide eugenics view of deaf persons, among others, as inferior
human beings. For example, the former teacher of deaf children and
famous inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, presented
a paper in 1883, “Memoir Upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of
the Human Race,” in which he proposed a plan of “positive” eugen-
ics to the American Academy of Science, which would gradually
eliminate sign language and the deaf community.4 Most deaf people
vehemently opposed these views.
Compounding the negative eugenics views, the worldwide eco-
nomic depression of the 1920s and 1930s resulted in devastating
unemployment for deaf persons everywhere. Despite this, deaf com-
munities had made progress. Recognizing their common problems,
national deaf communities organized international conferences. Eu-
ropeans took the lead and attempted to organize a world deaf orga-
nization in the years prior to World War II. 5 A German late-deaf-
ened leader, Fritz Albreghs, who also was a Nazi, was active in these
early efforts to organize deaf people internationally.6 Similarly, the
Salon International des Artistes Silencieux of Paris and the Ameri-
can Society of Deaf Artists organized an international exhibition of
“Deaf Artists” in New York in 1935. 7 However, the most active ef-
fort took place in the international sports arena. International sports
events for deaf athletes first occurred in Paris in 1924; the German
teams proved to be excellent competitors and often finished first
in the overall national team rankings. Deaf people viewed these
competitions as their own “Olympics.” 8 These accomplishments
by deaf individuals and organizations, however, were not well
known to the larger world outside the deaf community. Publicity
was limited to newspapers and magazines published primarily for
deaf people and/or professionals who worked with deaf individuals.
In the first third of the twentieth century, the German deaf com-
munity, like deaf communities elsewhere in the world, believed that
100 John S. Schuchman

they had made some progress. Education for deaf children was com-
pulsory, and many viewed Germany’s emphasis on oral education
as progressive. 9 In the international deaf world, German deaf people
were seen as leaders politically and athletically. Unfortunately, this
was not well known or understood by the public at large.
The producers of Verkannte Menschen hoped to counter this lack
of understanding. The medium of film was a natural communica-
tion choice since it allowed audiences, through the use of captions,
to see the deaf community and the language used by its adult mem-
bers—sign language.
Film was very popular in Germany. During World War I, the
German government, industry, and military had recognized the im-
portance of film as a communication and propaganda medium and,
in concert, created Universum Film AG (hereafter UFA), which be-
came the most powerful film business in Europe throughout the
1920s, 1930s, and the Nazi era. In a challenge to the Hollywood films
produced in the United States, UFA produced films and controlled
their distribution and exhibition in their own theater chains in Ger-
many and other European countries.10 The producers of Verkannte
Menschen managed to obtain authorization to exhibit copies of their
film as a Lehrfilm (educational/documentary film) distributed in
Germany by UFA.11
Like their counterparts in the United States, the German film
industry had converted to the new sound technology of “talking
motion pictures” by the early 1930s. However, the German deaf com-
munity chose to produce a silent film with subtitles. Approximately
thirty minutes in length, this black and white silent film used sub-
titles to convey its message to audiences that did not understand
German Sign Language.
When one thinks about deaf communities around the world in
the 1930s, it is necessary to draw a distinction between deaf children
and deaf adults. Deaf children’s parents typically could hear. They
had never met a deaf adult and usually did not know sign language.
Oral educators and medical doctors emphasized the importance of
speech and speechreading for deaf children. Even with the best
teachers, this is a difficult process. The majority of deaf children,
 Misjudged People: The German Deaf Community in 1932 101

particularly those who were born deaf, never achieved speech that
was understandable to the lay public. Although some deaf persons,
particularly those who became deaf after age two or three, became
successful by the bourgeois standards of the day, the majority only
held low-level employment. Because of their daily frustration with
communication, deaf people often turned to other deaf peers for their
primary social interaction. Amongst each other, deaf people used
sign language. 12 When one speaks of the deaf community, it is the
deaf adults and their organizations that are being described.
The content of Verkannte Menschen is organized around this dis-
tinction between the world of education for deaf children and the
adult deaf community. It is interesting that the scriptwriters chose
not to engage in a polemical description of the merits of sign lan-
guage. Instead, they allowed the audience to see both worlds.
The first half of the film focuses on education. Emphasizing the
progressive nature of German oral education, the narrative depicts
the “old days” in which deaf characters used gesture to indicate that
they could not hear and were dependent upon charity for food and
assistance. In contrast, “today”(1932) there is compulsory education
for all deaf children. The film demonstrates that for the past twenty-
five years, deaf children could learn to speak, read speech on the

The old days: Deaf vagrant signs “deaf” to passing car. Verkannte
Menschen, 1932.
102 John S. Schuchman

Today: Progressive speech lesson for young student. Verkannte

Menschen, 1932.

lips, and acquire work skills. Several scenes depict kindergarten

opportunities for deaf children. Thereafter, the film documents a deaf
child’s increasing skill in speech, speechreading, and written Ger-
man. Finally, this initial section of the film makes the point that
deaf persons are good citizens when they learn about the electoral
process. After these “academic” studies illustrated in the film’s first
half, the students are turned over to masters to begin their trade
apprenticeships.
In contrast to the depiction of teachers of the school years, who
clearly are hearing individuals, the vocational master teachers are
deaf adults who communicate through the use of German Sign Lan-
guage, not spoken German. Despite the film’s early emphasis on
“oralist” pedagogy at school and a reminder that one of the domi-
nant education philosophers of deaf education was the German
Samuel Heinecke, when the film turns its attention to the adult
deaf community, it is clear that the majority of deaf people use
sign language.
 Misjudged People: The German Deaf Community in 1932 103

The second half of the film addresses the primary problem deaf
Germans faced: discrimination in employment. “We see them ev-
erywhere, these [deaf] people so misjudged yet so capable.”13 Scenes
then portray deaf workers in factories, laboratories, and dental of-
fices, and doing domestic work at home and on the farm. When not
working, they live productive and useful lives.
Several scenes show deaf people as good Germans; they are good
citizens, they share the value of physical culture, they occasionally
save the lives of other Germans, and they obey traffic laws. They
“listen” to public speeches through sign language interpreters. With
its organizational flag featured prominently, the film includes sev-
eral minutes of a Berlin Deaf Sports Association-sponsored compe-
tition that includes track events, swimming competitions, diving,
and water polo. It features a deaf man who received a “life-saving”
medal for his heroism in aiding a drowning victim. Because the
ability of deaf people to acquire driver ’s licenses and to drive safely
was an issue for deaf communities throughout the world, the film

Vocational student receives instruction from a signing deaf master.

Verkannte Menschen, 1932.
104 John S. Schuchman

includes a scene where deaf people skillfully ride motorcycles in

heavy traffic. The capstone of this effort to articulate the film’s theme
of the general competence of the deaf person is an allegorical scene
of deaf climbers scaling mountains.
In the second half of the film, the majority of the deaf adults use
sign language. Although there is no overt statement of the language
preference of deaf adults, audiences could see that sign language, in
the view of the film, was no barrier to competent and productive
lives. There were two exceptions to this use of sign language, and
both involved hearing people. When the scriptwriter Wilhelm Ballier
makes a cameo appearance, he speaks orally to two secretaries who
are typing the script. In a second scene, which depicts a deaf mar-
ried couple, deaf parents communicate orally with their hearing
child. Reading a copy of Die Stimme, the German national deaf com-
munity newspaper, a deaf father speaks orally to his child. At this
point, the film challenges the eugenics belief that deafness is heredi-
tary by reminding its viewers that 90 percent of the children of deaf
parents can hear.

The Deaf community participates in public affairs through the

use of sign language interpreters. Verkannte Menschen, 1932.
 Misjudged People: The German Deaf Community in 1932 105

Banner of the Berlin Taubstummen (deaf) Sports Club (BTSV).

Verkannte Menschen, 1932.

Two young members of the BTSV swim team. German swimmers domi-
nated the swimming competitions of the World Games of the Deaf in 1935
and 1939. Verkannte Menschen, 1932.
106 John S. Schuchman

The final section of the film shows elderly deaf people at a home
for the deaf happily interacting and playing cards. This reflects the
other major theme of the film. The film begins with a portrayal of
deaf men as pitiful and in need of charity. It ends with a demonstra-
tion that deaf people have an active community, that deaf people
are content. At film’s end, the message is clear: Deaf people are ca-
pable, educable, and happy. With the closing image of a stereotypi-
cal blonde, muscular Aryan male, the film reminds viewers: “Don’t
pity, give them their rights: work and bread.”
Soon after Hitler’s takeover, the government enacted legislation
that imposed a variety of restrictions on certain groups, primarily
Jews, Roma-Sinti, and physically and mentally disabled persons. In
July 1933, the government passed the Law for the Prevention of Off-
spring with Hereditary Diseases. Among the groups targeted for ster-
ilization and eventual removal from the national community of Ger-
man Aryans were hereditarily deaf people. Verkannte Menschen’s view
of capable, educable, and happy deaf people who only asked for re-
lief from discriminatory employment practices did not fit the official

Elderly deaf men happily playing cards. Verkannte Menschen, 1932.

 Misjudged People: The German Deaf Community in 1932 107

In contrast to the Nazi “hereditarily diseased deaf,” the deaf community

depicts an idealized deaf Aryan who appears at the film’s end. Verkannte
Menschen, 1932.

party view of deaf people as “hereditarily diseased,” and so the film

was banned. Through the policy of Gleichschaltung (coordination),
all of Germany’s social and political institutions needed to fit within
the Nazi worldview of racial hygiene, and in that view, deaf Ger-
mans were not good Aryans.
In practice, the Nazi view of deaf people was contradictory. There
were, of course, deaf Nazis who had been active in the party militia,
the Sturmabteilung (Storm Troops or SA). Utilizing deaf collabora-
tors like Albreghs and Ballier (the film’s scriptwriter), the Nazis cen-
tralized deaf organizations into the REGEDE, where they imple-
mented their racial policies, which excluded the membership of deaf
Jews. 14 Moreover, they supported German deaf athletic teams that
traveled to London in 1935 and to Stockholm in 1939 to participate
in the International Games for the Deaf, popularly known as the Deaf
Olympics.15 Despite the success of the German deaf athletes abroad,
this was not the primary image that the Nazi government wished to
convey to the German public.16
108 John S. Schuchman

In May 1933, Hitler appointed Joseph Goebbels as Minister of

Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, which gave him responsi-
bility for all forms of public expression: print, radio, film, and cul-
ture. As president of the Reich Chamber of Culture, Goebbels dis-
seminated propaganda to the German people. By 1934, his ministry
could scrutinize all scripts and among other things, ban films. 17
In Verkannte Menschen, the deaf community pointed out that only
10 percent of deaf people had deaf parents. By the end of World War
II, it has been estimated that approximately 16,000 deaf Germans
suffered sterilization or abortions as required by the Nazi health
laws.18 This number represents more than one-third of the estimated
total German deaf population of 40,000 persons. Despite the use of
the term hereditarily diseased when referring to deaf Germans, it is
clear that the National Socialists targeted all deaf persons as unwor-
thy Aryans, not just those whose deafness was hereditary.
An examination of schools for deaf children reveals this basic
posture of National Socialism. In 1926, there were seventy-three
schools for deaf children in Germany, with 787 teachers for 6,149
pupils. Two schools had more than 200 pupils; twenty had less than
200; thirty-four had less than 100; and seventeen had less than fifty.
Sixty-eight of the schools were residential, with students living ei-
ther at the school or in the homes of foster parents. Teachers of deaf
children had two years of additional university training after first
qualifying as public school teachers. They had a national profes-
sional association and published their own journal. When the Na-
zis took control of the government in 1933, they destroyed the teach-
ers’ organization, banned their professional journal, consolidated
several of the schools, and provided few funds for the education of
deaf children. 19
One year later, National Socialist teacher of deaf children Kurt
Lietz published “The Place of the School for the Deaf in the New
Reich.” 20 In this article, Lietz provides insights into the Nazi view of
deafness and deaf people. National Socialism required all individu-
als to contribute to the welfare of the nation as a whole, and no one,
in Lietz’s view, was entitled to individual benefits. Complaining that,
in the summer of 1933, a much higher percentage of deaf children
 Misjudged People: The German Deaf Community in 1932 109

attended free summer camps than “normal children,” Lietz advised

his fellow teachers to give up the selfish effort to secure benefits for
“biologically inferior” deaf students at the expense of hearing chil-
dren. He believed that the national health depended on men able
and willing to give their lives for the nation and on women ca-
pable of providing healthy children. In view of these National So-
cialist principles, Lietz concluded that deaf people, not just those
with hereditary deafness, could never be “full citizens, but merely
German subjects.” 21
Given the limitations of deaf German subjects, Lietz proposed
that only the few who could produce “intelligible speech” should
benefit from the expertise of trained teachers of deaf children. The
rest could attend larger classes for fewer years with more attention
given to vocational training.
In contrast to the hearing Nazi teacher Lietz, the deaf Nazi sports
leader Werner Thomas urged deaf young people to join the Hitler
Youth organization.22 The views of deaf people, Nazi or not, did not
prevail. The capable, educable, and happy deaf people as depicted
in the film Verkannte Menschen were now “genetically diseased” or
biologically inferior. The National Socialist government viewed the
progressive deaf education system as wasteful of funds that could
be better spent elsewhere.
Most Germans, of course, did not read publications of the deaf
community or of teachers of deaf children. They did go the movies.
During the twelve years of Nazi rule, the German film industry pro-
duced approximately 1,100 movies. Goebbels carefully decided to
fill movie theaters with general entertainment films. Newsreels and
documentaries carried the Nazi message. Film historians Roger
Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel have estimated that only about fifty
films reflected a statement of Nazi ideology.23 Even so, all films un-
derwent scrutiny. The February 1934 Reich Film Law authorized a
censorship committee to rate films into six categories:

1. Particularly valuable politically and artistically;

2. Valuable politically and artistically;
3. Valuable politically;
110 John S. Schuchman

4. Valuable artistically;
5. Culturally valuable; and,
6. Educationally valuable.24
After review, the committee could withhold scripts and permits for
theater exhibition.
It is not surprising that the Nazi ministry did not permit Verkannte
Menschen to be shown. However, the ministry went further. Through
propaganda films, it sought to win public support for its programs
of sterilization and euthanasia. Though the mentally disabled popu-
lation suffered the brunt of these practices, the propaganda affected
all disabled persons in Germany. The Nazi government sponsored
the creation of several documentary films that historian Michael
Burleigh has described as “intended to criminalise, degrade and
dehumanise the mentally and physically handicapped so as to jus-
tify compulsorily sterilising them.”25 In the 1936 silent film docu-
mentary Erbkrank [Hereditarily Ill], script writers pointed out in cap-
tions that:
frequently cases of hereditary mental illness are accompanied by
physical handicaps. Idiotic deaf and dumb girl—there are four fur-
ther deaf and dumb cases in her clan. Feebleminded and deaf and
dumb. Grandparents both deaf and dumb. Brother and sisters, deaf
and dumb and feebleminded. Cost to date 10,700 RMS. . . .

Not every physically or mentally handicapped person is heredi-

tarily ill . . . but all—even the apparently healthy—members of a
hereditarily ill clan can be the carriers of diseased hereditary prop-
erties. . . .

Should things go on like this? . . .

No, No, Never! And for this reason we are carrying out the steril-
ization of the hereditarily ill. Their suffering must not be perpetu-
ated in the bodies of their children. Otherwise our great nation and
its culture will be destroyed.26

In 1932, Verkannte Menschen had sought to enlighten the Ger-

man public about the need to eliminate discriminatory practices
that limited the employment of deaf people. Some deaf Germans,
 Misjudged People: The German Deaf Community in 1932 111

particularly those who were active in the National Socialist move-

ment, hoped that Hitler’s government would implement improve-
ments for the deaf community. Despite some limited support from
international athletic competitions, the Nazi racial hygiene philoso-
phy was simply incompatible with the view that deaf Germans had
of themselves as a capable, intelligent, and contented community.
With the installation of the Nazi government, deaf Germans
struggled to maintain their very humanity.

Notes
1. Gerhard Schatzdorfer, producer of the German television program for
deaf viewers Sehen statt Hören in Munich, Bayerischer Rundfunk, kindly
shared a copy of this 1932 film with the author.
2. John S. Schuchman, “Silent Films,” in Gallaudet Encyclopedia of Deaf
People and Deafness, ed. John V. Van Cleve, vol. 3 (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1987), 275–79.
3. German historian Günther List has described “the history of deaf
people [as] a history of suppression.” See Günther List, “Deaf History: A
Suppressed Part of General History,” in Deaf History Unveiled, Interpretations
of the New Scholarship, ed. John V. Van Cleve (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet
University Press, 1993), 113–26.
4. See Alexander Graham Bell, Memoir Upon the Formation of a Deaf
Variety of the Human Race (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office,
1884), reissued by the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf in
1969. Although Bell recognized that there would always be deaf individuals,
he opposed the existence of a deaf community, and his proposals to limit the
use of sign language, deaf teachers, and residential schools for deaf children
were designed to eliminate the deaf community. In a subsequent speech at
Gallaudet College, Bell urged the deaf college students to marry mates who
could hear. See Bell, Marriage, an Address to the Deaf (Washington, D.C.:
Sanders Printing Office, 1898). Some German eugenicists and National
Socialists supported “negative” eugenics wherein the state enacted legisla-
tion that would prohibit marriage among the people they considered
“defectives” or “hereditarily diseased.” Some also supported sterilization
and euthanasia. Although he clearly identified deaf people who used sign
language as inferior through his use of the phrase “A Deaf Variety of the
Race,” Alexander Graham Bell supported a “positive” eugenics plan for deaf
people that advocated the use of oral education techniques and opposed the
use of sign language. He died in 1922; however, proponents of eugenics—
positive and negative—could point to this world-famous inventor as an ally.
112 John S. Schuchman

5. There were efforts to organize an international association of deaf

people in Prague (1928) and in Paris (1937). Albreghs attended both meetings
and the group elected him president. World War II interrupted these efforts
and a plan to hold a world congress meeting in Berlin in 1940. After the war,
deaf people convened the first World Congress of the Deaf in Rome (1951)
where the delegates voted to establish the World Federation of the Deaf. See
Richard Brill, International Congresses on Education of the Deaf: An Analytical
History, 1870–1980 (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 1984).
6. For a description of Albreghs, who became an early leader of the Deaf
Nazi movement, see Jochen Muhs, “Followers and Outcasts, Berlin’s Deaf
Community under National Socialism (1933–1945),” in Collage, Works on
International Deaf History, ed. Renate Fischer and Tomas Vollhaber (Hamburg:
Signum, 1996), 195–204.
7. For a copy of the exhibition brochure, see Margaret Jackson Papers,
box 1, folder 8, Gallaudet University Archives, Washington, D.C.
8. For a general description of the early activities of international deaf
sports, see Jerald M. Jordan, “Comité International des Sports des Sourds,”
in Gallaudet Encyclopedia of Deaf People and Deafness, ed. John V. Van Cleve,
vol. 1 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987), 198–99.
9. The eighteenth century German educator of deaf children Samuel
Heinicke often is described as the father of the oral method of education,
which emphasizes instruction through speech and speechreading and
discourages the use of sign language. This method often is called the
“German” method. The other reason that the German system was seen as
“progressive” was because of its emphasis on early kindergarten education,
which was rare in other countries.
10. For a recent history of UFA, see Klaus Kreimeier, The UFA Story, A
History of Germany’s Greatest Film Company, 1918–1945, trans. Robert and Rita
Kimber (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996).
11. The opening frames of the film informed viewers that for world
distribution, they should contact the Zentral Bildkammer in Berlin. The UFA
logo followed these frames. To the best of my knowledge, this was unique
among the world’s deaf communities. Although the deaf community in the
United States had made some films, none had any connection with a major
or minor film studio.
12. For a recent description of the struggle that deaf Germans experience
with their oral education and their desire to use German Sign Language, see
Gertrud Mally, “The Long Road to Self-Confidence of the Deaf in Germany,”
in Looking Back, A Reader on the History of Deaf Communities and their Sign
Languages, ed. Renate Fischer and Harlan Lane (Hamburg: Signum, 1993),
177–98.
 Misjudged People: The German Deaf Community in 1932 113

13. Retired Gallaudet University Professor Robert Harmon translated all

of the German subtitles into English. Thereafter, the Gallaudet University
Television Department added English captions to the videotape. Viewers can
see both the original German subtitles and English captions.
14. As one of the administrative heads of the deaf Nazi organization
REGEDE, Ballier signed membership cards. For a general description of deaf
collaborators, see Horst Biesold, Crying Hands: Eugenics and Deaf People in
Nazi Germany, trans. William Sayers (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University
Press, 1999), 91–108.
15. For participation of German teams and medals won, see International
Committee of Silent Sports, Special Issue for CISS 50th Anniversary, 1924–1974
(Padua, Italy: Ente Nazionale Sordomuti, 1974), 59–154.
16. Although the CISS only reported medals for individuals, deaf
publications regularly published the results by country. The editors of the
American Annals of the Deaf reported that the German team won first place
with 286 individual medals. See “Miscellaneous––The International Deaf
Games,” American Annals of the Deaf 84 (September 1939): 369–70.
17. For balanced discussions of Nazi film, see Roger Manvell and
Heinrich Fraenkel, The German Cinema (New York: Praeger, 1971), 75–98;
Erwin Leiser, Nazi Cinema, trans. Gertrud Mander and David Wilson (New
York: Macmillan, 1974); and Douglas Gomery, Movie History: A Survey
(Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1991).
18. Biesold, Crying Hands, 150.
19. Karl Franke, “The Deaf in Post-War Germany,” The Volta Review (June
1948): 268.
20. Kurt Lietz, “The Place of the School for the Deaf in the New Reich,”
trans. Tobias Brill American Annals of the Deaf 79 (May 1934): 200–4. This is a
condensation and translation of an article that appeared in the February 1934
issue of Blätter fur Taubstummenbildung (Journal of the Education of the Deaf), an
organ of the Association of German Teachers of the Deaf.
21. Ibid., 200–202.
22. For a description of the deaf Nazi leader’s efforts to recruit, see
Biesold, Crying Hands, 91–94.
23. Manvell and Fraenkel, German Cinema, 75.
24. Frederick W. Ott, The Great German Films. (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel
Press, 1986), 147.
25. Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State:
Germany, 1933–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 183.
26. Ibid., 185–87. Burleigh has reproduced all of the captions for the film.
114 Kurt Lietz

The Place of the School for the

Deaf in the New Reich

Kurt Lietz
Translated by Tobias Brill

Editor ’s Note: The two chief professional publications for deaf

education in the United States are the American Annals of the Deaf
(the Annals) and the Volta Review. The Annals is sponsored by the
Conference of Educational Administrators of Schools and Programs
for the Deaf and the Convention of American Instructors of the
Deaf, and the sponsor of the Volta Review is the Alexander Graham
Bell Association for the Deaf. The readership of both includes teach-
ers of deaf children, school administrators, and other profession-
als working in the field of deafness. Historically, both publications
routinely printed items of international interest. Throughout the
1930s, it was not unusual to find brief references to what was hap-
pening in Nazi Germany. For example, one can find brief articles
on Nazi sterilization laws, the participation of deaf German and
Italian children in Hitler Youth organizations, the demise of the
German teachers of the deaf professional association Bund
Deutscher Taubstummenlehrer, and even requests of European Jews
for assistance. However, there is little if no editorial comment on
these news items in either journal.1

The article included here is then typical of German news as re-

ported by the American professional publications of the time. De-
spite the pejorative views expressed about deaf people and the
value of education for deaf children, there is no editorial comment.
An analysis of the content makes it clear that under the Nazi re-
gime, all deaf people were deemed “inferior,” not just “hereditar-
ily deafened.” As such, deaf people were not entitled to expensive
education programs. When the following article appeared, Bund
Deutscher Taubstummenlehrer, as well as their professional journal,

“The Place of the School for the Deaf in the New Reich” originally appeared in the
American Annals of the Deaf (May 1934): 200–204. It is reprinted here with permission
of the American Annals of the Deaf.

114
 The Place of the School for the Deaf in the New Reich 115

was disbanded and merged into the general association of special

education teachers. This article is also notable for the absence of
any mention of deaf Jews.

The Israelite Institution for the Deaf at Berlin-Weissensee was one

of four Jewish schools for deaf children in Europe.2 With roots in
the late nineteenth century, it had an excellent reputation as a pro-
gressive oral school. Again, descriptions of the school can be found
in the American professional journals. Felix Reich, the school su-
perintendent and son of the school’s founder Marcus Reich, had
an excellent scholarly reputation and served as an officer of Bund
Deutscher Taubstummenlehrer. In the Nazi view, however, deaf Jews
were simply Jews and beyond the pale of German deaf education.3

The following is a condensation of an article that appeared in the

February 1, 1934 issue of Blätter fur Taubstummenbildung (Journal of
the Education of the Deaf), an organ of the Association of German
Teachers of the Deaf, edited by Dr. Paul Schuman, Leipzig. The
article was written by Kurt Lietz, Berlin. It was translated and
condensed by Tobias Brill, principal of the Intermediate and Ad-
vanced Department, New Jersey School for the Deaf, West Tren-
ton, N.J., and reprinted in the May 1934 issue of the American
Annals of the Deaf.
—John S. Schuchman

The National Revolution is the expression of the fundamental

political will of the German people. National Socialism is not merely
a political change, but it is a philosophy which affects all of the life
of the nation, economic as well as cultural. Each individual and each
group must contribute to the welfare of the nation as a whole, in a
totalitarian sense. The individual, therefore, has no right to ask for
anything that will benefit just him. This applies to education in gen-
eral as well as to the specific narrow field of the education of the deaf.
In the place of purely objective, scientific considerations of indi-
vidual development, we must emphasize the transmission of such
knowledge and the development of such talents as will benefit the whole
German nation. This implies a more conscientious consideration of the
116 Kurt Lietz

expenditure of available means and a co-operation with political

organizations. The fundamental question should be, “Is the pupil,
by virtue of his abilities and place in the community, entitled to and
worthy of a greater expenditure of public moneys to receive special
or more advanced education?”
The development of the body and character takes first place in
education, for the struggle of a nation to insure its existence and
development depends upon its men being able and willing to give
their lives, if necessary, for the welfare of all, and upon its women
being able and willing to present the nation with healthy children. A
little intellectual superstructure is not the most valuable part of a
nation, but “men capable of bearing arms and women capable of
bearing children.”
To us who are National Socialists, there are certain necessary con-
sequences for schools for the deaf. Since the State relies upon us, as
the only experts in the field, for advice, we should do straight and
honest thinking, uninfluenced by the inertia of the old individualis-
tic-liberal era. Just think—during the summer of 1933, 60 out of about
300 deaf children, or roughly 20 percent, were sent to free camps, while
only 30 out of 1,000 normal children were so privileged! We teachers
of the deaf were pleased because it affected favorably those entrusted
to our care, but we have no right to follow the old individualistic prin-
ciple of getting all we can get while the getting is good.
What is the status of the school for the deaf in the New Reich,
and what are its functions? What can it contribute to the State? What
can it do for the needs of the German people, and what can it not
do? Is the work of the school for the deaf essential to the achieve-
ment of national aims, and if not, is its cultural significance so great
that, without the school for the deaf, the whole status of our cultural
life is endangered?
On the whole, we may say that the expenditures on schools for
the deaf are not without results. The majority of our deaf children
become more or less self-supporting in a number of vocations, and a
few take part in civic projects for the benefit of the nation as a whole
rather than for personal, individualistic interests. We must admit,
however, that it is extremely difficult for a deaf person to submerge
 The Place of the School for the Deaf in the New Reich 117

his personal interests in those of the whole community or nation,

much more so than for a normal person.
The speech and language limitation (i.e., the general difficulty
of communication) is the main factor in the deaf person’s inability
to lose himself in the whole state, no matter how intelligent and well
educated he may be. The quality of the deaf man’s work may not be
affected, but his usefulness as a member of the National Socialist
State is curtailed. Above all, he cannot serve in the army, and most
of the women cannot bear children, being prevented from propagat-
ing their defect by the sterilization law. The deaf, therefore, never
can be full citizens (Staatsbürger), but merely German subjects
(Staatsangehöriger).
What is the value of the education of the deaf in the general scheme
of education? We may have clarified a few questions, solved some
problems, but nobody can maintain that, without us, psychology,
medicine, the sciences of language and pedagogy would have suf-
fered irreparable loss. On the whole, the contributions of the schools
for the deaf to the general field of education have been very modest.
The only justification for the existence of the school for the deaf,
therefore, is from a social point of view. The school for the deaf is
the only medium that enables deaf people to take their part in the
life of the community that they do, and to that extent society has a
responsibility for those of our fellowman who, through no fault of
their own, are thus handicapped. But there are limits to these re-
sponsibilities, and it is a biological sin not to observe these limits.
Christian sentimentality has been instrumental in favoring institu-
tions for the intellectually, morally and physically handicapped at
the expense of the common public school, and in practice, the result
has been that the greater the degree of idiocy, feeblemindedness,
blindness, deafness or other physical handicap was, the greater the
public expenditure for these biologically inferior people, while in-
sufficient care was taken of the normal children of parents who were
out of work or had very meager means.
Since the maintenance of schools for the deaf can be justified
from the social point of view only, it behooves us to consider the
following two questions.
118 Kurt Lietz

1. Are the sums of money now spent on behalf of the deaf abso-
lutely necessary, and in what way can they be reduced?
2. Is the present manner of using these means the best, considered
from the point of view of the totalitarian State, or should we
find new ways?

In answer to the first question, we must realize that the ratio of

the deaf to the total population is about one per thousand and, ac-
cording to Hild, the expenditure on account of the deaf represents
from one to one and one-half per cent of the total budget. [It is not
clear what budget is referred to.—Translator] Even if the last esti-
mate is too high, there is no doubt that amounts spent are propor-
tionately many times those spent for normal children. It may be
claimed that these large expenditures are necessary to prevent the
deaf from becoming permanent public charges, but this claim can
hardly be substantiated. The new State will have to effect econo-
mies. The law to prevent the propagation of inherited defects (ster-
ilization law) will, of course, reduce the [number of] deaf in the fu-
ture, but the effect of this law will not become noticeable for some
time, and even when the law is strengthened to include those with
recessive hereditary defect characters, it will not completely elimi-
nate the deaf. In the meantime, parents might be expected to assume
a larger share in the increased cost of the education of their defec-
tive children. It is not fair that the parents of healthy children should
be penalized for the sake of biologically inferior children by having
to contribute indirectly a larger share for the education of these de-
fective children than for their own healthy children. In the future,
parents of deaf children will have to bear the full cost of mainte-
nance of their children in institutions and part of the increase in the
cost of the tuition over that of normal children.
Finally, a part of our expenditures might be saved by exclud-
ing the uneducable deaf from our schools. By uneducable are meant
those intellectually, and partly physically, so inferior that they will
always remain a burden on the public, becoming institutional cases
for permanent care, without contributing anything significant by
their labor. The number of these is not very high, but to them might
 The Place of the School for the Deaf in the New Reich 119

be added those who, from a language and intellectual point of view,

are not very far removed from the zero point, but who can do
manual labor. The fact that they can “learn something” is really
not the deciding factor. Unless their academic success is consider-
able, the tremendous expenditure is not justified.
The duty of the school for the deaf is to educate the deaf to a
complete acceptance of the policies of the New State and to a sub-
mergence of their individualities in the totality of the nation. This is,
of course, a most difficult problem because it involves a struggle
with the ghosts of the dead past. Only when the deaf reach the point
where they take it for granted that they have no right to receive pre-
ferred treatment educationally, except on the grounds of special abili-
ties or achievements, will the goal have been reached.
The education of the deaf comprises mainly two points—abil-
ity to comprehend and vocational skill. From a social-national point
of view, ease of communication is of greatest importance, and the
teaching of speech and lip-reading supersedes everything else. Such
education, of course, is valuable only to the extent that it results in
intelligible speech, and is, therefore, restricted to the so-called Class
A pupils and those partially deaf. Those less gifted (i.e., those whose
speech will never be of such a nature as will enable them to use it
in ordinary intercourse) should be taught in larger classes, with
writing as a basis for language teaching and a larger amount of
manual training, which need not be given by trained teachers of
the deaf. The length of their attendance at school might also
be reduced.
Such a reorganization would enable schools to get along with con-
siderably reduced budgets, and when the number of pupils gradu-
ally diminishes, the buildings will be available for other purposes.
Even under these circumstances, the cost of the education of the deaf
will still remain comparatively high, but it will be more justifiable.
The school for the deaf, therefore, in the New Germany will oc-
cupy an entirely different place. The steps to be taken may seem
extraordinarily harsh, but they are biologically necessary. The whole
revolution draws its strength from the biological foundations of our
nation. The German nation had sufficient vitality left to produce in
120 Kurt Lietz

time of need the great Leader. Above all, our nation proved its will
to live by placing full confidence in the Leader and following him
unconditionally. This is the best guarantee that Hitler will complete
his tremendous task. But he needs your unconditional co-operation,
German teacher of the deaf!

Notes
1. An exception would be Harriet Montague, “A Problem at Our Own
Door,” Volta Review (August 1939): 453–57, wherein the author reviewed
several letters from deaf and hard of hearing Jews or professionals in the
field of deafness and asked readers to consider possible sponsorship of their
visa applications.
2. The four European Jewish schools for the deaf were in Berlin,
Budapest, London, and Vienna.
3. Throughout the 1930s, various children and graduates emigrated out
of Germany. In 1939, eight children, in the company of Superintendent Felix
Reich, traveled to the School for the Jewish Deaf in London as a part of the
Kindertransport movement. In 1940, teachers Philipp Cann and Max Beyer
were still teaching twenty-two children. The next year, there were only
eleven pupils. The school was liquidated in 1942, and the remaining resi-
dents were deported to Theresienstadt. See Vera Bendt and Nicola Galliner,
Open Your Hand to the Dumb–The History of the Israelite School for the Deaf and
Dumb in Berlin-Weissensee 1873–1942: Exhibition Program, trans. Trixi Flügel
(Hamburg: Adult Education Department of the Jewish Community Berlin
and the Jewish Department of the Berlin Museum, 1994).
 Teacher-Collaborators 121

Teacher-Collaborators

Horst Biesold
Translated by William Sayers

T he testimony I gathered suggests that educators in Germany’s

special schools actively supported racial hygiene measures against
deaf people; they did not share the “rescue mentality” claimed by
historians for special education teachers.1 It is worthwhile to begin
this discussion by reviewing the influence of the director of the Ger-
man training institute for teachers of the deaf and the directors of
regional institutions for the deaf on teachers’ beliefs and actions.

The Training Institute for Teachers of the Deaf

in Berlin-Neukölln
The State Institution for the Deaf at Berlin-Neukölln is the old-
est institution for deaf pupils in Prussia.2 It was founded in 1788 by
the son-in-law of Samuel Heinicke, the founder of German deaf edu-
cation. 3 In 1811 it also became the training institute for Prussian
teachers. 4 Over time, other provinces began to send their teacher
trainees to Berlin-Neukölln. The school’s principal also served as
director of the teacher training program.
Gotthold Lehmann assumed this dual position in 1924. Six years
later he reported that the training program had twenty-eight candi-
dates and that “the admissions register, which was begun in 1874,”
had reached candidate number 487.5 Lehmann was responsible for
making proposals for future university courses to the Prussian State
Ministry for Science, Art, and Public Education, and for supervising
payments to the institute’s faculty.6 The financial accounts for fiscal
This chapter is reprinted by permission of the publisher, from Horst Biesold, Crying
Hands: Eugenics and Deaf People in Nazi Germany, trans. William Sayers (Washington,
D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 1999), 42–83.

121
122 Horst Biesold

year 1930 and for second-year students during the winter term of
1931–1932 provide information about “special lectures” on profes-
sional themes. For example, a Professor Flatau lectured on the physi-
ology of voice and speech.7
Early during the period of the Nazi Party’s expansion of power
and the initiation of its race policies, Lehmann proposed eugenics-
related topics for participants in the first-year program, such as “In-
troduction to the Theory of Heredity” and “Exercises in the Science
of Heredity.” Course topics proposed for the years 1932–1938 “for
the scientific instruction of participants in the program for the train-
ing of teachers of the deaf” illustrate Lehmann’s indoctrination of a
generation of teachers with National Socialist racial ideas. Among
the courses listed were the following:

• Eugenics
• The science of human heredity and German race cultivation
• Contemporary problems in the maintenance of public welfare
(heredity, eugenics, sterilization, conservation)
• The theory of heredity and race hygiene
• Hereditary diseases
• General studies of deafness, the collaboration of the schools
for the deaf in the implementation of the Law for the
Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases
• Environment and hereditary predisposition
• Views on race hygiene
• The theory of human heredity as the basis for race hygiene8

Evidently, Lehmann’s proposals were accepted by the Prussian

State Ministry for Science, Art, and Public Education, although the
training programs were canceled by the Ministry for 1933–1935 and
1938–1940.9
The alignment of the teacher training institute’s curriculum with
National Socialist goals was intentional. Lehmann was a member of
the National Socialist Teachers’ Confederation even before the Na-
zis’ coordination and integration of the Union of German Teachers
of the Deaf, and, according to a colleague from Berlin, he shared the
 Teacher-Collaborators 123

Reich Professional Group of Teachers of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing

(with Reich Professional Group Leader and Party Member Maesse).
Reprinted by permission from Die Deutsche Sonderschule, 1935, p. 159.

National Socialist point of view.10 Furthermore, Lehmann encour-

aged the implementation of the sterilization law among the students
of his institution. There are reliable accounts from those affected that
he took the initiative in informing authorities about them and that
he sought to influence parents.11
The latter charge is substantiated by the case of a deaf woman,
born in 1921 and ordered to be sterilized when she was fifteen.
Lehmann’s letter to the girl’s mother is reproduced in figure 1. 12 Her
mother protested the sterilization order in a letter to Lehmann on
April 15, 1936. At the close of her letter, she wrote: “I cannot sign
this [the consent form].” 13 In the end, however, the deaf girl was
sterilized anyway. Lehmann’s letter (see fig. 2) reminded the mother
that parental consent was not necessary.14
One of Lehmann’s former students has described how force was
used when pupils resisted sterilization. Just turned fourteen, he was
to be sterilized at the Rudolf Virchow Hospital in Berlin in Novem-
ber of 1938 on the recommendation of his teacher, Schürmann. On
his third attempt to escape from the school, he was apprehended by
the police, put in handcuffs, beaten, and delivered to the hospital.15
124 Horst Biesold

The Director
State Institution for the Deaf Berlin-Neukölln April 14, 1936
and Mariendorfer Weg 47/60
Training Institute
for Teachers of the Deaf
Log No. 544
To Frau NN
The health authority of Berlin-Neukölln has informed me by a
letter of April 6, 1936, that a judgment concerning the sterilization
of your daughter has been delivered in accordance with the law
and that NN is to be conducted within two weeks to the Neukölln
Municipal Hospital for the performance of the operation. I would
ask you to sign the enclosed declaration and to return it to me. We
will then convey NN to the hospital.
I would point out that thus far fourteen sterilizations have been
completed on our children and that in no case have negative ef-
fects occurred.
Heil Hitler!

Figure 1. Letter from Gotthold Lehmann requesting a parent’s authoriza-

tion on a sterilization order

The example of senior teacher Schürmann illustrates Lehmann’s

personnel policy. Schürmann had been a teacher at the Provincial
Institution for the Deaf in Soest since 1929. He had particularly dis-
tinguished himself during the Nationalist Socialist training camp for
officials of the Nazi teachers’ confederation in Birkenwerder/Havel
by giving a report on “hereditary biology in the schools for the
deaf.”16 Two years later, in a letter to the Reich and Prussian Minis-
ter of Science, Art, and Public Education, Lehmann nominated
Schürmann for a university-level teaching position.17
Schürmann was to assume responsibility for the areas of gen-
eral deaf studies and race cultivation. In his recommendation,
Lehmann presented Schürmann as especially qualified for these
duties, since “he has for some time been active as a consultant in the
Reich Union of the Deaf of Germany.” Lehmann particularly em-
phasized that Schürmann had been a member of the Nazi party since
 Teacher-Collaborators 125

The Director
State Institution for the Deaf Berlin-Neukölln April 14, 1936
and Mariendorfer Weg 47/60
Training Institute
for Teachers of the Deaf
Log No. 930
Dear Frau NN,
NN was released from the clinic in good health on August 16.
The operation proceeded normally. NN has already written you
about this.
The law stipulates that in the case of persons above fourteen
years of age, the operation may be performed without the consent
of parents and guardians. You could not then have changed any-
thing in this regard. I believe that it will be quite a good thing for
NN that she has no children. Her life will likely be hard enough as
it is.
With best regards, Heil Hitler!

Figure 2. Letter from Gotthold Lehmann informing a mother of her

daughter’s sterilization

August 1, 1932. As a result, Schürmann was appointed professor of

race cultivation, with the written authorization of the Reich and Prus-
sian Minister for Science, Art, and Public Education. 18
Lehmann selected candidates for teacher training according to
political criteria. In one case, he rejected an applicant because the
individual had been a member of the Social Democratic Party of
Germany before the “seizure of power.”19 Another applicant, on the
other hand, was particularly recommended by Lehmann, since he
was “an old fighter, a member of the Nazi Party since 1932.” 20
Higher authorities noticed the director ’s support for Nazi ob-
jectives. After an unannounced inspection of his school’s training
program, the inspector appointed by the Reich and Prussian Min-
ister for Science, Art, and Public Education, Dr. Schaefer, stated in
the summary of his investigative report that Lehmann worked
“with the greatest skill and exemplary conscientiousness” and that
126 Horst Biesold

Participants at the National Socialist Teachers Confederation Training

Camp II at Birkenwerder in 1935

he had “tangibly stamped the overall image of the Institution with

his educator’s zeal.”21

Director Wegge—The Provincial Institution for the

Deaf in Soest
The crimes of Wegge, director of the Provincial Institution for
the Deaf in Soest, who according to accounts of former students car-
ried out his educational duties in an SS uniform, have until today
remained concealed by institutional interests. The student register
of the Soest school, however, offers a close look at Wegge’s attention
to selecting students for sterilization.
The headings of the register, created by Wegge himself in the
absence of any printed form, reveal the thrust of his activities. His
handwritten entries state that the students were “examined for he-
reditary health.” Those whom Wegge determined should be steril-
ized had next to their names the code A, meaning “referral [Anzeige]
to the Health Authority.”22
The register begins with entering student number 1210, admit-
ted to the Soest institution on April 15, 1925, and discharged on March
 Teacher-Collaborators 127

30, 1933, and concludes with student number 1779, admitted May 2,
1944, and discharged June 2, 1944. There are check marks in either
blue ink or pencil next to the names of 338 of the 569 students Wegge
recorded in the register. The blue ink definitely indicated that a stu-
dent had been examined for “hereditary health,” and the pencil may
have had the same meaning. Wegge may be assumed, therefore, to
have examined about 60 percent of his students for hereditary health
reasons. However, this figure masks the diligence with which Wegge
sought to “construct” the desired numbers of “hereditarily diseased
deaf students.”
The register indicates that Wegge referred 85 students to the
health authority who had been admitted to the school from 1926
through 1934 (student numbers 1235 to 1471). This represents 36
percent of the 236 students covered by these register years, includ-
ing 28 students transferred to Soest on January 8, 1934, from the Pro-
vincial Institution for the Deaf in Petershagen. Particularly heinous
is the fact that Wegge informed against children aged eight to ten
years old.
The register is not clear for the years after 1934, but it may be
that Wegge reported on nearly every student. For students with en-
trance numbers between 1472 and 1779, under the column headed
“Remarks,” there is a handwritten addition, “A–Z: Reported to the
health authority.” With six exceptions, this reference is found for each
child in this group. Occasionally, there is the name of a place and a
date. The code letter A is missing. One can only speculate whether
Wegge did, in fact, refer for sterilization 98 percent of all entrants to
the school between 1935 and 1944.
Wegge attempted to cover the tracks of the policies that he initi-
ated, as figure 3 shows. He recommended to the municipal health
authority in Dortmund that the sterilization operations be carried
out during the summer holidays to prevent student unrest and to
avoid circulation of details of the sterilization among the deaf clubs.
The second letter in figure 3 indicates that the health authorities
agreed with his request.
Documents from the Soest institution demonstrate that many of
this school’s pupils were forcibly sterilized, and that Wegge not only
128 Horst Biesold

personally made the notification to authorities, but also arranged

the transport of his students to the clinics where the operations
were performed (see fig. 4). In one such case, Wegge reported to
authorities on a ten-year-old student; the school apparently ar-
ranged to transport her to the municipal hospital in Hamm, and
her parents were informed only after the operation had been per-
formed (see fig. 5).
One more document from Soest further illustrates Wegge’s attitude
and tactics. In an attempt to intimidate parents who had protested an
order to sterilize their daughter, he used the specious argument that
consanguinity in the child’s paternal great-great-grandparents “justi-
fies the suspicion of hereditary disease.” He warned that the parents’
appeal of the sterilization order would not be successful, that the op-
eration would be performed “with force if required,” and that, in any
case, “if hereditary disease is indeed present, it would be appropriate
that [their daughter] not have children” (see fig. 6).

SS Director Bewer—The Provincial Institution for the

Deaf in Königsberg
Four former students of the Institution for the Deaf in Königsberg,
Prussia, indicated on their questionnaires that SS Director and Senior
Teacher Bewer reported them to the authorities, and there is other
evidence indicating Bewer’s complicity in Nazi crimes.
Alexander Hundertmark, who was chairman of the Deaf Refu-
gees until his death in 1980, gave a deposition in 1957. His statement
naming Bewer was written on behalf of a former fellow student who
applied for remuneration under the Federal Compensation Law. She
had been forcibly sterilized, Hundertmark said, “through the offices
of Senior Teacher of the Deaf, Bewer,” who was “known to have been
a fanatic Nazi.”23
I also questioned a former student at the Institution in Königsberg
concerning Bewer ’s activities. Frau T. was not sterilized, as she ar-
gued successfully that she had lost her hearing due to a childhood
accident. Frau T. said that Bewer wore his SS uniform in the course
of his school duties. He remained faithful to the Nazi regime up to
 Teacher-Collaborators 129

Provincial Institution for the Deaf in Königsberg, Prussia.

the last day of the war. In 1945, when the Soviets were already out-
side Königsberg, Bewer ordered all forty-eight students in the voca-
tional school at the institution to remain at the facility. This order
resulted in the loss of thirty-six girls’ lives.

Director Edwin Singer—The Institution for the

Deaf in Heidelberg
Similar practices also reportedly occurred at the Institution for
the Deaf in Heidelberg, which distinguished itself by following the
party line and publicizing “hereditary biology” data on its students.
The director of the Heidelberg school, Edwin Singer, collaborated
closely with the head of the university ear, nose, and throat clinic,
Professor K. Beck, and with the resident physician at the Institution,
Dr. W. Hoffmann. 24
Former Heidelberg students answered the question “Who in-
formed on you?” with “the institution” or “the teacher.”25 To the ques-
tion, “Did the police come and take you to the hospital?” one person
answered, “Director Singer, removed by force!” This individual was
fifteen at the time of his sterilization in 1936. He described it this way:
While the other students from the Residential School for the Deaf in
Heidelberg went on holidays, I and a few other deaf students were
taken away on the orders of the principal for compulsory steriliza-
tion. I wanted to run away, but I knew that I didn’t have a chance.
They threatened to have me brought back by the police. Just before
the operation I cried a great deal because I felt so powerless.
130 Horst Biesold

The Director
of the Provincial Institution for the Deaf
Soest, April 26, 1935
Your letter of April 12, 1935 File 32/K-II
To the State Public Health Authority:
For the sterilization of NN, the Municipal Hospital in Hamm
will be used. I would ask you, if possible, to arrange that the op-
eration be performed there during the summer holidays, which last
from July 25 to September 2. By carrying out the operation in her
hometown during the holidays, the sterilization can be kept from
the other students more readily than if the girl were sent from here
to Hamm.

State Health Authority of the Minden District

The Public Health Officer Minden, Westphalia, May 29, 1935
To Fräulein NN of XX
c/o the Director of the Provincial Institution for the Deaf Soest
In accordance with the application of the director of the Pro-
vincial Institution for the Deaf in Soest of May 28, 1935, the proce-
dures for your sterilization operation pursuant to article 7 of the
third decree of the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with He-
reditary Diseases of February 25, 1935 (Reich Law Gazette, I, p. 289)
will be postponed until the beginning of the summer holidays (July
24, 1935).
In accordance with this letter and with the order to undergo
the operation that was sent to you by the public health officer on
May 25, 1935, you will present yourself at the Municipal Hospital
(Dr. Kopischke) or at the private clinic of Dr. Strempel in Bad-
Oeynhausen, promptly after July 24 so that the entire process can
be completed in timely fashion by the end of the holidays (Sep-
tember 3).

Public Health Officer

Figure 3. Correspondence from Director Wegge and a public health officer

regarding a student’s sterilization
 Teacher-Collaborators 131

The Director of the Provincial Institution for the Deaf

Soest, October 12, 1936
Herr NN
XX, Westphalia
On the orders of the Public Health Authority of the city of
Gladbeck, your daughter Traudchen was conducted to the munici-
pal hospital in Hamm in order that the decision of the Hereditary
Health Court of Essen might be carried out.

Wegge

Figure 4. One example of a letter describing transportation to a clinic for

sterilization

The Director of the Provincial Institution for the Deaf

Soest, February 8, 1936
Your letter of January 19, 1936
To Herr NN
Your daughter Anneliese was conducted to the municipal hos-
pital in Hamm on the 6th of this month to have the operation per-
formed. I inquired about her condition by telephone today and re-
ceived the following information from the nurse in charge: the
operation was performed yesterday; Anneliese is doing well. She
is already quite friendly with the nurse and could make herself
well understood.

Wegge

Figure 5. Sterilization operations often took place without parents’

knowledge
132 Horst Biesold

Provincial Institution for the Deaf, Soest, Westphalia

February 19, 1935
To Frau NN
Your letter of February 15, 1935
Dear Frau NN,
Since I was on leave, I am only today able to respond to your
letter. The Hereditary Health Court will point out that in your
husband’s family there is a consanguineous marriage. His great-
grandparents were first cousins. Such a consanguineous marriage,
even so far in the past, justifies the suspicion of hereditary disease.
Proof that NN incurred deafness as a consequence of an illness in
her early youth would then be difficult for you to advance, since
you previously indicated that the deafness was innate. Your hus-
band may withdraw his application. The process will, however,
proceed. In the event that the Hereditary Health Court decides in
favor of sterilization, you may file an appeal. The matter will then
be dealt with by the Superior Hereditary Health Court. If it con-
firms the decision for sterilization, this will be carried out, with
force if required. In the case of children, recourse to such coercion
will not be made until they are 14 years of age.
The sterilization of girls is not performed in Soest but in a hos-
pital in Hamm. As far as I have heard, the subjects all recover quite
promptly.
If you cannot prove that NN became deaf as a result of illness,
your appeal will scarcely have a chance of success. If hereditary
disease is indeed present, it would be appropriate that NN not have
children. There are no other negative effects from the procedure.

Figure 6. Wegge used intimidation and coercion to fulfill the sterilization

laws

Two other informants specifically named Singer as the person

who reported them to the authorities. One of these men applied for
compensation in 1951 and sought the assistance of the Baden Asso-
ciation of the Deaf in Heidelberg. The chairman of the association
was the same Edwin Singer, their informer. He wrote back to the
sterilized deaf man: “We can confirm from our own knowledge of
the exact circumstances that in 1936 (March 19) you were a victim of
 Teacher-Collaborators 133

the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases.

The sterilization operation was performed at that time in the surgi-
cal clinic in Heidelberg.”26
For Singer, as for many other Nazi followers, there was no rea-
son after the collapse of the Third Reich to reflect on and analyze
the failures of German deaf education during the previous twelve
years of fascist rule. In 1946, Singer turned to the new agenda, just
as if it were a question of clearing away rubble. He expressed no
concern for the disenfranchised, those former deaf students who
had been robbed of their basic human rights, degraded, and exter-
minated. 27 In a 1946 article he wrote that it was “not seemly for us
to dwell on the ruins.” Rather, teachers of deaf children should
“teach them to speak, and warm their hearts so that they too be-
come human beings.” 28
Singer’s inability to value deaf people and their lives, and the
irony of his role as superintendent of a school for deaf children and
then the head of an association for deaf people’s welfare, merits one
more comment. A man born in 1919 and sterilized in 1935 exchanged
letters with Singer, his former principal, in 1960 and 1961. This deaf
pressman told Singer of his suffering and of his deep sense of viola-
tion. He was angry that Singer had never told him that he was to be
made infertile, and he asked why he had to be sterilized. “You did
not really understand what a human being is,” the deaf man wrote
to his former teacher (see fig. 7). Singer, then eighty-one years old,
replied with a haughty letter, saying, “The fact that you have no
children should not be seen as a misfortune. Better to have no chil-
dren than one who is blind or deaf or epileptic” (see fig. 8).

Oskar Rönigk—Homberg Institution

The Electorate of Hesse founded the Homberg Institution on May
1, 1838, as a training college for teachers of deaf students. Hermann
Schafft served as its first principal, and he sought to implement
Moritz Hill’s reforms for German deaf education at the school. 29 In
1933, a staff of sixteen taught eighty-eight deaf students.30 Nazi Party
member Oskar Rönigk was the principal; former students report that
134 Horst Biesold

Dear Director Edwin Singer, I must first ask you to pardon me

for writing to you so openly and for requesting your response. The
time is long since past when on September 16, 1926, I was admit-
ted to the school at the Institution for the Deaf in Heidelberg. At
the school I was taught by Herr Kaspar Derr, and was promoted
and discharged on April 10, 1936. I was afterwards astounded by
your earlier letter, which my mother had kept. My class teacher,
Herr Derr, and my mother knew about it. What did my mother
and the Lord God do to me, a poor child, that they didn’t let me
know about this when I left my hometown for the last time on
March 8, 1935, in the direction of the institution for the deaf in
Heidelberg? On March 31, 1935, I was confirmed in the Castle
Church in XX. It was a beautiful confirmation ceremony. It was
wonderful to celebrate God’s holy victory. At once, my father re-
ceived a registered letter from the District Court in XX (Nazi Party).
When I came to the city hospital on Wednesday, April 10, 1935, I
did not know what I was doing there. Then I lay in bed for only
two days, until Friday, when the National Socialist doctor, Herr
Karl Gamstäder, said that I would be operated on at 10 A .M . that
same day. This assistant doctor sterilized my abdomen in the cru-
elest fashion and made me infertile. On April 20, 1935, I was re-
leased from the city hospital. On the way home I was faint with
weakness. I felt so tormented and cruelly treated because I hadn’t
been told anything. Why did you keep silent and not tell me that
sterilization would mean killing my body and that it is a wrong
and a crime that I cannot have any children? You also abused my
brother NN and Frau NN and NN. You didn’t warn us. We are not
content with you professionally because of your offenses and dis-
regard. Sterilization makes a body worthless. I no longer feel like a
real person. It was not right and it was a tragedy. A very great and
serious crime has been committed. God sees everything with a stern
eye. He said, “Thou shalt not kill.” Since that time I have suffered
great misery. I am innocent. I can’t have any children. Why did I
have to be sterilized? For a long time I have been very dissatisfied
with your actions, because I am unhappy that in 1933 [the forma-
tion of the Reich] you were already the Führer of the Hitler Party
in the Heidelberg deaf school. You would rather kill my belly and
have me sterilized and keep silent, than let me know openly that I

Figure 7. Letter from a sterilization victim to his former principal,

August 15, 1960
 Teacher-Collaborators 135

could not have a child. Fortunately God can save me. He punishes
the grave sins that were done to me with the killing and steriliza-
tion. . . . A great deal has been lost from my life, because there can
never be any happy love. I can no longer trust you or accept the
idea of how unjustly you treated people. For you, the word human
is no longer applicable, because you gave me no help. You are guilty
of a crime toward me. You abused me. You had me sterilized, killed,
and destroyed me so that I can’t have a child. You did not really
understand what a human being is. I know from my own experi-
ence what Hitler was up to. He was a cheater, a liar and a serious
criminal. I was not born defective and I am not feebleminded. It
was all deceit and lies and tricks of the Hitler party. Hitler was
clearly feebleminded himself. Otherwise he wouldn’t have behaved
like such a monkey, wouldn’t have had such a big mouth and been
so dishonorable. He was godless. . . .

Figure 7—Continued

he ran a very strict school and also informed on students to the health
authorities under the sterilization law.31
An examination of the remaining records of this school allowed
me to document Rönigk’s actions. They revealed that the director
not only reported his current students to the health authorities for
sterilization, but also reported former pupils. From 1920 through
1932, thirty-four students were discharged from the Homberg school.
Rönigk reported twenty-one of these, 62 percent, to the authorities.
Twenty-nine of the seventy students discharged during 1933 and 1934
were reported by the director of their school (see table 1).
My research at the Homberg school had three goals: 32

1. To verify the accuracy of the information received earlier through

the questionnaire and interviews
2. To determine whether students were reported on after being dis-
charged from the school
3. To evaluate the effects of Rönigk’s racial hygiene views on indi-
vidual students
136 Horst Biesold

Edwin Singer, Director (ret.), Heidelberg, August 18, 1961

Herr NN,
Dear NN, To deaf adults I usually speak formally, but in this
letter I will be more informal, as in the past, so that you under-
stand me better. You wrote me that you were sterilized 26 years
ago. I did not know that. But I am hardly surprised. At that time,
all the hereditarily diseased were to be made infertile. You ask:
Who is guilty? Who is responsible that you were sterilized? Many
hundreds of thousands of people can ask the same question, all of
whom were sterilized. My answer is: the government of the day. It
was the National Socialist German Reich. At the head of the ruling
party stood Hitler, Himmler, Göbbels, Frick, and others. They are
all dead now. Do you want to carry your complaint down into Hell?
Then they will answer in turn: Parliament, the duly elected repre-
sentatives for the people, passed the Law for the Prevention of
Offspring with Hereditary Diseases. The doctors had to obey and
carry out the law. Dear NN, such complaints are useless. You are
not badly off, but you are not content. But compare yourself to
others. Several million fell in the war or were killed. You are still
alive. You can work and earn a satisfactory living. The fact that
you have no children should not be seen as a misfortune. Better to
have no children than one who is blind or deaf or epileptic. Even
as a youngster you were often unhappy. But when I talked to you
and you thought things over, you were happy again. That’s the
way it should be now too. So, NN, keep your chin up. And good
luck!
With best regards,
Edwin Singer

Figure 8. Edwin Singer ’s reply to his former student

The student registers available to me contained information on

593 Homberg students, 104 for the period 1920–1934. Red and blue
marks were below or next to some students’ names in the register.
The same marks also appeared in various student files. The student
records marked with red and blue proved to be those of students
whom Rönigk had referred to the health authorities for steriliza-
tion. For such reporting, Rönigk employed a form letter that he
had developed.
 Teacher-Collaborators 137

Table 1. Students Reported to the Health Authority by Oskar Rönigk

Reports
under the Percentage
Research Year of Number Sterilization of Students
Corpus Discharge of Files Law Reported

Student records 1933–1934 70 29 41.43

Student records 1920–1932 34 21 61.76

Total research 104 50 48.08

corpus

Rönigk’s decisions about children to report were determined by

entries in the school register under the headings “Physical Condi-
tion” and “Cause of Deafness.” The notation “hereditary deafness”
always led to a referral. But it is also possible to identify fifty-three
students whom Rönigk also reported on for whom illness had occa-
sioned their deafness or where the cause was entered as “not deter-
mined.” Only by proceeding in this way could Rönigk achieve such
a high number of “hereditarily diseased” students.
Rönigk also worked in the spirit of his fellow party member,
Maesse, the leader of the Reich professional group, who tried to use
genealogical charts of his pupils’ families to conduct research on
“hereditary diseases and on the conditions of genetic transmission
in families.”33 For this purpose, Rönigk wrote to the parents of stu-
dents, as seen in the letter transcribed in figure 9.
The headings on the inner pages of Rönigk’s genealogical charts
show the relevance of the questions to racial hygiene. For example,
they deal with hearing impairment, consanguinity, and other per-
ceived ailments.
Rönigk believed that it was necessary for school principals and
doctors to collaborate in the implementation of the sterilization law,
and that one or the other should make the report to the public health
officer.34 An example demonstrates this practice, and it provides more
evidence of a school administrator ’s enthusiasm for sterilization
of deaf people, as he released student files that had not even been
requested.
138 Horst Biesold

Director of the Provincial Institution for the Deaf,

Homberg, December 20, 1934
The respected parents of our deaf and hearing-impaired stu-
dents are urgently requested to complete the enclosed genealogical
charts conscientiously and to return them to the Institution by Eas-
ter 1935 at the very latest.
Heil Hitler!
signed Rönigk

Figure 9. Oskar Rönigk’s letter requesting genealogical charts from his

students’ families

On July 21, 1935, the chairman of the district council of Korbach

inquired into the behavior, during her school years, of a deaf girl who
had been discharged from the institution. His letter of inquiry stated
that the girl “has already begun to fool around,” and he asked, “Were
any steps taken at that time in the way of sterilization? Since it is un-
questionably a case of hereditary deafness, making an application is an
urgent matter.”35
Rönigk’s reply on July 29, 1935, indicates collaboration between
the school and Nazi medicine. He wrote that “notification [for steriliza-
tion] is made in cases of this kind in the course of the student’s last year
at the institution,” but this girl had not been scheduled for discharge
until the following year. Rönigk nevertheless was more than willing to
comply. “I enclose NN’s student file with the request that you take cog-
nizance of it and return it,” he wrote.36

Director Heidbrede at the Schleswig Institution

for the Deaf
Georg Pfingsten founded the Schleswig Provincial Institution for
the Deaf in 1787. By 1931, the school had 14 staff members and 121 deaf
pupils.37 After the Nazi takeover, a Nazi Party member and teacher of
the deaf named Heidbrede was appointed director. He immediately made
efforts, in part based on his experiences at the Nazi Training Camp I, to
enlist the support of parents and teachers for Nazi racial hygiene poli-
cies.38 To that end, he developed the following letter to send to parents:
 Teacher-Collaborators 139

Schleswig, ..... 1934

The agencies responsible for the implementation of the Law for

the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases of July 14,
1933, (Reich Law Gazette 1, 1933, No. 86) may expect accurate infor-
mation from us concerning the deaf children who fall under the
provisions of the law. In accordance with section 1, paragraph 2, of
the law, these are persons suffering from hereditary deafness.

Our personal and medical questionnaires give us only scanty infor-

mation on the cause of deafness, since they aim only to determine
the educability of the child, and in this regard the distinction be-
tween inherited and adventitious deafness is of little consequence.

We would then request you to help us complete the missing infor-

mation on the enclosed questionnaires with answers as detailed as
possible. The information is unconditionally required for the com-
plete and successful implementation of the law.

We know that we have set you no light or welcome task, but we

hope that you will gladly take this opportunity to collaborate in
the improvement of the German people, which is the ultimate ob-
jective of this law.

Your cooperation will be of value in completing the work of our

Führer Adolf Hitler; in his vision, as we know, race hygienic thought
is a cornerstone in the formation and expansion of the Third Reich.

“We must,” as Professor Eugen Fischer, Director of the Kaiser

Wilhelm Institution, says, “sharpen the focus of our ethical respon-
sibilities and of our consciences with regard to coming generations.
In addition to the love of our neighbors, we must add a love of our
successors, who will be our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
We must not only love the people of which we are now a part but
also those who we shall one day become.”

We then count on your valuable assistance and request the prompt

return of the questionnaire.

Heil Hitler!

The Director of the Provincial Institution for the Deaf

Kindly return the questionnaires to Lutherstrasse 14, Schleswig.

140 Horst Biesold

The questionnaires that were sent to parents of his deaf students

with this letter—responses to which Heidbrede characterized as “ab-
solutely necessary for the comprehensive and successful implemen-
tation of the law”—had been reworked by Heidbrede in keeping with
the beliefs of his Nazi colleagues.39 Heidbrede used not only Ques-
tionnaire B of the Nazi authority for public health, Schleswig Hol-
stein district, but also a questionnaire that he himself had devel-
oped.40 The primary objective of his questionnaire was “research into
family trees” on the “sound basis of the genealogical charts of the
Heidelberg Institution for the Deaf.”41
Heidbrede’s complicity in racial hygiene policies is also evident
from data in the pupil discharge records for the academic years 1926–
1943. The school director reported on five of his former students who
were discharged between 1926 and 1932. Furthermore, on his own
authority Heidbrede informed on almost one-third of his students,
and thus delivered them to sterilization authorities (see table 2).
Individual cases indicate Heidbrede’s enthusiasm for his racial
hygiene work. He wrote the following comment in one student file
and forwarded it to the relevant heredity health authorities:
The mother of NN and the father of the twin brothers NN and
NN are siblings. In the case of these cousins it is then a question
of hereditary deafness in the family, which falls under the provi-
sions of the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary
Diseases. 42

In another example, in which the hereditary health authority in

Heide requested information on the “hereditary deficiency” of a fe-
male student as part of its investigation into large families, Heidbrede
entered a remark on a transcript that was sent on March 10, 1936.43
There he expressed the opinion that the student was “totally deaf
and very weakly endowed, as well as not beyond ethical reproach
(suffers at times from kleptomania).” “Furthermore,” he wrote, “In
consideration of the circumstance that there is an additional deaf
child in the family, I would certainly assume that NN does indeed
suffer from a hereditary defect.”44
Yet another case demonstrates Heidbrede’s attitude. In a confi-
dential letter of May 24, 1939, the district public welfare authority in
 Teacher-Collaborators 141

Table 2. Students Reported to the Health Authority by Heidbrede

Number
Reported
under the Percentage
Research Year of Number Sterilization of Students
Corpus Discharge of Files Law Reported

Student records 1926–32 23 5 21.74

Student records 1933–35 77 21 27.27
Student records 1936–43 20 10 50

Total research 120 36 30

corpus

Ratzeburg inquired about a former student of the Schleswig Institu-

tion who had been discharged from the school in 1936. The letter
inquired “whether the preconditions for sterilization had been iden-
tified or whether this procedure had already been implemented.”45
Heidbrede replied, also confidentially, that he did not know whether
“in the meantime the law of 14.VIII.1933 had been applied” in the
case of his former student. He regretted that the file did not permit
him to say “whether in the present case it is an instance of heredi-
tary or adventitious deafness,” and he complained that “no sure in-
formation was available from relatives.” Heidbrede apparently
wished to indicate that genetic deficiency could be assumed and
sterilization warranted, however, for in his reply he wrote: “In any
case three brothers of the paternal grandfather died of tuberculosis.”46
The Schleswig Institution’s willing cooperation “in the improve-
ment of the German people” and “valuable assistance in completing
the work of our Führer Adolf Hitler,” in Heidbrede’s words, are also
illustrated in figure 10. 47 They indicate that Nazi authorities, with
the complicity of the school, wanted to streamline the process of iden-
tifying supposedly “defective” persons.
142 Horst Biesold

Collaboration in Private Institutions

Franz Schmid and Georg Schmid—St. Joseph Private Institution

for the Deaf
Even private Roman Catholic schools were unable to protect their
students from the hands of Nazi teachers. A sixty-year-old former
resident of the St. Joseph Private Institution for the Deaf in
Schwäbisch Gmünd wrote on his questionnaire that he and about
forty classmates, including two of his brothers, were taken for ster-
ilization immediately after being discharged from the school. 48 An-
other former student described the same incident, adding that none
of the boys knew what was going on at the time. “Only later,” he
wrote, “did I learn just what kind of hospital stay I had made. What
kind of a body do I have now?”49 A third victim has identified Franz
Schmid, the institution’s director, and senior teacher Georg Schmid
as the informers who turned the boys in for sterilization.50

District Instructional and Vocational Institution for Deaf Girls

Two concluding examples are drawn from the District Instruc-
tional and Vocational Institution for Deaf Girls in Dillingen, a Catho-
lic school founded in 1847 at the suggestion of J.-E. Wagner, profes-
sor of dogmatics at the university in Dillingen. Wagner was also the
pastor and spiritual director of the Franciscan convent in Dillingen.
In 1931, ninety-eight Catholic girls attended the convent school. They
were taught in eight classes by twelve trained nuns.51
In 1936 a thirteen-year-old deaf baker’s assistant, who was liv-
ing at the institution, received a letter telling her to submit volun-
tarily to the sterilization operation. She refused on the basis of sec-
tion 6, paragraph 4, of the ordinance for the implementation of the
law from December 5, 1933. This section reads:
If the subject has been admitted at personal expense to a private
institution that offers a full guarantee that reproduction will not
occur, the law stipulates that on the subject’s application the
completion of the operation may be deferred as long as the subject
is living in this or a similar institution. If the subject is legally
 Teacher-Collaborators 143

incapacitated or has not yet reached eighteen years of age, the

legal guardian is authorized to make such an application. If a de-
ferral occurs before the eighteenth birthday, the subject may after
that date make a personal application for further exemption. 52

The ordinance thus indicates that the girl was within her rights
in refusing to allow the operation to be carried out. She was clearly
in a private institution. Since she had not yet passed her eighteenth
birthday, however, she had to ask her guardian to apply for the ex-
emption from the operation.
The mayor of the city of Dillingen, Dr. Hogen, dismissed the
regulation related to private institutions in his decision (see fig.
11). He claimed that as he was the girl’s legal guardian, article 6 of
the ordinance justified his use of coercive measures. He apparently
followed the case closely, and wrote on the back of his decision,
“Matter settled. NN was committed to the Günzberg Hospital on
December 14, 1936.” 53
A particularly dramatic case study is offered by the record of an-
other student at the Dillingen Institution. Her guardian was Conrad,
the Nazi director of the State Institution for the Deaf in Dresden. The

Students at the District Vocational and Instructional Institution for Deaf

Girls in Dillingen embroidering church vestments
144 Horst Biesold

Nr.______________
Race Political Authority of the Reich Union for the
Nazi Party and Office of the Leader German Family
Reich Administration
Berlin W 15, Sächsische Strasse Nr. 69.
To the Leader of the School for the Deaf in Schleswig
Re: Hereditary biology screening (Strictly confidential)
For the purposes of the race biology screening of the Reich
Union for the German Family I would request, in the interests of
saving time, that in the place of the previously requested copies of
affidavits concerning the family named below you complete the
information on the next page about members of the family who
attended or are attending school there. The family must under no
circumstances know of this. Please accept my grateful thanks in
advance for a fully completed response.
Kindly send replies to: Reich Union for The German Family
Schleswig-Holstein Provincial Administration
Kiel, Sophienblatt 23
Heil Hitler!
(signed) I. A.
Encl: Postage-paid return envelope
To families to be judged:
Name of the head of the household: NN
Residence: XX
1. Child NN born xxxx
1. Which children attend a special school NN
(schools for the feeble minded, for the
deaf, for the blind) Provincial School for the
Name and location of the school: Deaf Schleswig, since 1936

2. Were the objectives of the school not NN is a student in a weakly

reached or is there a prospect that endowed class in which it is
they will not be reached? By which foreseen that he will achieve
student? the objectives of the school.

3. Have you noted in the children signs No

of bodily malformation or defects
such as epilepsy, feeblemindedness or
unhealthy inclinations?

Figure 10. Letter and questionnaire sent to families of children in the

Schleswig Institution for the Deaf
 Teacher-Collaborators 145

4. In the event of poor performance, do No

you consider the children nonetheless
of average gifts?
How do you explain the poor
performance?

5. Please rank the children (by the numbers assigned them on the next
page) in these categories of natural endowment:

Weakly Below average Average Above average Highly

endowed endowment endowment endowment endowed

No. 1

6. Have you observed signs of character- No

related inferiority? In which child?
Which signs?

7. Does the family home provide for the Not known

well-being of the child? (Physical care
and clothes, supervision of household
tasks or other positive upbringing by
parents and siblings, any abusive
exploitation of the child as a domestic
servant?)

8. Are other family members or blood Not known

relatives inmates in a school for the
retarded, reform school, nursing home,
preventive detention center, etc.?
Who?

9. Final numerical grades, as well as the grading system employed

Child 1 Legend
Language 4 1=very good
Counting 4 2=good
Phys. Ed. 3 3=satisfactory
Manual work 3 4=adequate
5=not adequate
6=unsatisfactory

Place and Date: Schleswig, June 22, 1943

Signature of the school leader:
Director of the Provincial School and Residence for the Deaf
signed Obrecht

Figure 10—Continued
146 Horst Biesold

Re: Sterilization of NN, baker’s assistant in the Institution for the

Deaf of Dillingen, born xx in XX, resident in Dillingen at the Insti-
tution.
Decision
It is hereby ordered that NN born on xx in XX shall be forcibly
conveyed to the hospital in Günzburg for a sterilization operation,
unless she immediately goes there of her own accord.
Grounds
NN is to be sterilized in accordance with the decision of the
Hereditary Health Court of the Augsburg District Court of Octo-
ber 20, 1936, No. XIII 414/36. The decision has been drawn up by
the court clerk in the office of the Hereditary Health Court with
the mention that it becomes final on November 13, 1936, and that
the sterilization operation may also be performed against the will
of the subject. This decision was delivered on November 19, 1936,
to the legal representative of NN, NN a farmer in XX, with the
order of the public health officer that NN present herself for the
operation at either the municipal hospital in Augsburg or in
Günzburg within two weeks.
Since NN did not submit to sterilization voluntarily nor did
her legal representative provide any further explanation, forcible
sterilization at the hospital of Günzburg is to be effected in accor-
dance with the prescription of the state health authority in Dillingen
with the assistance of the responsible police authorities (Mayor of
the City of Dillingen) (article 6 of the Ordinance of December 5,
1935, Reich Law Gazette 1, 1021, section 2, Ordinance of July 8, 1933;
Referral No. 222/36).
Dillingen, December 10, 1936
District Police Authority, Dillingen
signed Dr. Hogen

Figure 11. Dr. Hogen’s decision to override Article 6 of the Law for the
Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases

June 18, 1937, entry in her student progress record shows that Conrad
requested that the administration of the Dillingen institution permit
the sterilization of his deaf ward. In doing so, he angered the Catho-
lic administration there, since the Vatican had issued the encyclical
“Casti connubi” on December 13, 1930, stating that “authorities do
not have direct power over the bodily organs of their subordinates.”54
The orthodox Catholic view was to reject all motives for violating
 Teacher-Collaborators 147

the integrity of a human being, especially eugenic motives.55 This un-

ambiguous stand by the Holy See against eugenic efforts serves as the
background for a letter from the directress of the institution, the
Franciscan nun and senior teacher, Mother Agreda Dirr. She wished
to save the trainees entrusted to her from the grasp of the Nazis.
Conrad’s answer was not long in coming. Although Conrad was the
girl’s guardian, the young deaf woman nevertheless attempted to pre-
vent the sterilization. Mother Dirr supported her by writing another
letter to Conrad. However, Conrad’s response again emphasized that
he was not moved by the arguments concerning negative psychologi-
cal consequences on his ward. Then, as before, he did not agree to the
deferment, and the victim was forced to submit to the operation against
her express will (see fig. 12).

June 21, 1937

Dear Director Conrad,
Our letters concerning NN have apparently crossed in the mail.
To be on the safe side, we must not neglect to call your particular
attention once again to the possibility of article 6, paragraph 4, of
the implementation ordinance for the hereditary health law. . . .
The Institution for the Deaf of Dillingen qualifies as such a
private institution in the sense of the law according to the decree
of the Reich Minister of the Interior of January 11, 1936, No. 5348 e
133. This would then offer a legal possibility that NN would not
have to undergo the operation, since there is no charge against
public funds on her behalf. In any case, she would then have to
renounce holidays with her grandparents or anywhere else out-
side a private institution. We have a wealth of girls here who have
taken advantage of this ruling. I would request you to communi-
cate to me whether you will make an application on behalf of your
ward under the provisions of article 6, paragraph 4. This must oc-
cur within the prescribed fourteen-day period.
I look forward to hearing from you.
With German greetings,
Mother Agreda Dirr
Directress of the Institution

Figure 12. Correspondence between Mother Agreda Dirr and Herr Conrad,
Director of the State Institution for the Deaf, Dresden
148 Horst Biesold

Dear Madame Directress, article 6, paragraph 4, of the Law for the

Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases, which you cite,
is known to me. Nonetheless, I should like to have the operation
carried out, firstly, to permit NN to go on holiday to her relatives
and acquaintances and, secondly, since the sterilization would in
any case have to be performed if NN left the institution or got mar-
ried, and the operation is then, in my experience, much more unpleasant
than if it had been performed at a younger age [emphasis added].

Institution for the Deaf, Dillingen/Danube July 3, 1937

Dear Director,
I have just received 50 marks for NN and have had them de-
posited in her savings account until she needs the money.
At the same time I must inform you that NN was not prepared
to go to Günzburg on July 1 and it then happened that I went with
her to the district physician instead of the hospital so that she could
herself request that the operation be postponed. I supported her
urgent request and accompanied her later that same evening to
the public health officer who stated that the operation could very
easily be postponed, since NN lives in a private institution. All
that needs to be done is that her guardian submit an application to
the relevant district physician for a postponement of the decision.
That is the present state of things.
I was more than a bit surprised at NN when she stood up for
herself with such firmness. That has not often happened earlier. I
believe that if NN is not permitted to go on holidays again this year,
she will finally make up her mind on her own and it would prob-
ably be best to sit back and wait for this. For this girl, who from a
psychological point of view is rather fragile, formal coercion would
not have good results, and I would be of the opinion to wait until
she leaves the institution, whether on holidays or for good. I look
forward to your decision and eventual application on her behalf.
With German greetings,
Mother Agreda Dirr

Extracts from NN’s Student Progress Record, July–August 1937

April 21, 1936: A. started her instruction in plain needlework at the be-
ginning of the school year. Inquiry concerning hereditary disease.

Figure 12—Continued
 Teacher-Collaborators 149

July, 1936: A. cannot travel to her relatives for the holidays. Director
Conrad proposes to take her to the summer camp at a country
place near Dresden, but since the investigation into hereditary
disease is still ongoing, he considers it better that A. remain in
Dillingen for the time being.
June 18, 1937: A. has received an order to present herself for steril-
ization within fourteen days. At the same time her guardian
also sent the decision and the legal order with the request that
A. should comply with the order on July 16, 1937.
June 21, 1937: We have reminded the guardian of the possibility of a
postponement of the decision by reason of entry into a private
institution.
June 23, 1937: Nonetheless, the guardian urges the completion of the
sterilization; grounds:
1. A. can then go home to her relatives for the holidays;
2. Sterilization would still have to be performed when she left
the institution or if she married and would then be much more
unpleasant than now.
July/August, 1937: A. was to have been brought on July 1, 1937, to
Günzburg but she refused and applied to the district authori-
ties for a postponement of the operation. The latter required
that her guardian submit an application for a suspension of
the decision. The guardian is not in agreement with the defer-
ral. A. was taken to the hospital in Günzburg on July 22, 1937.
After the completion of the sterilization operation she returned
to the institution on August 6, 1937.

Figure 12—Continued

The Pauline Home in Winnenden

The primary objective of research at the Pauline Home was to
determine from the evidence of resident files the number of persons
referred to the health authorities.* As in other cases of archival work,
this was a matter of testing and verifying the responses given to the
question “Who informed on you?”

* The administration of the Pauline Home (an institution of the Home

Mission) permitted unimpeded access to the archives. Their supportive
attitude stands out in comparison with that of other institutions in the
Federal Republic of Germany.
150 Horst Biesold

Two criteria guided the selection of resident files: (1) The person
in question must have been a resident of the Asylum for the Deaf at
the Pauline Home in Winnenden between 1933 and 1945 and (2) he
or she must have reached reproductive age. Forty-nine residents met
these requirements. Twenty-six were reported on in accordance with
section 3 of the sterilization law. The superintendent’s office of the
Pauline Home submitted recommendations on its own initiative for
the sterilization of wards in sixteen instances. In ten others, the ap-
plication was made by the provincial youth health officer in Stuttgart
or by the health authorities with the cooperation of this office.
Twenty-three students were not reported for sterilization.
A vocational school also was associated with the Pauline Home
in Winnenden. Thirty-three students attended and received train-
ing as basketmakers, tailors, shoemakers, and brushmakers. 56 I
sampled twenty-seven student files from the vocational school to
determine whether the superintendent’s office reported on young
persons who were only temporarily lodged at the institution. The
files showed that fifteen vocational students were reported on, and
twelve were not. In six cases, the superintendent’s office made the
notification; in eight cases the provincial youth health officer
stepped in; and in one case the health authority in Waiblingen in-
stigated the report.
The figures are complemented by an official list drawn up by
the Pauline Home in Winnenden concerning the application of the
sterilization law. This list contains the names of fifty-nine deaf people,
and in the diagnosis of “Hereditary Disease” lists “feebleminded-
ness” and “deafness” indiscriminately. Only nine of the forty-one
cases identified through my research appear on this list as reported
under the sterilization law.
In summary, the seventy-six student records examined in
Winnenden show that a total of forty-one children, about 54 per-
cent, were reported on under the terms of the sterilization law. These
figures do not reveal the effect this process had on its victims, how-
ever, or of the rigor with which the superintendent of the Pauline
Home, Pastor Müller, transferred the young people entrusted to him
to the machinery of the Nazi race fanatics. Müller was an adherent
 Teacher-Collaborators 151

of Nazi race ideology and a member of the Nazi Party. The “Troop
Orders” for April 9, 1938, state that he was a storm trooper, Leader
of Nazi 6/121 Second Troop.57
Even before the implementation of the sterilization law, Müller
had advocated the application of racial hygiene measures to a per-
son living in the Asylum for the Deaf in Winnenden. In response to
an August 2, 1933, inquiry of the district welfare office in Schwäbisch
Hall as to whether continuing educational efforts at the home had
good prospects for success, Müller wrote on August 4 as follows:
“As it now is, it cannot be commended in good conscience to any-
one. It will pose a constant threat to public welfare, unless the princi-
pals of eugenics are applied” [emphasis added].58
The case history of a fourteen-year-old student illustrates
Müller’s close working relationship with Nazi institutions engaged
in the application of the Hereditary Health Law, although he pre-
sented himself as the guardian of his underage ward. After the “due
process” of prosecution in the Hereditary Health Court, which passed
sentence on January 19, 1939, Müller renounced his right to object to
the decision for the sterilization of his ward. 59 This removed any
possibility of an appeal and cleared the way for the operation. Just
how eager Müller was to have the sentence carried out is apparent
in a remark added to his letter to the Hereditary Health Court in
Stuttgart: “I am requesting the prompt transmission of the defini-
tive verdict, so that the sterilization can be completed as soon as
possible before the confirmation ceremony.”60
In four additional cases that have come to my attention, Müller
demonstrated a similar eagerness. In one instance, the Hereditary
Health Court in the District Court of Stuttgart noted in its judgment
of September 17, 1935, that “the leader of the institution requests the
completion of the sterilization operation, since the girl is not reli-
able in sexual matters.”61 This evidence led to a ruling favoring ster-
ilization for a resident of the Pauline Home.
Superintendent Müller ’s judgment was crucial to the fate of
his students, as can be seen by comparing his comments with those
used by the court to justify sterilization. In December of 1936,
Müller wrote to the State Health Authority of Waiblingen about a
152 Horst Biesold

particular student. He said that she was “suspected of congenital

feeblemindedness.” This was his “evidence”:
NN was enrolled at our institutional school on April 22, 1922. . . .
Her school performance was unsatisfactory; see the enclosed report
card. After confirmation, the girl worked in various positions, but
always came back to us. The chief characteristic of her behavior is
defiance to the point of open impudence; toward men, on the other
hand, she behaves in a very forward manner. She is a resident in our
asylum at the Pauline Home and helps with the housekeeping. Her
performance is poor and requires constant supervision.
Office of the Superintendent

The Hereditary Health Court’s decision on February 26, 1937,

employed Müller’s language almost word for word as the grounds
for its decree:
NN has been at the Pauline Home in Winnenden since April 22,
1922. Her school performance is unsatisfactory, as her discharge
certificate from the Spring of 1927 shows. After confirmation, the
girl worked in various positions, but returned to the Pauline Home
in Winnenden. The chief characteristic of her behavior is defiance
to the point of open impudence; toward men, on the other hand,
she behaves in a very forward manner. She is a resident in the asy-
lum of the Pauline Home and helps with the housekeeping, but
her performance is poor and requires constant supervision.62

Müller’s eagerness to have his pupils sterilized is evident also

from the case of a young girl who was about to be discharged after
successfully completing training at the Pauline Home. The provin-
cial youth health officer in Stuttgart, a Dr. Eyrich, examined her case.
He judged initially that the girl’s mother was “physically and men-
tally inferior.” Müller had indicated that the father was “of modest
mental endowment,” but the physician disagreed. “The father . . .
does not make an unfavorable impression on me, but is very hard of
hearing” [emphasis added]. 63
The parents had stated that the child was born hearing and was
deafened at seven years of age as the result of a traffic accident (“on
July 6, 1932, she was run over by a beer wagon”). Eyrich dismissed
this testimony with the remark that “the child bears the signs of lues
 Teacher-Collaborators 153

congenita” (congenital syphilis), and apparently Müller was not con-

vinced either. 64 Eyrich’s examination indicated that girl was not
feebleminded: “For example, she can complete an intelligence test
without difficulty, can read and write, do written sums quickly, and
has also learned to sew at the Home . . . and has passed the appren-
ticeship examination.” Müller’s evidence, though, influenced the
physician: “But according to the report of the director of the institu-
tion she is not a good worker and is very frivolous, is out after men,
has an acquaintanceship with a deaf man in Feuerbach, but also flirts
with the deaf in the institution.” 65
Eyrich’s ultimate conclusion in favor of sterilization is bizarre,
but it achieved the goal he and Müller desired:
Diagnosis: congenital deafness. The question of whether deafness
is of a hereditary nature cannot be unequivocally answered. In all
probability, it is a question of deafness as the consequence of con-
genital lues. Consequently, the girl is not to be characterized as
hereditarily diseased in the sense of the law. Nonetheless, I recom-
mend sterilization since our findings suggest that lues is probably
not the single cause of her inferiority and, in addition, the father is
extremely hard of hearing. Both father and mother are mentally
inferior. It must be concluded that the risk in NN having children
is very great and that, in the event of reproduction, one must cer-
tainly reckon with inferior offspring. In addition, she would be
completely incapable of raising a child in proper fashion. 66

Public health officer Eyrich’s “expert opinion on proposed ster-

ilization” was submitted along with his recommendation to the
Stuttgart I District Court on December 7, 1934. 67 Further inquiry
scarcely need be made as to the decision reached by the Hereditary
Health Court of Stuttgart I.
The case history of a sister and her surviving brother, who could
still be questioned during my investigation, demonstrates that Müller
went far beyond the duties that were incumbent on him under the
sterilization law. A basketmaker who lived at the Pauline Home in
Winnenden reported that “the institution” informed on him.68 The
chief medical officer of the State Health Authority, Schwäbisch
Hall, Dr. Walter Gmelin, in a letter of November 28, 1934, requested
154 Horst Biesold

“information whether hereditary disease was present” in the case of

the basketmaker, who was then thirteen years old. The doctor con-
tinued: “The subject’s sister has been reported to me on the grounds
of hereditary (?) epilepsy.”69
Müller’s reply makes clear that he reported on the brother and
sister, and that he tried to persuade their parents that they should
“voluntarily” apply for the sterilization operations (see fig. 13).
Just one year later, on January 30, 1936, a judgment was passed
on the fourteen-year-old boy by the Hereditary Health Court of

Winnenden, February 11, 1935

To the Chief Public Health Officer, Schwäb. Hall,
Re: Hereditary health cases of NN, born xx, and NN, born xx, chil-
dren of the farmer, NN, in xx.
Until December 23, 1934, NN was a charge in our vocational school
for the deaf. In due course, she was reported by us to the provin-
cial youth health officer responsible for the institution, Dr. Eyrich,
as hereditarily diseased. He examined her and came to the deci-
sion that an application for sterilization should be made. Mean-
while, the time came for her discharge from the institution. This
occurred in agreement with the provincial youth health officer. He
had previously been in contact with the parents and had requested
their agreement to the sterilization. Since I do not know whether
the youth health officer has informed you as senior public health
officer in Schwäb. Hall of this, I am so informing you now, so that
if necessary the father can be prevailed upon to make the applica-
tion voluntarily.
Her younger brother, NN, is also with us and will likely stay
for a few more years. The youth health officer has also been noti-
fied about him. Since Karl is still rather childish, a recommenda-
tion about him can be deferred for some time. We will report again
on him during his last year of training so that a decision can be
made about an application for sterilization.
Office of the Superintendent
Müller

Figure 13. Letter from Superintendent Müller notifying the Chief Public
Health Officer of two siblings’ sterilization status
 Teacher-Collaborators 155

Öhringen: “NN is to be sterilized, because in the official medical

assessment of the Provincial Youth Health Officer of Stuttgart he
suffers from hereditary feeblemindedness (section 1, paragraph 2,
point 1, of the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary
Diseases of July 14, 1933).”70
As noted earlier in this chapter, the two diagnoses—“hereditary
deafness” and “hereditary feeblemindedness”—were used indis-
criminately, and they were prominent in the official list of condi-
tions that called for the application of the sterilization law. In the
case of this individual, as well as others, considerable doubt must
be cast on the accuracy of the diagnosis “congenital feebleminded-
ness.” Several factors suggest that the label of “feeblemindedness”
is incorrect—the boy’s four years of attendance at an elementary
school; his residence since 1931 at the School for the Deaf in the
Pauline Home at Winnenden, and his successful completion of train-
ing in basketmaking.71 Moreover, the official register of the Pauline
Home lists under the heading “Ailment” only “congenital deafness”
for the boy and his sister.72
Research in the archives of the Pauline Home in Winnenden gives
no indication of any effort by Müller to appeal sterilization decisions,
although he could have done so according to section 9 of the steriliza-
tion law. Rather, he was an active proponent of sterilization and tried
to intimidate parents into giving up their right to appeal decisions to
sterilize their children, as shown by the following letter:
February 5, 1936
Dear Herr NN,

The Hereditary Health Court has decided on the sterilization of

your son, NN. If you raise no objection to it before the District Court
in Öhringen, the judgment will enter force on February 14. The ster-
ilization operation will be performed in the Waiblingen District
Hospital. We urge you, however, not to raise any such objection,
since the matter will not be dropped because of this measure, but
only deferred to a later date. With best regards.
Office of the Superintendent
156 Horst Biesold

In another case the parents of a fourteen-year-old girl, who was

being trained as a clothesmaker, were not notified by Müller until
three days after the girl’s admission to the hospital and after the
completed operation:
June 27, 1936

Dear Herr NN. We should like to inform you that by order of

the hereditary health court your daughter has been in the
Waiblingen District Hospital since Wednesday for a sterilization
operation. It is anticipated that she will return to us by the middle
or end of next week. With best regards and Heil Hitler!
Signed for (signature)73

Müller was inconsistent on the question of whether the Pauline

Home qualified as a private institution, and thus did not have an
obligation to inform on its wards, while eagerly and voluntarily iden-
tifying children to be sterilized, and often for reasons that seemed to
have little to do with their potential for transmitting hereditary deaf-
ness. An inquiry from the Esslingen District Welfare Authority, ask-
ing whether a resident of the institution ought to be discharged and
returned to his mother, led Müller to answer negatively on Novem-
ber 3, 1938, and then to notify the health authorities of the child’s
eligibility for sterilization. He told the Welfare Authority, “NN is
lame on one side so that he is very impaired when walking and work-
ing. He is completely deaf and dumb, and also very weak mentally.
In addition, he has a very difficult character and is not easy to handle.
The question of sterilization could be put off as long as he was at the
Institution. Notification has been made to the health authority of
suspected hereditary disease.”74
In the case of a fifteen-year-old deaf girl, who was being trained
in needlework at the Pauline Home, Müller informed the district
public welfare authority in Saulgau on April 17, 1936, that “her
gifts are not sufficient to promise success in needlework training.”
He added in conclusion that “such pitiable children are best raised
in an institution” and advised the welfare authority and the girl’s
father to let her stay on at the Pauline Home “in the girl’s interest.”
Müller’s chief argument for the “ongoing necessity of institutional
 Teacher-Collaborators 157

care” for the girl was “the constant danger of moral abuse.” 75 He
also found grounds for notification according to section 3 of the ster-
ilization law. “We must also notify the provincial youth health of-
ficer about her because of hereditary deafness and congenital feeble-
mindedness; in all likelihood the sterilization operation will also have
to be carried out. (Until this matter is resolved she must definitely
not be discharged from the Institution.)” 76
In the case of a fifteen-year-old boy, Pastor Müller told the Supe-
rior Hereditary Health Court in Stuttgart on April 8, 1936, that the
“sterilization operation” was “urgently necessary.” Müller wrote that
the child’s “debility is of moderate degree,” and his performance
was satisfactory in civics, reading, arithmetic, singing, and physical
education. Müller found grounds for sterilization, however, because
of “defects of character.” He described the deaf boy as “extremely
restless, very excitable, completely unreliable, rebellious, recalci-
trant,” with asocial behavior. Müller finally recommended a defer-
ral of the operation for one to two years.77
Müller not only used criteria other than deafness to justify ster-
ilization, but he also seemed unconcerned about establishing any
proof of genetic causes. Thus he wrote about one boy that “our docu-
ments provide no information” concerning the cause of deafness.
Nevertheless, he wrote that “we have notified the appropriate dis-
trict health officer of his suspected hereditary disease.” Müller be-
lieved the child would need to be sterilized before he left the institu-
tion, but he told the State Health Authority in Ehingen, in a letter of
October 20, 1936, that he would prefer the sterilization recommen-
dation to come from them.
Pastor Müller’s attitude, and the sterilization law itself, must
have created anxiety and unrest among the deaf residents of such an
institution as the Pauline Home in Winnenden. Indeed, on March
23, 1934, the youth health authority for Nürtigen-Urach discussed
the case of a nineteen-year-old shoemaker’s apprentice who was hard
of hearing. The writer of the letter informed the Pauline Home that
the boy’s father said the youngster “has become very upset, as were
other wards of the Pauline Home, on learning about the sterilization
law. He is reported to have had thoughts of suicide at the prospect
158 Horst Biesold

April 13, 1944

To the Youth Authority in Nürtingen-Urach
Re: Care for NN, born xx, 1915, in XX.
Document M.F. 294
NN is one of our most promising charges. He is making very
good progress in shoemaking. His behavior is also good. He will
take his apprentice’s exam in the fall and will probably pass with a
good grade. Then it will be a matter of finding a position for him,
and he will be well able to earn a living on his own. The steriliza-
tion law has, however, caused some anxiety among our charges.
They read far too much about it in the newspapers. I have talked
to him myself and calmed him down. I scarcely believe that his
thoughts of suicide are to be taken very seriously. Our people talk
a lot about it, especially since a severely psychopathic student took
his life last year. Whether sterilization is necessary in NN’s case is
beyond my judgment to say. The hereditary health court must first
determine whether his defective hearing is hereditary or not; the
decision lies with this court.
We have only the responsibility to make reports. So far noth-
ing at all has happened in this case.
Office of the Superintendent

Figure 14. Müller ’s reply regarding student concerns about the steriliza-
tion law

of sterilization.” The letter concluded with the following statement

and question for Pastor Müller: “I do not believe that in the case of
NN there exist the preconditions for sterilization. Is the administra-
tion of the institution at all aware of these difficulties?”78 Müller’s
ambiguous reply appears in figure 14.

Summary
The central question addressed in this chapter was whether the
stand taken by educators of the deaf toward the sterilization law
and their acquiescence in the implementation of that law support
the claim of some German scholars that there was a “rescue mental-
ity” among special education teachers. They do not.
 Teacher-Collaborators 159

In the mind of Reich leader Maesse, teachers of deaf students

were “true defenders of the state and people” and functioned not
only as “convinced advocates and collaborators” but as the “keen-
est agents in the great work of preventing diseased offspring.”79
Furthermore, 349, or 28.72 percent, of the respondents to the ques-
tionnaire reported that they had been sterilized before reaching their
eighteenth birthday, in part with the permission or active participa-
tion of their own schools, teachers or principals. Some 34 percent
were informed on by their teachers (see table 3).
The close collaboration of deaf education, medicine, jurispru-
dence and other Nazi institutions made possible the extensive selec-
tion of “hereditarily diseased” deaf children and their referral to the
Nazi race hygienists. The collective silence surrounding these events
could have been circumvented by persecuted deaf people through
their own communication system, but this was of no advantage in
mounting a strong, more active resistance movement. Contributing
greatly to this powerlessness was the unification and harmoniza-
tion policy of the Reich Union of the Deaf of Germany (REGEDE),
whose Nazi leadership clique fully endorsed the ideology of Nazi
eugenicists and race hygienists.
Under these circumstances, the various expressions of passive
resistance, including the “noncompliance” of almost one-third of the

Table 3. Summary Data on the Number of Students Reported

by School Authorities

Number of Number Reported Percentage

Files under Sterilization of Students
School Reviewed Law Reported
Provincial Institution
for the Deaf, Homberg 104 50 48.08
Provincial Institution
for the Deaf, Schleswig 120 36 30
Pauline Home,
Winnenden 76 41 53.95
Total research 300 127 42.33
corpus
160 Horst Biesold

deaf people prosecuted under the sterilization law, and individual

efforts toward active resistance must be recognized as admirable acts
of courage.

Notes
1. See U. Bleidick, “Die Entwicklung,” 827.
2. G. Lehmann, “Die staatliche Taubstummenanstalt zu Berlin-
Neukölln,” in Taubstummenunterricht und Taubstummen-Fürsorge im Deutschen
Reich, ed. G. Lehmann (Düsseldorf, 1930), 32.
3. Cf. H. Biesold, “Hörschädigung-Geschichtliche Aspekte,” in Handbuch
der Behindertenpädagogik (Solms: Jarick Oberbiel, 1984).
4. Lehmann, Taubstummenunterricht, 35.
5. Ibid., 32.
6. Central State Archives, Potsdam, Rep. 76-VII, 3321, item 4.
7. Ibid.: “Provinzial-Schulkolleg i. d. Brandenburg . . . ,” FA 10159/32, of
April 7, 1932, item 56 and overleaf.
8. Central State Archives, Potsdam, Rep. 76-VII, 3321, item 78 and
overleaf.
9. This information comes from research in the Central State Archives,
Potsdam, particularly Rep. 76-VII, Part 5\V, No. 6, vol. 17.
10. “Besprechung der N.S. Taubstummenlehrer,” in XV. Tagung des
Bundes Deutscher Taubstummenlehrer (Halle [Saale] 1933), 9. Damaschun
wanted to advance the candidacy of Lehmann as executive officer of the
Union of German Teachers of the Deaf, so that as a professional he might
stand above things. But Damaschun was also concerned “that our Führer
must be a Führer in the National Socialist sense.”
11. Biesold Archive 484, 849, 891, 1645, 1651.
12. Biesold Archive 1651/2.
13. This information has been taken from the preserved minutes book of
the School for the Deaf on Humboldtstrasse in Bremen. The secretary,
Warlich, reported to a meeting of school staff on November 29, 1934, of
National Socialist Training Camp I in Birkenweder, October 14–20, 1934, for
teachers at special schools. Lehmann, among others, spoke on these topics at
the camp, which was organized for officials of the National Socialist Teachers
Confederation.
14. Biesold Archive 1651/7.
15. Biesold Archive 1043/1.
16. P. Bartsch, “Birkenwerder Nachharke,” Die Deutsche Sondershule
(1935), 262.
17. Central State Archives, Potsdam, Rep 76-VII, item 370; the letter has
Ref. No. 1043.
 Teacher-Collaborators 161

18. Central State Archives, Potsdam, Rep 76-VII, item 372 and overleaf;
the communication carries number 2498 and is dated February 7, 1938.
19. Central State Archives, Potsdam, Rep 76-VII, 3321, items 233 and
overleaf, 234, 237.
20. Central State Archives, Potsdam, Rep 76-VII, 3321, items 309 and
overleaf, 310, 325.
21. Central State Archives, Potsdam, Rep 76-VII, item 262 and overleaf:
“Annotation E VI” by Dr. Schaefer of the Prussian Ministry for Science.
22. The following is a transcription of Wegge’s handwritten notes on the
register:
Examined for hereditary health—Determination in the
light of the sterilization law
Register of the Provincial Institution for the Deaf in Soest
Registers for previous years list the criteria for decisions
[signed] Wegge.
A–Z = Document code according to standards of the
Provincial Administration last column: 1) . . .2) . . .
23. The relevant text of his deposition is this:
Deposition: Frau NN, born in xx, earlier residing in
Königsberg, East Prussia, xx, was forcibly sterilized dur-
ing the Hitler period through the offices of Senior Teacher
of the Deaf, Bewer, also resident in Königsberg. Bewer is
known to have been a fanatic Nazi. My home is also in
Königsberg, Unterlaak 28, and I have known the appli-
cant since our time at school here.
(Stamp) 16.11.57
Signed Alexander Hundertmark
24. This information is drawn from various compensation documents,
including “Regierungspräsidium Nordbaden, Az. I/4a-36460,” and from
hereditary health court judgments on prosecuted deaf persons.
25. This question is derived from conventional German Sign Language,
and refers to the person who made the notification under paragraphs 3 and 4
of the sterilization law, and thus initiated the “selection” process.
26. Letter from E. Singer, January 1, 1951
Baden Association for the Deaf
Provincial Welfare Union for the Deaf and Hearing-
Impaired, Heidelberg
Heidelberg, January 1, 1951
Herr NN, resident in XX,
In response to your request, we can confirm from our own
knowledge of the exact circumstances that in 1936 (March
19) you were a victim of the Law for the Prevention of
162 Horst Biesold

Offspring with Hereditary Diseases. The sterilization op-

eration was performed at that time in the surgical clinic in
Heidelberg. Chairman of the Association,
(signed) Edwin Singer
27. E. Singer, “Aufstieg,” Neue Blätter für Taubstummenbildung 1 (1946), 2.
28. Ibid., 4.
29. A. Richter, “Die Landestaubstummenanstalt zu Homberg,” in
Lehmann, Taubstummenunterricht, 80ff.
30. Statistisches Jahrbuch, 1931, 22ff.
31. In 1937 the school was moved to Frankfurt am Main, when a police
academy was established in the school building.
32. Research work in the school archives of the Provincial Institution for
the Deaf of Homberg was substantially supported and facilitated by the
school administration and teaching staff.
33. Cf. H. Maesse, “Betrachtungen zum Gesetz zur Verhütung
erbkranken Nachwuchses,” Die Deutsche Sonderschule (1935), 161.
34 . Biesold Archive S. 160.
35. Biesold Archive HR/39/34.
36. Biesold Archive HR/39/35. Name omitted for reasons of confidentiality.
37. Cf. Statistisches Jahrbuch, 2.
38. Heidbrede was demonstrably a participant in Nazi Training Camp I
in Birkenweder, in October 1934, which was organized for officials of the
National Socialist German Teachers Confederation; cf. Die Deutsche
Sonderschule, 272.
39. Cf. Maesse, “Betrachtungen,” 161.
40. Biesold Archive SL/20, 1 and 2.
41. See Maesse, “Betrachtungen,” 161. Biesold Archive SL/19/1ff.
42. Biesold Archive SL/12.
43. Biesold Archive SL/16/1.
44. Biesold Archive SL/16/2.
45. Biesold Archive SL/17/1
46. Biesold Archive SL/17/2.
47. Biesold Archive SL 11/181.
48. Biesold Archive 971/2.
49. Biesold Archive 117/2.
50. Biesold Archive 612/3. Statistisches Jahrbuch, 59, lists Franz Schmid as
director of the St. Josef Private Institution in Schwäbisch Gmünd. The listing
of the male teaching staff names Georg Schmid as a senior teacher of the
deaf. All other teachers were nuns. Two more nuns taught crafts and worked
in the kindergarten.
51. Cf. “Statistische Nachrichten,” 55.
52. Reich Law Gazette (1933): Part 1, 1022
 Teacher-Collaborators 163

53. Biesold Archive 1235/2.

54. Cf. Nowack, Euthanasie, 106.
55. Ibid., 110.
56. Statistisches Jahrbuch, 96.
57. Biesold Archive WI 83/1.
58. Biesold Archive WI 83/24
59. Biesold Archive WI 83/52.
60. Ibid.
61. Biesold Archive WI 83/52
62. Biesold Archive WI 83/55.
63. Biesold Archive WI 83/15, p. 1.
64. Ibid.
65. Biesold Archive WI 83/13, p. 4.
66. Ibid.
67. Handwritten comment, Biesold Archive WI 83/13, p. 1.
68. Biesold Archive 1162/1.
69. Biesold Archive 1162/2.
70. Biesold Archive 1162/5, p. 1.
71. Biesold Archive 1162/1, p. 1.
72. Biesold Archive WI 83/3, p. 1, entries 13 and 19.
73. Biesold Archive WI 83/25.
74. Biesold Archive WI 83/50.
75. Biesold Archive WI 83/58.
76. The brackets and X are entered by hand. In the margin is the hand-
written comment, in Müller’s handwriting: “Not applicable, since she was
admitted to the institution for training, not for custody.”
77. Biesold Archive WI 83/14.
78. Biesold Archive WI 83/58.
79. P. Bartsch, “Birkenwerder Nachharke,” 262; A. Winnewisser, “Ist
angeborene Taubheit immer Erbtaubheit?” Die Deutsche Sonderschule (1938):
426; Eisermann, director of the School for the Deaf in Tilsit and Hitler Youth
Führer of Reich Banner G, cited from E. Weng, “Weihe eines neuen HJ-
Heimes des Reichsbannes Gehörgeschädigte (G) in Tilsit,” Die Deutsche
Sonderschule 11 (1938).
 Introduction 165

Part III
The Jewish Deaf
Experience
 Introduction 167

Introduction

Donna F. Ryan

N azi racial hygiene policies were carried to their deadliest con-

clusion within the borders of the Third Reich where the Aryan master
race was supposed to be purified and propagated. In the case of Jews,
the Nazi worldview called for their removal from all of Europe,
whether by expulsion or extermination. Similarly, Roma and Sinti,
often called Gypsies, were targeted for elimination as a racially infe-
rior people, although the Nazis were never as successful in their ap-
plication of racial policies to them as they were to the Jews. Other
groups within Germany who were to be eliminated or at least reduced
dramatically included those with cognitive and physical disabilities,
homosexuals, habitual criminals, and others in the vague category of
“asocials.” We will probably never know if programs of elimination
based on eugenics theories might have been applied in occupied ter-
ritories not incorporated into the Greater Reich. Only country-by-coun-
try studies of European countries conquered by Hitler’s armies will
tell us how deaf people were treated as a result of occupation and
local responses to those with disabilities during very trying times.
We also know only a little about the fate of deaf Jews at this
point. In Germany, where the deportation and removal of Jews be-
gan early, it was miraculous for a deaf Jew to survive, except in cases
of emigration or successful concealment of Jewishness. Few deaf
German Jews would have survived lengthy slave labor conditions
in the camps as the war dragged on. Indeed, many would not have
survived the initial selection process in camps such as Auschwitz.
Only limited information has been uncovered about deaf Jews in
occupied France, Belgium, and Holland, and not much is known of
such survivors from Poland and other devastated areas of Eastern

167
168 Donna F. Ryan

Europe. As archives have opened in eastern Europe and researchers

interested in deaf people have begun to investigate the events that
took place in occupied western European countries, we can look for-
ward to a more sophisticated discussion about deaf Jews in Europe
during World War II.
Since 1997, John Schuchman and Donna Ryan have interviewed
more than a dozen deaf survivors of the Holocaust in Hungary. Af-
ter initial interviews in Budapest, with the help of the American Jew-
ish Joint Distribution Committee, we were able to bring some of the
survivors to tell their stories at the 1998 conference, “Deaf People in
Hitler ’s Europe.” What follows are their stories, first told in narra-
tive form in John Schuchman’s essay, and then told in their own
words in transcription of part of their testimony.
As the son of deaf parents, Schuchman has developed a special
rapport with the survivors and has applied his intimate knowledge
of Deaf culture to extrapolate the story of a vibrant deaf Jewish com-
munity. He portrays that community as well defined by association
with the Mexico Street Jewish deaf school and held together by their
wartime experiences. Because the German occupation and deporta-
tions from Hungary occurred at such a late date, and their incar-
ceration and forced labor were of relatively short duration, many of
them survived. Those who survived often were helped by other camp
inmates, sometimes relatives, who convinced the authorities they
could work, and who could communicate with them and keep them
aware of what was going on around them. Some survived through
contact with Righteous Gentiles who helped them hide or obtain false
papers. All the survivors appear to have been young, strong, and
able to work in the camps or fend for themselves in hiding. Like all
survivors of the Holocaust, they sometimes were just lucky. They
were persecuted because they were Jews, but their experiences were
also shaped by their deafness.
The narrative description of their experiences is designed to
impose some order and interpretation on the stories the survivors
tell. But no narrative can be as poignant and moving as their own
words, and for that reason we close this anthology with excerpts
from their testimony given in Washington, D.C., in June 1998.
 Hungarian Deaf Jews and the Holocaust 169

Hungarian Deaf Jews

and the Holocaust

John S. Schuchman

B eing deaf and Jewish is not easy. The experience of many deaf
Jews is one of marginalization. Within Judaism, deaf persons his-
torically have been considered incomplete Jews, classified legally
with children and mentally disabled individuals.1 Within the national
deaf communities, deaf Jews have faced the same anti-Semitic atti-
tudes prevalent in the hearing community at large. Consequently,
many deaf Jews are ambivalent about their identities: deaf, Jewish,
or a mixture of the two.
Holocaust scholars have not paid much attention to the general
experience of deaf persons or deaf Jews in particular. To be sure, the
deaf population is small and the deaf Jewish population even smaller.
Nevertheless, deaf people were a part of the Holocaust and record-
ing their experiences is important. A scholar who studied the music
of European Jewish communities has pointed out that “there are li-
braries filled with literature on the Holocaust telling us how these
people died but there is precious little about how they lived . . . the
neglect to interview these people about their lives contributed to
their sufferings. We failed to assure them that they were the creators
of a unique culture and not just a victimized mass.”2 Similarly, we
need to examine the experience of deaf persons to illustrate broader
themes in the Holocaust and its intersection with the deaf world.
Holocaust scholar Henry Friedlander has shown that the Final
Solution began when the Nazis, armed with the rhetoric of racial
hygiene, eugenics, and euthanasia, assaulted disabled people in
Germany. With the press of military activity after 1939, the Nazis
did not have an opportunity fully to apply these practices against
disabled people in other parts of Europe.3 Deaf people suffered the

169
170 John S. Schuchman

privations of war as did the general population of war-torn Europe.

Two groups of deaf people, however, were unique. Ironically, one of
them was deaf Germans who suffered the brunt of Nazi eugenic prac-
tices. Nazi policies required deaf Germans to register with health
courts, which determined who had to undergo sterilization or abor-
tion. It has been estimated that 16,000 deaf Germans underwent ster-
ilization or abortion procedures by war ’s end.4
The second group of deaf persons who had a unique experience
were Jews. The focus of this chapter will be on the experience of
Hungarian deaf Jews. Hungarian Jews were among the last Jews to
be transported to the extermination camps, due to the lateness of
the Nazi’s occupation of Hungary. Therefore, a substantial number
of Hungarians survived. As we have stated earlier, Donna Ryan and
I interviewed a dozen Hungarian deaf Jews in the summer of 1997.
Subsequently, in the summer of 1999, I interviewed another survi-
vor living in the United States, Harry Dunai.
Scholars of deafness and deaf people throughout the world gen-
erally agree that residential schools for deaf students occupy a spe-
cial place in the deaf community. It is often the place where deaf
children meet other deaf persons for the first time and where they
first learn to communicate effectively outside their families, either
orally or in sign language. Through alumni organizations or net-
works, it is also the place where deaf children first encounter deaf
adults and thus gain access to deaf clubs and the larger adult deaf
community.
Though Judaism generally marginalized deaf Jews, some reform
elements within the Jewish community believed that deaf children
should receive a religious education.5 By the beginning of the twen-
tieth century, Jewish residential schools for deaf children had been
established in London, Berlin, Vienna, and Budapest. These were
vibrant schools that achieved respect for their curricula, staff, and
graduates.6 None exist today.
The first Hungarian school for deaf children opened in 1802 in
the town of Vacz, north of Budapest. As a part of the Hapsburg Em-
pire, the school used German, Magyar, and sign language. As the
Hapsburg influence waned, education reformers and nationalists
 Hungarian Deaf Jews and the Holocaust 171

expanded and transformed Hungarian schools for deaf children. The

schools adopted an oral curriculum modeled after the German sys-
tem, which emphasized speechreading and voice in Magyar.7 Be-
sides the oral curriculum, the Jewish school added religious educa-
tion and the study of the Hebrew language.
By 1906, there were sixteen boarding schools for deaf pupils
throughout Hungary, including the Jewish school in Budapest. Phi-
lanthropists’ funds created the Jewish school for deaf children in
1877 and the school for blind children in 1908. When inflation and
devaluation during and after World War I decimated the schools’
monetary foundation, the Pest Jewish Council merged the two
schools at the Mexico Street location. 8 Formally, the school was
known as the Jewish Deaf-Mute National Institute and the Sir Ignaz
Wechselman and Zsofia Neushloss Education Institute for the Blind.
Within the deaf community, this school became known simply as
the Mexico Street School.
In this chapter, the experiences of six former students will be
examined to illustrate the intersection of the Holocaust with the deaf
world. Three of the students were children enrolled at the school at
the time of the German military occupation of Hungary in the spring
of 1944, and three were twenty-one-year-old graduates living in the
city of Budapest.
Hungary occupies an interesting place within Holocaust schol-
arship. Some scholars have called the Hungarian experience a “whirl-
wind of destruction, resembling a genocide within the genocide.” 9
For much of the war, Jews viewed Hungary as a safe place. At the
end of World War I, newly created Hungary, as an ally of defeated
Germany, lost two-thirds of its territory and three-fifths of its popu-
lation. Afterwards, tempted by the expansion and success of Nazi
Germany, Hungary joined the Axis powers in World War II. Although
Hungary regained some of its former territory, the government re-
sisted the demands of its own radical right fascist movement, the
Arrow Cross, and Nazi Germany to hand over Jews for deportation.
Hungary had a long tradition of political alliance between the aris-
tocracy and middle-class assimilated Jews. Despite anti-Semitic leg-
islation that dated from 1920, Hungarian Jews viewed themselves
172 John S. Schuchman

as comparatively safe from the onslaught that they saw all about
them in other parts of Europe. However at war’s end, as the Allied
and Soviet armies advanced militarily, the government of Regent
Admiral Miklos Horthy explored possible opportunities for with-
drawal from the war. Alarmed that a Hungarian withdrawal would
further expose Germany to its enemies, Hitler ordered his army to
occupy Hungary in the spring of 1944. Between the spring of 1944
and winter of 1945 when the Soviet Army liberated Budapest, the
Germans, with the help of the Hungarian establishment (Interior
Ministry and the Hungarian gendarmerie), sent nearly a half-mil-
lion Jews to concentration camps. The pro-Nazi fascist Hungarian
government subjected Jews who remained in Budapest to harsh con-
ditions in the ghetto and brutal work as forced laborers. Pillage and
murder were common. Eventually surrounded by Soviet troops,
Budapest became a bombed-out shell of its former self.10

The Hungarian Deaf Jewish Experience

In his annual report for the 1943–1944 school year, Jewish Deaf
School Director Dezso Kanizsai listed fifty-seven student boarders,
mostly deaf (forty-five) and a few blind students (twelve). Among
the deaf students were Peter Farago, Izráel Deutsch, and Bella Pollak,
all of whom survived the war.11
The experience of the three deaf elementary school children and
their respective families is typical of the experience of the Hungar-
ian Jewish population. The Germans and Hungarians transported
Farago and his mother to the Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany;
Deutsch’s parents and all of his brothers and sisters to Auschwitz;
and Pollak’s mother, sister, and aunt to Auschwitz. Deutsch’s mother,
father, and eldest and youngest brothers died in Auschwitz, and
Pollak’s father died as a conscriptee in a forced labor battalion. While
Farago was incarcerated in Bergen-Belsen, Deutsch and Pollak re-
mained in Budapest with other Jewish children, where they moved
frequently—from the Mexico Street School, to an orphanage, back
to the school, and then to cellars located in the central ghetto. The
children endured starvation rations, Allied and Soviet bombing, and
Arrow Cross street violence.
 Hungarian Deaf Jews and the Holocaust 173

Class at the Mexico Street School with Director Dezso Kanizsai in

Budapest. Courtesy of Miklos Klein, Budapest.

All three of the children were born into an era of increased anti-
Semitism. In the decade prior to their birth, the Hungarian Parlia-
ment enacted a Numerus Clausus Act, which restricted the number
of Jews in institutions of higher education to no more than 6 percent
of the student body. In 1932, the Hungarian Prime Minister Gyula
Gömbös depicted Jews as unpatriotic and prone to Bolshevik ten-
dencies. In the mid-1930s, the Arrow Cross, under the leadership of
Ferenc Szálasi, increasingly gained political influence, power, and
eventually parliamentary seats. The fascists advocated the need to
solve the “Jewish question” and to end the inherited privileges of
the conservative aristocrats who dominated Hungarian society and
government. Hungary joined the Axis in November 1940, joined the
invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, and entered the war against the Soviet
Union in June 1941. Increasingly, the government sought to appease
174 John S. Schuchman

the demands of the German government and the Arrow Cross agenda
with anti-Semitic legislation. By 1942, the government limited the
number of Jews in business or the professions to 6 percent, counted
Jews who had converted to Christianity as racial Jews, expropriated
Jewish lands and forests, excluded Jews from the military, and con-
scripted Jewish men into forced labor units.12
However, the war did not go well for the Axis powers. The Ger-
man and Hungarian armies suffered terrible losses on the Russian
front. The Allies advanced in North Africa, Sicily, and prepared to
assault France. One of the Axis partners, Italy, withdrew from the
war. The Horthy regime also explored opportunities to extricate
Hungary from the fighting. Unfortunately, Hitler would not tolerate
such a strategic loss and ordered the German Army to occupy Hun-
gary on March 19, 1944.
Hitler had given primary administrative responsibility for the
Final Solution to the SS under the direction of Heinrich Himmler. As
the chief administrator for Jewish Affairs (subsection IV B-4 of the
Reich Central Security Office), Adolf Eichmann had specific respon-
sibility for the deportation and transportation of European Jews to
the killing camps in the East. With the occupation of Hungary,
Eichmann arrived immediately to oversee the disposition of the Jew-
ish population. Armed with years of experience deporting Jews to
the extermination camps, the SS colonel moved with alacrity. On
March 20, the day after occupation, Eichmann’s deputy called a
meeting of the city’s Jewish institutional directors. 13 The Director of
the Jewish Deaf and Blind School, Dezso Kanizsai, attended the
meeting at the Jewish Boys’ Orphanage. The German deputy, SS Lieu-
tenant Colonel Hermann Krumey, informed the group that all Jew-
ish institutions for children had to close and turn their buildings
over to the German military. All of the children were transferred to
the Jewish Orphanage for Boys.14
Otto Roboz, director of the orphanage, reported that “Dezso
Kanizsai, an excellent special educator, called on me on March 24 to
warn me that the very sensitive blind children would not be able to
fit in with the rest of the children and so he preferred to return them
to their parents’ care. Unfortunately, no one imagined that the fate
 Hungarian Deaf Jews and the Holocaust 175

of the children sent from Budapest to the countryside would be sealed

sooner.”15 At the end of March 1944, the Jewish school for deaf chil-
dren ceased operation.16
Many Jews believed that the war would soon be over and that
the Horthy government would continue to protect them. 17 However,
after German occupation, German sympathizers, especially the Ar-
row Cross party, became the real rulers of Hungary. Adolf Eichmann
personally took charge of the deportation effort; the pro-German
government enacted additional anti-Jewish legislation, required Jews
to wear the yellow star, concentrated Jews in designated places, and
participated in the transportation of Jews out of the country. Hun-
garian authorities transported the Jews out of Hungary where, once
they crossed the border, German authorities took custody. By mid-
summer, they had sent most of the Jews in Hungary outside Budapest
to Nazi concentration camps.18 When School Director Kanizsai, like
other Hungarians, became aware of the deportations from the coun-
tryside, he tried to keep the deaf students together. To a remarkable
extent, Kanizsai succeeded. Despite horrible conditions, Kanizsai
would keep most of the children safe until war’s end.
Bella Pollak was one of the survivors. Born in Romania in 1931,
the young girl became deaf when she was four years old. Her father,
mother, and younger sister could hear. When her father died in the
labor force in 1942, the family moved to Budapest to live with an
aunt and to allow Bella to attend the school for deaf children. 19
Though the pro-German government soon deported her mother and
sister to Auschwitz, Bella remained at the school, but not for long.
In accord with the German order to vacate the building, the deaf
children moved from the Mexico Street School to the Jewish Orphan-
age for Boys on Queen Wilma Street, where they joined other Jewish
children. Kanizsai and his wife went with the children.20
However, some parents insisted that the school return their chil-
dren home. Bella’s younger classmate Peter Farago remembers that
his mother threatened suicide if he did not return home. He re-
turned home to his mother, who was a teacher, and they both wore
the required yellow star. Authorities ordered them to vacate their
apartment and move to the Oroshaza ghetto, where they awaited
176 John S. Schuchman

deportation. Due to Allied bombing of the railroads leading to

Auschwitz, the Nazis diverted their train to the Bergen-Belsen camp
in Germany, where they arrived in early December 1944. Upon ar-
rival, the camp guards separated the young boy from his mother.
Although only ten years old, Peter was big for his age, which possi-
bly contributed to his survival. Because of the mixture of spoken
national languages and his own hearing loss, Farago did not under-
stand most of the events around him. Feeling confused and hungry,
he began to cry, simultaneously rubbing his stomach and pointing
to his mouth.
In an amazing stroke of good fortune, a hearing child of deaf
parents approached Farago and cautioned him to be quiet and stop
the gestures.21 Although they used furtive gestures with each other,
Farago only understood that his new friend’s name was Pavel, that
he was fourteen years old, was from Poland, had deaf parents, and
knew Polish sign language.22 Together, the young boys worked clean-
ing munitions casings. They slept in a mixed-nationality barracks
with boys and girls from the ages of five to fifteen. The older chil-
dren slept in the upper bunks. Pavel and Peter talked in sign/ges-
ture at night, but he did not fully understand why Pavel did not
want him to sign openly.
In later years, Farago recalled that he ignored the awful things
happening around him and focused on finding his mother, whom
he believed to be in another part of the camp. In April 1945, Allied
troops liberated the camp. Farago said goodbye to “my angel” Pavel,
whose family name he never learned. In the company of other Hun-
garians, he began walking home to Hungary. Experiencing a second
stroke of good fortune, Farago found his mother at the Hungarian
town of Gyór near the Austrian border. Realizing that her son had
survived, she fainted when she saw him. Continuing on to Oroshaza,
the two discovered that looters had stripped their home of its con-
tents. They then moved to Budapest where Farago’s mother began
to work for the Jewish American Joint Distribution Committee and
Farago resumed his education at the Mexico Street School.23
Unlike Farago, classmate Izráel Deutsch remained in Budapest
throughout the war. Born in 1934 in the farming village of Komjata
 Hungarian Deaf Jews and the Holocaust 177

(at that time a part of Czechoslovakia, which Germany returned to

Hungary in 1939), Deutsch came from a prosperous Orthodox Jew-
ish family that owned its home, a working farm, and a general retail
business. The only deaf child in a family of ten siblings, his parents
opted to send him to the Mexico Street School in Budapest. There
was a government school for deaf children much closer to Komjata,
but the family believed that the school was anti-Semitic and knew
that the school food was not kosher. Instead, Izráel went to Budapest
in 1940 where he entered kindergarten with Peter Farago. During
the school year, he learned to pronounce the Magyar (Hungarian)
alphabet and a few words.24 This curriculum was typical for schools
for deaf children in Hungary.
Completing his first-year introduction to oral education, Deutsch
returned home to Komjata. Previously, he and his family had used
gestures and “home sign” to communicate among themselves. 25
Greeting his father orally in Magyar with “How are you, father?”
his progress pleased the family. The child’s greeting was symbolic
of his educational achievement and promised future improvement
for communication in and out of the family setting.
However, broader changes in society ultimately harmed the fam-
ily. Anti-Semitic legislation devastated the family’s fortunes. In 1941,
the Horthy government confiscated the Deutsch family farm and
business. Left with only their house and a few cows, they managed
to survive through a system of barter for necessities. Despite limited
funds, the family managed to send Izráel back to Budapest to con-
tinue his studies.
Deutsch became an excellent student. Like Farago and Pollak,
he received the top grade of “1” in all of his subjects.26 The students
attended class from Sunday through Friday. Although the school did
not have its own chapel, the children attended temple services on
Saturdays at an orphanage for hearing Jewish girls. The deaf stu-
dents did not begin the study of Hebrew until the fourth grade.
When the Germans occupied Hungary in March 1944, Deutsch
was ten years of age. In later years, he remembered himself as big
for his age like his friend Peter Farago, healthy, and “politically
aware.” On April 5, when the Horthy government ordered all Jews
178 John S. Schuchman

to wear a yellow star, the female students sewed them for their class-
mates and staff. The next month, the police closed the school in ac-
cord with the order by Eichmann’s deputy, Hermann Krumey. Many
parents, like Peter Farago’s mother, came to take their children home
because they believed they would be safer. Deutsch’s parents did
not come. Although the young boy was unaware of it, the govern-
ment already had deported his family to Auschwitz. In compliance
with the Nazi directive, the school transferred the remaining fifteen
children, who included Deutsch and Bella Pollak, to the Jewish Or-
phanage for Boys; although Director Kanizsai accompanied the deaf
children, the orphanage mixed the deaf students in with hearing Jew-
ish children. In contrast to Director Kanizsai’s earlier concern that
blind students would not function well in the orphanage, Deutsch
felt that the deaf students got along well with the hearing orphans.
During that springtime, the Allied air forces began to bomb the city.
The children practiced evacuation drills and hid in basement shel-
ters. Eventually, the orphanage suffered a bomb attack and the build-
ing collapsed. Deutsch became separated from the other deaf chil-
dren and sought refuge. Budapest Jewish families took individual
orphans into their homes and within a very short time, the young
deaf boy found assistance.
Deutsch went to live with a family with a hard of hearing grand-
father—Deutsch remained there until one of his teachers, Charlotte
Balkanyi, found him. She took the young boy to her home in Buda.27
He remembered her as his favorite teacher and a woman who al-
ways “wore a mink coat.” The Balkanyi family was an example of
the successful Jewish middle class that had allied itself with the Hun-
garian aristocracy and government.28 Active in banking, law, and
industry, the Balkanyi family protected the young deaf boy. How-
ever, it was dangerous for even this privileged family to provide aid
to other Jews. Family members arranged for Deutsch to be placed
with an International Swedish Red Cross camp. His teacher returned
him to Pest where, to his surprise, he discovered that the Red Cross
camp was actually on the grounds of the Mexico Street School.
Several forces had combined to locate the camp at the site of the
Jewish deaf school. Most importantly, the school was near a train
 Hungarian Deaf Jews and the Holocaust 179

station, which made it a convenient location for transportation to

the camps or other locations outside of Hungary. Additionally, both
Zionist organizations and the international community became ac-
tive in various efforts to alleviate the situation for Hungarian Jews.
In January 1943, a Jewish relief and rescue committee (Vaada)
for Budapest was organized. Its leaders, Otto Komoly, Rezso
Kasztner, and Joel Brand, had contacts with foreign Jews and the
Germans. The Zionists and Nazi officials negotiated a controversial
deal to exchange Jews for supplies. Eventually, they transported 1,684
Jews to Bergen-Belsen and then on to Switzerland. 29 Before their
transport, these Jews were kept at a specially created camp on the
grounds of the school for deaf children. Until Eichmann left Hungary,
SS guards protected these Jews from Arrow Cross abuses. “Because of
its reputation as a haven, many Jews sought refuge there . . . at one
time, it harbored 3,600 Jews, including several hundred deserters from
the labor service companies.”30
The international community also became active. In January 1944,
American President Franklin Roosevelt created a War Refugee Board
(WRB), which urged neutral countries, the Vatican, and the Interna-
tional Red Cross (IRC) to help the Jews until the arrival of Soviet
troops. Sweden offered supplies and children’s homes as well as ref-
uge for Jews with papers to emigrate to Sweden or Palestine. The
Swedes sent Raoul Wallenberg to foster rescue efforts. The United
States asked that the IRC, funded by the WRB, be given responsibil-
ity for Jews in the ghetto. By late summer, the Horthy government
agreed that the IRC would be responsible for the Jews. The Zionist
leader Otto Komoly received an IRC appointment as head of Section
A, which was responsible for children. They created nearly forty
children’s homes that provided protection to approximately 5,000
children and 2,000 adults.31
After the Allied bombing of Budapest in April, the government
developed a plan for a ghetto similar to Warsaw. Meanwhile, on May
3, a decree ordered the vacating of Jewish apartments for the benefit
of Christian victims of bombing. The decree required all Jews to move
into buildings identified with a sign painted with a yellow star. Jews
moved from approximately 10,000 buildings to 2,600 “yellow star”
180 John S. Schuchman

buildings throughout the city. By the end of November and early

December, the ghetto was ready. The required yellow star badges
and house signs made Jews easy targets for fascists to rob and kill. It
is ironic that many Jews viewed the grounds of the Mexico Street
Deaf School as a safe haven. The majority of people at the camp could
hear, but deaf adult Jews from various parts of the city had sought
refuge there. The school represented a familiar and safe place.
When Deutsch returned to the Mexico Street IRC camp from the
Balkanyi home in Pest, the young deaf boy rejoiced to see his class-
mates. The camp extended from the school building onto the
grounds. Surrounded by a fence that displayed an IRC sign, the camp
had sections for adults and children. Kanizsai served as director of
the children’s section.
In the camp, children received food rations and inoculations for
tetanus and typhoid. The young student Izráel Deutsch knew the
school and its environs well. Because of his familiarity with the neigh-
borhood and despite his age, Deutsch became a successful entrepre-
neur. Observing that vendors sometimes sold bakery goods in the
camp, he realized that this was an opportunity to make money. He
regularly removed his yellow star so that he could visit stores out-
side the camp forbidden to Jews. He bought food, sundries, and
newspapers, which he resold in the camp for a modest profit.32 This
comparatively calm period did not last.
In mid-October 1944, the Germans staged a coup and installed
the Arrow Cross leader Ferenc Szálasi as the Hungarian Prime Min-
ister. Szálasi ordered all Jewish men from ages sixteen to sixty and
all Jewish women from ages sixteen to forty to serve in forced labor
units for the fortification of the city. Arrow Cross militia and armed
hooligans roamed the city.33 Responding to a rumor that the Mexico
Street IRC camp sheltered a large number of runaway labor service-
men, Arrow Cross militia came to the camp and tore down the Red
Cross sign. They sent both disabled and elderly persons into the
Mexico Street school building. Deaf people congregated on the sec-
ond floor of the school. While there, fighting broke out between par-
tisans on the roof of the school and the Arrow Cross.34 Eventually
the Arrow Cross confronted the deaf people and ordered them to
 Hungarian Deaf Jews and the Holocaust 181

surrender. They hit Deutsch, kicked and escorted him outside to the
tram line on the street. There, the young boy saw another deaf stu-
dent, Leo Wachlenberg, shot to death with six bullets and many
wounded and bloody people. 35 In accord with the fascist order to
put Jewish men and women to work on the city’s fortifications, the
armed militia separated the adults from the children below the age
of sixteen. They put both the hearing and deaf children in the cellar.
The next day, militiamen ordered the children to clean up the build-
ing by a specific time or be shot. Afterwards, the Arrow Cross es-
corted the children to Klauzal Square, which became a part of the
ghetto. Allowed to go with the children, Kanizsai advised the chil-
dren to stay together. Moved into an empty apartment building, the
children worked at a variety of janitorial and cleaning jobs. There
were several deaf children included in this group. Bella Pollak was
one of them. She recalled this as the time “we lived in cellars.” Al-
though he recalled the need to fight with a hearing youngster over a
blanket, Deutsch felt that the hearing and deaf children got along
well. Existing on a breakfast of ersatz coffee and garbage refuse, he
lost weight but did not become ill as did many others. He also washed
himself periodically in order to reduce infestations of lice. Arrow
Cross gangs and their dogs roamed the streets of the ghetto. As the
Russian Army closed in, the fascists placed bombs throughout the
ghetto and destroyed many buildings. The terrified deaf children
could feel the vibrations of bombs and see the exchange of firepower
in the evening sky. On the morning of January 18, Soviet soldiers
woke Deutsch up with their flashlights. He recognized the Red Star
on their hats.36
After the successful liberation of the city by Soviet troops, Dezso
Kanizsai gathered the children and returned to the Mexico Street
School. When they arrived, the building structure was intact but
supplies of food and drink were gone. Izráel Deutsch recalled that
he went into a deep sleep in a bed infested with lice and bedbugs.
Kanizsai went to the child’s bed daily for several weeks and forced
him awake to build up his strength. The Russians provided no help.
Worse, drunken Russian soldiers made the streets unsafe. Eventu-
ally, in the summer of 1945, the children received food and supplies
182 John S. Schuchman

Leo Wachlenberg, unable to hear an order to stop,

was shot during an Arrow Cross raid at the
Mexico Street School, 1944. Courtesy of Bella
Liptay, Budapest.

from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.37 Kanizsai

gave Deutsch and some of the other boys the responsibility for bring-
ing food and supplies from the Joint distribution center to the school.
The school re-opened in the fall of 1946 with three teachers and ap-
proximately thirty students. Izráel Deutsch became a student once
again and assisted Kanizsai with responsibilities for general school
custodial and maintenance work.
Deutsch later visited a survivor information center and found
the names of his brother and sister on a survivors’ list. They eventu-
ally visited the school and told him about the other siblings who
had moved to Israel, Italy, Sweden, and the United States. They did
not mention their parents. The Farago family—Peter, his mother, and
grandmother—moved to Budapest, and Peter returned to the school
 Hungarian Deaf Jews and the Holocaust 183

in 1946. His mother obtained a job at the Joint where she learned
that Deutsch’s father, mother, and younger brother had died at
Auschwitz. Deutsch learned this from his deaf friend and classmate.38
Only when he visited Auschwitz in the summer of 2000 did Deutsch
learn that his eldest brother, a university student in Bratislava, also
died at the camp.
When the school re-opened in 1946, Farago and Deutsch were
twelve years old. Pollak was fifteen years of age. About a quarter of
their previous classmates had been deported and died.39 Deutsch
was an orphan. Farago commuted to the school from his mother ’s
Budapest apartment. Pollak’s mother and sister returned from
Auschwitz to live with cousins in Budapest; however, there was in-
sufficient room for Bella, who continued to board at the school.
In 1947, there was discussion that the school’s orphans be sent
to Palestine. Both Deutsch and Pollak wanted to go. Initially, Direc-
tor Kanizsai agreed with the plan. The Zionist organization and the
Joint agreed to assist with the move; however, the director later
changed his mind. Without the director’s authorization, the orphans
remained in Hungary. In later years, Deutsch recalled that his favor-
ite teacher, Charlotte Balkanyi, disagreed with the director’s deci-
sion and resigned from the school. She later moved to England.40
That same year, both Farago and Deutsch turned thirteen. In
previous years, students had studied Hebrew and some were bar
mitzvahed.41 However, neither Farago nor Deutsch experienced this
traditional religious rite. Farago reports that he does not understand
Hebrew, but Deutsch’s experience was different. Deutsch specifically
recalled reciting prayers at Passover 1947, Chanukah 1947, Purim
1948, and Passover 1948, which impressed visitors who made dona-
tions to the school. Despite his recitals, Deutsch reported that he
also did not understand Hebrew. The young boy experienced feel-
ings of confusion and disillusionment about religion. Even though
his father possessed a rabbinical education, prayers had not helped
the family. Moreover, the Communists and the Soviet regime deni-
grated the existence of God. He refused to study for a bar mitzvah.42
In 1947, Communists took control of the government. 43 Within a
year, the government closed down the Joint and religious-based
184 John S. Schuchman

education. In the Hungarian system of education, students normally

began vocational studies at age fourteen.44 Bella Pollak studied sew-
ing and became a seamstress; Peter Farago studied optics and be-
came a lensmaker; and Izráel Deutsch worked as a machinist ap-
prentice.45 The Mexico Street School had not offered an eighth-grade
curriculum, so Deutsch attended the state-operated school for deaf
children in Pest in 1949. Since he was an orphan and unable to re-
turn home for school vacations, he convinced the school principal to
allow him to visit the local deaf club on weekends. This enabled
Deutsch to interact with the deaf adult community, where he found
a second home.
As a result of his contacts at the deaf club, Deutsch met another
deaf man, Kalman Kentner, who was from a deaf family. The Kentner
family was Catholic. The father, Antal, and mother, Rozalia, had three
children—two deaf sons and one hearing daughter, Vilma. During
the war years, the father served as secretary of the Hungarian Deaf
Association. The deaf community knew what was happening to deaf
Jews: “Everyone knew . . . if they did not, they were stupid.” 46 How-
ever, this family acted on their awareness. They helped a Jewish deaf
man’s family. He and his hearing son were taken, but the Kentner
family hid the man’s Christian deaf wife and two hearing daugh-
ters. The Jewish deaf man died but when the hearing son returned
after the war, he presented Vilma with a gift of silver in thanks for
her family’s help.47
As they had done during the war, the Kentner family provided
assistance to the young deaf orphan Deutsch. 48 His deaf friend
Kalman helped him find a job at the local gas works and Deutsch
finally moved out of the Mexico Street dormitory to live with the
Kenter family for three years, 1953–1956. 49
Although trained to work in the printing trade, Antal Kentner
worked in a factory during the war.50 Technically, any deaf person
could have been assigned to a labor brigade. In 1939, national de-
fense legislation stated that all Hungarian citizens over twenty-one
years of age and permanently unsuitable for military service “could
be compelled to engage in public labor service in special labor camps
for a period not to exceed three months.”51 Originally, the system
 Hungarian Deaf Jews and the Holocaust 185

provided men for military construction assignments, but as the anti-

Jewish climate worsened, the “labor service” represented much of
the worst that the Hungarian government was prepared to do against
Hungarian Jews. The length of service became extended to two years
for Jews. Authorities stamped labor service certificates with the let-
ter “Z” for Zsido [Jew]. After 1942, Jewish workers wore yellow
armbands and “racial” Jews (Christian converts or Christian chil-
dren of a Jewish parent) wore white armbands, which made them
targets for anti-Semitic thugs.52
As the Hungarian government increasingly transported ever
more Jews to the Germans for slave labor, the Hungarian labor ser-
vice ironically became a safe haven for Jews. Despite abuse and
murder, Hungarian labor service workers usually remained in Hun-
gary, thus avoiding the mass deportation of Jews to the extermina-
tion camps throughout the summer of 1944. With pressure from the
United States, Sweden, and the International Red Cross, Hungarian
Regent Horthy wanted to keep the labor servicemen in Hungary.53
But after the Arrow Cross coup in October 1944, the Hungarian fas-
cists went to the “yellow star” buildings and ordered all men be-
tween the ages of sixteen and sixty to report for national defense
service. When the Soviet offensive began on November 2, women
from the ages of sixteen to fifty who could sew were also called to
the labor service.54 Deaf Jews served, too.
Peter Farago, Izráel Deutsch, and Bella Pollak were too young
for the labor service. But former Mexico Street School students Miklos
Klein, Judit Konig, and Klara Erdosi had been born in 1923. Each
performed labor service. All three attended the Mexico Street School
for eight years. Klein trained to be a dental technician; Konig a seam-
stress; and Erdosi a hairdresser.55
After graduation from the Jewish deaf school, Klein became a
dental apprentice. When his dental master, who also was Jewish,
committed suicide as a result of the anti-Jewish laws, Klein became
a manual laborer in the upholstery trade. Leaving the town of
Satoraljaujhely near the Slovakian border, Klein lived in Budapest
when the Nazi occupation began in mid-March 1944. From May, he
served in the labor brigade in the small town of Jaszbereny to the
186 John S. Schuchman

east of Budapest. Klein knew of fifteen deaf Jewish men in the labor
service. At first, the deaf workers tried to stay together but eventu-
ally were interspersed among a brigade of more than 2,000 Jewish
laborers. A 1944 photograph of ten of the deaf labor servicemen
shows them wearing soft military-style caps, a mixture of military
and civilian overcoats and scarves, and the required yellow
armbands. On five different occasions, Klein escaped from the labor
brigade only to be rearrested. When an escape opportunity arose, he
simply removed his yellow star and armband and left.56
He usually headed for Budapest, where he traveled between the
ghetto and the Mexico Street School. At the school, deaf individuals
tried to aid each other as best they could. In one case, a deaf woman
named Edith Weisz was living in a ghetto cellar with her infant and
hearing mother when a Christian deaf visitor told her that there were
many deaf people at the Mexico Street School. Thinking this might
be a better place for her and her deaf infant, Weisz went to the school,
but she became frightened when she realized that there would not
be enough food for her and her child. Like Miklos Klein, her deaf
husband Miksa Weisz had been conscripted into the labor brigade.
Klein, who was hiding at the school, volunteered to take her and the
child back to the ghetto. They removed their yellow stars and trav-
eled by tram. When they saw Arrow Cross members, they got off
and walked back to the ghetto.57
Throughout the war, Klein suffered abuse at the hands of Arrow
Cross militiamen, but he pointed out that they were hearing indi-
viduals. There were also deaf members of the Arrow Cross, who
dressed in green shirts (the traditional uniform of Arrow Cross mem-
bers) and carried guns. Some he knew personally, but they never
harassed him. Shortly after he accompanied Mrs. Weisz back to the
ghetto, the Arrow Cross came to the school and took him to the train
for deportation.58
At the railroad station, Klein believed he was being transported
to a death camp. The guards packed about eighty persons into the
train car. Sixteen-year-old Sandor Weicher and Klein were the only
deaf persons in the railroad car. Given salty rice to eat, they had no
water. Three or four persons died in their railroad car before they
 Hungarian Deaf Jews and the Holocaust 187

Jewish deaf members of the Labor Brigade, 1944: Fedor Láng, György
Konig, Imre Meterny, Antal Löwy, Istrán Sinko, Pal Keleman, Samú
Foldvári, Lajos Klein, György Csillay, and Miska Weisz. Courtesy of Judit
Konig, Budapest.

arrived at the Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany.59 Altogether, four-

teen deaf Jews were sent to Bergen-Belsen from the Mexico Street
School. 60 After searches and confiscation of their personal belong-
ings, the deaf Hungarians donned camp uniforms and ended up in
the same barracks, where they remained until April 1945. They com-
municated in sign language and stayed together “through good and
bad times in the camp”.61
Unlike Auschwitz and others, Bergen-Belsen was not an exter-
mination camp. But by late 1944 and early 1945, the arrival of thou-
sands of new prisoners led to overcrowding and unsanitary condi-
tions, which resulted in a typhus epidemic. When British military
forces liberated the camp, they found nearly 60,000 seriously ill pris-
oners.62 All of the deaf prisoners had been selected for work. Most
of them were twenty to thirty years of age. Klein was twenty-one.
Weicher was one of two sixteen-year-old deaf prisoners. The two
oldest deaf Jews died in the camp. The camp had a crematorium and
188 John S. Schuchman

Weicher reported that guards sent Erno Galambos and him there but
fortunately for them, the chamber no longer worked.63 Sick and un-
derweight, Klein recalled that he cried a lot but shortly before lib-
eration, guards sent him to another camp to avoid nearby Allied
troops. On the road, his deaf friend Lajos Klein died, and his body
was abandoned there. Stopping at a German village, the group ran
into American troops, who then liberated the prisoners. Allied troops
sent Miklos Klein to a sanitarium with other Jewish deaf prisoners
to recover their health.64
The two women in Klein’s class at the Jewish deaf institute were
Klara Erdosi and Judit Konig. Like Klein’s, Erdosi’s family could all
hear. After graduation and subsequent vocational training, she be-
came a hairdresser, but the government conscripted her into a labor
brigade in September 1944. She was the only deaf person in the la-
bor unit and they released her after one month. Her parents ob-
tained Swedish documents for the family but the authorities paid
no attention to them. Her father and mother went to the ghetto
and Erdosi and her hearing sister proceeded to the Ravensbrück
camp in Germany.65
Ravensbrück was the largest concentration camp for women. By
1944, nearly 70,000 prisoners engaged in forced labor at Ravensbrück
and its subcamps.66 No one in Klara’s family used sign language, so
she depended upon speechreading, but on the dark and crowded
train, she could obtain no information and had no idea where the
train was going. After eight days, the train arrived at the camp. The
Hungarians were interspersed with Polish and Russian women,
whom Erdosi could not understand. Beaten frequently by German
guards and Polish kapos, the women turned over their personal pos-
sessions and clothes. Her head shaven, Erdosi donned a uniform,
which had a cross on the back and a sewn number. She shared a bed
of a three-tiered bunk with a doctor and her daughter. Erdosi’s hear-
ing sister lived in the same barracks, but in a different bunk.67
Erdosi and her sister stayed at Ravensbrück for about two-and-
half months until January 1945. There were other deaf Jewish women
in the camp. Erdosi knew three: Magda Katz, Mrs. Armin Konig,
and Mrs. Andor Revesz. With the subsequent arrival of German
 Hungarian Deaf Jews and the Holocaust 189

“high” officers, her sister advised Erdosi to separate herself from

the other deaf prisoners. The deaf prisoners disappeared, presum-
ably to their death since they never returned after the war. Although
the Germans knew that Erdosi was deaf, her sister convinced them
that Klara could work. Along with about 4,000 other prisoners, Erdosi
and her sister were sent to another camp near Leipzig, Germany.68
At the Leipzig subcamp, the women prisoners worked at a mu-
nitions factory, but the camp officials would not permit Erdosi to
work there when they discovered her deafness. Like some hearing
persons unfamiliar with the abilities of deaf persons, the guards prob-
ably adhered to the general misperception that deaf people could
not work.69 Fearing that Erdosi might be killed if she did not work,
her sister argued again on her behalf. The officials relented and al-
lowed Erdosi to work but not at the munitions factory. She became
the camp gravedigger. From time to time, other prisoners would be
assigned to help; however, Erdosi was the only prisoner assigned to
dig graves continuously. Over the next few months, she would dig
fifty-seven graves. Bodies would be carried to the graves and then
Erdosi would climb out. When not digging graves, the guards as-
signed her to camp janitorial duties. In an ironic turn of events, the
guards learned that Erdosi had worked as a hairdresser before the
war. As a result, she added weekly hair treatments for the female
guards to her list of assigned tasks in exchange for extra food.70
As the Allied troops approached, the Germans forced the pris-
oners to march; however, one by one, the German guards began to
disappear until finally, the prisoners realized that they were free.
With other prisoners, Erdosi and her sister made their way to the
badly damaged railway station in Leipzig. Still dressed in her camp
uniform, Erdosi entered a railway station cafe and begged for a beer,
which she was given. Her sister and fellow prisoners admired her
courage. The railway station also had a Red Cross Center, where
they saw some Schwabian soldiers (units of ethnic German-Hun-
garian citizens). The soldiers told the Hungarian women not to be
frightened because they too were on the way home. The women ac-
companied them. On the last part of the trip, they took a train and
Erdosi knew she finally was on Hungarian soil when she saw a
190 John S. Schuchman

Magyar sign that informed passengers that “It is forbidden to put

your head out the train window.” In Budapest, the Erdosi sisters
found their parents still alive.71
Unlike her classmates Klein and Erdosi, Judit Konig did not go
to a camp. She remained in Budapest throughout the war. Also un-
like her classmates, Konig came from a deaf family. Her parents were
deaf and her brother was hard of hearing. Her family’s home was
near the Doheny Street Synagogue, the area that became the ghetto.
With German occupation, authorities conscripted Konig for three
months (April to June) labor service as a seamstress, where she sewed
German Army uniforms. Shortly after her return home, she and her
brother were taken to jail on July 4; he remained for four days and
she for two days. Konig suspected that this was because her brother
was a communist supporter. Afterwards, authorities sent her to an-
other labor brigade in Kobanya, a Budapest suburb. She was the only
deaf person in a brigade of 150 people. She ran away and returned
to the family apartment. The Germans arrested her brother again. A
family friend, who was a policeman, reported that the Gestapo beat
and killed Konig’s brother. Konig remained with her father, who was
a goldsmith.72
With the fascist government in place in October, the Arrow Cross
required all men from sixteen to sixty and all women from sixteen to
fifty to report for labor service. Jews were taken to sports fields and
organized into labor brigades.73 Authorities took Konig on October
23 to the Kisok sports field. Once again, she managed to escape and
returned to the family apartment. A week later, authorities trans-
ported her father to Hamburg, Germany, where the Konig family
believed that he was thrown into the sea as a subject of survivor
experiments. He died.74
In early December, the family obtained documents from Raoul
Wallenberg. Like other Budapest Jews, the Konig women believed
that the Mexico Street School and grounds were safer than their apart-
ment in the ghetto. Konig, her mother, and her grandmother went to
Mexico Street; Judit and her mother joined other deaf people, but
her grandmother went to a nearby nursing home. On December 14,
the Arrow Cross militia barged into the house. Ignoring the Swedish
 Hungarian Deaf Jews and the Holocaust 191

passports issued by Wallenberg, the Arrow Cross took away their

foreign currency, beat them, and returned them to their apartment
in the ghetto. Upon their return, they discovered that the apartment
had been looted and Konig recalled that there were twenty-five
corpses in one of the bedrooms. Among the bodies, Konig found her
dead grandfather.75
In January, the Soviet Army bombarded Budapest. The Arrow
Cross horrors continued. On January 4, 1945, soldiers took hundreds
of Jewish women to the Danube where the fast-flowing river would
disperse the bodies after execution. Konig was one of the many
women shot. Fortunately, she and a few others managed to survive.
Bloody from three gunshot wounds, she ran through the neighbor-
hoods and received help from a stranger who bandaged her wounds.

Judit Konig at the Danube River, scene of Arrow Cross executions.

Courtesy of Judit Konig, Budapest.
192 John S. Schuchman

When she returned to the family apartment, a Jewish doctor who

lived in the building took her to the ghetto hospital. They had no
medicine except for iodine. With the arrival of Soviet troops a few
weeks later in mid-January, she removed her yellow star and even-
tually received operations to remove the bullets. She asked to keep
the bullets so that she could prove that both Germans and Hungar-
ians participated in the atrocities at the Danube River. The impor-
tant men in her life died: her brother, her grandfather, her father, and
her fiancé. She immediately obtained employment as a seamstress in
a Soviet factory, where she worked for the next twenty-eight years.76

Conclusion
In the summer of 1998, the editors of this anthology invited
former Mexico Street students Judit Konig, Klara Erdosi, Miklos
Klein, Peter Farago, and their friend and interpreter Vilma Dostal to
Washington, D.C. to attend a conference, “Deaf People and Hitler ’s
Europe, 1933-1945,” sponsored by Gallaudet University and the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In Washington, they met
another school alumnus, Harry Dunai (né Iszráel Deutsch). A panel
of these retired survivors shared their stories at the conference. These
stories plus interviews with them and several other Jewish deaf sur-
vivors that we conducted in Budapest in the summer of 1997 and
with Dunai in 1999 are the basis of this chapter. What do their sto-
ries tell us about the experience of deaf people and the Shoah?
Most importantly, their stories represent a record. Deaf people
were victims of the Holocaust and their stories have not been widely
shared. The war devastated Hungary, the Hungarian people, and
the Hungarian deaf Jewish community. In a January 1947 letter ad-
dressed to the American deaf community, officers of the Deaf Sport
Club of Budapest asked for donations of sports equipment. In the
letter, they reported on the deaths of several Hungarian sportsmen
who had been active in international deaf community athletic com-
petitions before the war. “There are many others, all together about
150 Jewish deaf members.”77 Forty-five years later, a group of twenty,
mostly elderly deaf Jews took advantage of the fall of communism
 Hungarian Deaf Jews and the Holocaust 193

and created the Hungarian Organization of Jewish Deaf (HOJD) in

1992 at Budapest. In memory of the fiftieth anniversary of the Holo-
caust, the HOJD placed a commemorative plaque on the wall of the
Mexico Street School in 1994. The building currently is a primary
school and dormitory for disabled children.78 Beyond these two sepa-
rate events, little has been written about the experience of the Hun-
garian deaf Jews.
Although deafness complicated an already difficult set of war-
time circumstances, the Nazis and the native Hungarian fascists per-
secuted these deaf survivors because they were Jewish, not deaf.
Once enmeshed within the Holocaust experience, deafness caused
additional problems. Arrow Cross militiamen shot Izsráel Deutsch’s
classmate when the deaf boy failed to hear and respond to a com-
mand to stop. Klara Erdosi and her sister feared for the young deaf
woman’s life when camp guards did not believe that a deaf person
could perform adequate work in a slave-labor factory.
Deafness per se did not result in automatic harm. Even though
in Germany itself, Nazi theories of racial hygiene resulted in man-
datory registration in health courts and the possibility of steriliza-
tion or abortion, this does not seem to have been applied elsewhere
in war-torn Europe. If the Axis powers had been victorious, one can
speculate that eugenic practices might have expanded. Clearly in
Hungary, the fascists included deaf Jews in labor service brigades.
Miklos Klein, Klara Erdosi, Judit Konig, and other deaf persons all
worked in these slave labor units. Although the deaf children at the
Mexico Street School suffered, they were not treated badly because
they were deaf. In fact, authorities allowed the school superinten-
dent Kanizsai and his wife to remain with the children and super-
vise their care. Finally, several survivors recalled that there were deaf
individuals who served as members of the Arrow Cross.
The survivors’ experiences in the camps are not uniform. More-
over, none of these particular survivors were in a death camp like
Auschwitz. Although many people died at Bergen-Belsen and
Ravensbrück, these camps were not primarily extermination camps.
Some people thought that it was unwise to be visibly deaf. Certainly,
camp prisoners avoided unwanted attention from guards. Use of sign
194 John S. Schuchman

language was one visible way to receive such attention. Pavel, the
hearing child of deaf parents, advised Peter Farago not to gesture or
use sign language at Bergen-Belsen. Klara Erdosi’s hearing sister told
her to separate herself from the other three deaf women in their camp.
Klara did not see these women again in the camp, and they never
returned after the war. Yet Miklos Klein reported that he was in
Bergen-Belsen with a dozen or more other deaf persons. Some of
these men died, but they were the eldest and youngest of the group.
A sense of place is very important in the deaf community. Ninety
percent of all deaf persons are born into a family of individuals who
can hear, which often means that the deaf member is alone and faces
difficult communication problems. As a result, places such as a deaf
school, a deaf church, or a deaf club, where deaf people can interact
and communicate more freely, take on added significance.
In the case of the Hungarian deaf Jews, the Mexico Street School
occupied a central place in the lives of the survivors. Although all of
the survivors readily identified themselves as Jews, none of them
talked about synagogues or rabbis. None of them expressed strong
religious beliefs. Several mentioned that they had attended the deaf
club in Budapest or participated in sports activities, but this appar-
ently stopped with the Nazi occupation. In short, the traditional
places one would expect to find in the deaf community were absent
save one. Nearly all the survivors had attended the Jewish school
for deaf children on Mexico Street.
When Miklos Klein escaped from labor brigade service, he usu-
ally ran to Mexico Street. When Edith Weisz wanted help for herself
and her infant son, she traveled to the school. When the authorities
transported Judit Konig’s father to Germany, she took her mother
and grandmother to the school. When the countryside deportations
occurred, school Director Kanizsai kept the children together as best
he could. When Charlotte Balkanyi could no longer keep Izráel
Deutsch with her family in Buda, she escorted the young child across
the river into Pest and the Mexico Street School.
Despite the presence of guards and periodic attacks by the Ar-
row Cross, the Mexico Street School represented a safe haven for the
deaf Jews of Budapest. It was a place to meet other deaf people—old
 Hungarian Deaf Jews and the Holocaust 195

and young—and to exchange information. Eventually, the Arrow

Cross closed the building and sent its deaf occupants to camps or
back to the ghetto. But as soon as liberation occurred, the children
came back and the school re-opened until its final closing in 1948 by
the new communist regime.

Notes
1. For a general treatment of historical attitudes towards disability within
Judaism, see Judith Z. Abrams, Judaism and Disability, Portrayals in Ancient
Texts from the Tanach through the Bavli (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet Univer-
sity Press, 1998).
2. Judit Frigyesi, “The Effect of the Holocaust on the Study of East-
European Jewish Music,” in The Holocaust in Hungary, Fifty Years Later, ed.
Randolph L. Braham and Atztila Pok (New York: Columbia University Press,
1997), 630–31.
3. See Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, From Euthanasia to
the Final Solution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
Although the Nazis operated their T4 program throughout the war in
Germany itself, there was not the same opportunity to implement these
programs in other parts of conquered Europe. Since Nazi Germany was not
the only country to sterilize “abnormal” individuals, one could speculate
that these programs would have been expanded in a successfully Nazi-
dominated post-war Europe.
4. See Horst Biesold, Crying Hands: Eugenics and Deaf People in Nazi
Germany, trans. William Sayers (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University
Press, 1999).
5. Although some deaf Jews who had understandable speech managed to
become bar mitzvahed at their schools, they rarely were allowed to read
from the Torah when they returned to their home communities. Deaf Jews
without understandable speech were not bar mitzvahed. Typically, deaf Jews
were not married in a synagogue. These are a few examples of the
marginalization of deaf Jews. For an interesting example of the experience of
a Russian Jewish deaf immigrant to the United States, see Harvey Barash
and Eva Barash Dicker, Our Father Abe: The Story of a Deaf Shoe Repairman
(Madison, Wisc.: ABAR Press, 1991).
6. Histories have been published for each school except the one at
Budapest. For example, see David Jackson, ed., The History of the Residential
School for Jewish Deaf Children (London: Reunion of the Jewish Deaf School
Committee, 1992).
7. William O. McCagg, Jr., “Some Problems in the History of Deaf
Hungarians,” in Deaf History Unveiled, Interpretations from the New Scholar-
196 John S. Schuchman

ship, ed. John V. Van Cleve (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press,
1993), 252–61.
8. Dezso Kanizsai, ed., 1943–44 Yearbook, trans. Michael Mayer
(Budapest: Jewish Deaf-Mute National Institute and Sir Ignaz Wechselman
and Zsofia Neushloss Educational Institute for the Blind, 1944), 3.
9. David Cesarani, ed., Genocide and Rescue, The Holocaust in Hungary,
1944 (Oxford: Berg, 1997), 5.
10. Professor Randolph L. Braham of Columbia University is considered
the doyen of Hungarian Holocaust scholars. For a recent example of his
analysis, see Randolph L. Braham, “The Holocaust in Hungary: A Retrospec-
tive Analysis,” in Genocide and Rescue, The Holocaust in Hungary, 1944, ed.
David Cesarani (Oxford: Berg, 1997), 29–46.
11. For personal reasons after the war, Izráel Deutsch changed his name
to Harry Dunai. He believed that Izráel identified him as a Jew, and Deutsch
was a reminder of his Holocaust experience. He is now retired and lives in
California.
12. For general descriptions of the anti-Semitic legislation, see Randolph
L. Braham and Scott Miller, eds., The Nazis’ Last Victims, The Holocaust in
Hungary (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1998) and Yehuda Bauer, American
Jewry and the Holocaust: A History of the American Jewish Joint Distribution
Committee (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981).
13. It is not clear how many directors attended. In the 1936–1937 school
year, there were twenty-five Jewish educational institutions located in
Budapest. See Aron Moskovits, Jewish Education in Hungary (1848–1948)
(New York: Bloch, 1964), 280–81.
14. Otto Roboz, “The Red Cross Home of the Jewish Orphanage for Boys
in Budapest,” in The Tragedy of Hungarian Jewry: Essays, Documents, Deposi-
tions, ed. Randolph L. Braham (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986),
295–96.
15. Ibid., 296.
16. Kanizsai, 1943–44 Yearbook, 4.
17. Horthy was the Regent of Hungary. He appointed prime ministers
who administered government affairs. Despite the fact that Horthy did not
satisfy Hitler’s demands, scholars agree that the Regent was pro-German,
authoritarian, and supported anti-Semitic legislation. For a summary, see
Michael R. Marrus, The Holocaust in History (New York: Penguin, 1987), 75–83.
18. Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945, 10th ed.
(New York: Bantam, 1986), 379–83.
19. Bella Liptay (née Pollak), interview by John S. Schuchman [hereafter
the author], video recording, Budapest, Hungary, 25 July, 1997. Schuchman
conducted these interviews. A Hungarian interpreted from the author’s
spoken English to spoken Hungarian, which was then interpreted into
 Hungarian Deaf Jews and the Holocaust 197

Hungarian sign language. Survivor testimony occurred in reverse order.

Donna F. Ryan videotaped and took notes of the interview. One year later,
we brought four of the survivors and the Hungarian sign language inter-
preter to the United States for a conference, “Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe,
1933–1945,” co-sponsored by Gallaudet University and the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum. Essentially, we used the same system of
communication when the survivors appeared as a panel. As a child of deaf
parents, I often communicated with the survivors one-on-one outside of the
formal interviews, thereby developing rapport and obtaining additional
information.
20. Although I have no written documentation, both Bella Pollak and
Harry Dunai confirmed the school director’s presence at the orphanage, the
International Red Cross Camp at the Mexico Street School site, and in the
central ghetto.
21. Deafness has been described as the invisible disability since there are
no outward physical manifestations of the hearing loss. However, sign
language quickly identifies a deaf person as an individual who is different
from the “normal” majority population. In the 1930s and 1940s, it was not
unusual for deaf people to experience stares or ridicule from hearing people
when they used sign language in public. As a result, the hearing children of
deaf parents often would hear negative comments about the signs and their
parents. Also, it was and is not unusual for deaf persons to caution each
other in public about sign language use in order to avoid unwanted atten-
tion. At international meetings of hearing adult children of deaf parents,
participants from many countries, including Europe, Israel, Japan, and the
United States, have confirmed that this is a shared painful experience.
Certainly, Pavel, as the young hearing child of deaf parents, would be
sensitive to this cultural phenomenon and would have naturally cautioned
the young deaf child in an effort not to draw attention to themselves.
22. Sign language is not international. Each country has developed its
own sign language; however, deaf individuals are comfortable with visual
gesture and are able to establish basic social communication with foreigners
within a short period of time. In recent years [post-1980], the international
deaf community has developed an international sign language known as
Gestuno; however, most deaf persons prefer to use their own national sign
language and gesture with foreigners.
23. Peter Farago, interview by author, video recording, Budapest,
Hungary, 21 July, 1997.
24. Harry Imre Dunai (né Izráel Deutsch), interview by author, Califor-
nia, 20 August, 1999.
25. When a deaf child and the hearing members of the family have had
no formal exposure to sign language, they often create gestures for use
198 John S. Schuchman

exclusively within the family, which would have no meaning to other deaf
people—hence the term “home sign.”
26. Kanizsai, 1943–44 Yearbook, 8.
27. Budapest straddles the Danube River. Buda and Obuda are on the
west side of the river; Pest is on the east side. The Mexico Street School is
located in Pest. See United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Historical
Atlas of the Holocaust (New York: Macmillan, 1996), 189.
28. Historian Randolph L. Braham refers to 1867–1918 as the “Golden
Era” of Hungarian Jewry. Because of their privileged position, Charlotte, her
parents, and other family members would emigrate to England. For a recent
description of the Jewish middle class, see Randolph L. Braham, “The
Holocaust in Hungary: A Retrospective Analysis,” in Genocide and Rescue, the
Holocaust in Hungary, 1944, ed. David Cesarani (Oxford: Berg, 1997), 29–46.
29. Randolph L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide, the Holocaust in Hungary,
2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 732–39.
30. Ibid., Vol. 2, n. 91; Ibid., vol. 1, 573.
31. For recent discussions of these rescue efforts, see Asher Cohen,
“Resistance and Rescue in Hungary,” in Genocide and Rescue, the Holocaust in
Hungary, 1944, ed. David Cesarani (Oxford: Berg, 1997), 130–31; and Robert
Rozett, “International Intervention: the Role of Diplomats in Attempts to
Rescue Jews in Hungary,” in Nazis’ Last Victims, ed. Randolph L. Braham and
Scott Miller (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997), 137–152.
32. Dunai, interview.
33. See Laszlo Karsai, “The Last Phase of the Hungarian Holocaust: The
Szalasi Regime and the Jews,” in Nazis’ Last Victims, ed. Randolph L. Braham
and Scott Miller (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997), 103–16.
34. Resistance took the form of self-defense. With allied advances in 1944,
resistance meant keeping Jews alive for months. Typical situations involved
Zionists fighting against the Arrow Cross to prevent them from rounding up
Jews, as was the case at the Mexican Street School roundup. For general
discussion, see Robert Rozett, “Jewish Armed Resistance in Hungary: A
Comparative View,” in Genocide and Rescue, the Holocaust in Hungary, 1944,
ed. David Cesarani (Oxford: Berg, 1997), 138–39.
35. In his interview, Dunai only referred to the deaf boy as his friend Leo.
Later, Peter Farago and Bella Liptay sent me a photograph of Leo
Wachlenberg. She said he was shot when he ran down the school stairs,
“when a Hungarian Nazi, named Laszlo Tuz, called him to stop, thinking
that he wanted to desert. Poor boy, of course, did not hear a word, and the
Nazi shot him to death.” Peter Farago, letter to author, 3 March, 1999.
36. Dunai, interview; Liptay (née Pollak), interview.
37. The “Joint” was a Zionist relief and rescue organization. It helped
refugees and organized emigration to Palestine. Much of their funds came
 Hungarian Deaf Jews and the Holocaust 199

from the United States. The communists eventually kicked the Joint out of
Hungary, but it continued to operate clandestinely through numerous front
organizations. When communism fell in the 1980s, the Joint returned to
Eastern Europe. Its branch in Budapest is directed by Dr. Israel Sela, a
hearing son of Israeli deaf parents. Dr. Sela has been instrumental in foster-
ing a good working relationship between the Jewish deaf Hungarian
survivors and the editors of this anthology.
38. Dunai, interview. There is a conflict in this story. In another interview,
Dunai stated that he learned the news about his parents and brother from
one of his siblings. It is possible that he actually acquired the information
from both sources—siblings and the Farago family.
39. Farago, interview. In the summer of 1997, I interviewed a dozen deaf
Jewish survivors who live in Budapest. Peter Farago is the acknowledged
leader of this group.
40. Dunai, interview. Dunai speculated that Kanizsai’s decision was
based on a fear that the loss of the orphans would result in the closing of the
school.
41. Miklos Klein, interview by author, video recording, Budapest,
Hungary, 22 July, 1997.
42. Farago, interview; Dunai, interview.
43. Eva Molnar, ed., Hungary: Essential Facts, Figures & Pictures (Budapest,
Hungary: 1997), 78–79.
44. Ibid., 166–67.
45. Liptay, interview; Farago, interview; Dunai, interview.
46. Vilma Dostal (née Kentner), interview by author, video recording,
Budapest, Hungary, July 23, 1997. Mrs. Dostal served as our Hungarian sign
language interpreter throughout our interviews in Budapest.
47. Ibid.
48. Dunai, interview. Although an orphan, his siblings provided help and
support when they could. However, the young deaf man pursued his
education and vocational training in Budapest on his own.
49. Ibid. With the help of his sisters, he eventually emigrated to Sweden
(1957) and to the United States (1959), where he lives today.
50. Dostal, interview.
51. Randolph L. Braham, The Hungarian Labor Service System, 1939–1945.
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 5.
52. Ibid., 17–25.
53. Ibid., 59–66.
54. Ibid., 70–75.
55. Klein, interview; Judit Konig, interview by author, Budapest, Hun-
gary, 25 July, 1997; and Klara Erdosi, interview by author, video recording,
Budapest, Hungary, 23 July, 1997.
200 John S. Schuchman

56. Klein, interview.

57. Edith and Gyorgy Varsanyi, interview by author, video recording,
Budapest, Hungary, 21 July, 1997. After the war, mother and son changed
their family name from Weisz to Varsanyi to avoid anti-Semitic abuse.
58. Klein, interview.
59. Ibid.
60. Two people confirmed this number. Sandor Weicher, interview by
author, video recording, Budapest, Hungary, 21 July, 1997; and Magda
Galambos, interview by author, Budapest, Hungary, 21–22 July, 1997.
However, Klein reported that twelve deaf people lived in his barracks. Klein
was unaware of the child Peter Farago in another part of the camp, and the
fourteen cited by Weicher and Galambos included one woman, which might
explain the discrepancy.
61. Klein, interview; Weicher, interview.
62. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Historical Atlas of the
Holocaust, 165–66.
63. Weicher, interview.
64. Klein, interview.
65. Erdosi, interview.
66. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Historical Atlas of the
Holocaust, 153–56.
67. Erdosi, interview, 1997.
68. Ibid. Although Erdosi only mentioned Leipzig, a Ravensbrück
subcamp was located at Leipzig-Schoenfeld. Ravensbrück was the adminis-
trative center for a series of about forty subcamps spread throughout Greater
Germany. See United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Historical Atlas of
the Holocaust, 155.
69. For example, the German deaf community created a film Verkannte
Menschen (Misjudged People) in 1932 in an effort to enlighten the hearing
majority about deaf people. A major theme of the film was the lack of
employment opportunities for deaf persons. This is evidence that German
deaf people believed that most Germans underestimated the ability of deaf
people to work. There is no reason to believe that German military officers
and camp guards did not share this perception.
70. Erdosi, interview. The Ravensbrück camp had more than 500 “uni-
formed SS women” guards. See Sybil Milton, “Women and the Holocaust:
The Case of German and German-Jewish Women,” in When Biology Became
Destiny, Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany, ed. Renate Bridenthal, Atina
Grossmann, and Marion Kaplan (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984), 308.
71. Ibid.
72. Konig, interview.
73. Braham, Hungarian Labor Service, 70–75.
 Hungarian Deaf Jews and the Holocaust 201

74. Konig, interview.

75. Ibid.
76. Ibid.
77. “Hungarian Deaths,” The Cavalier (Washington, D.C.: January, 1947), 4.
78. Dr. Israel Sela reported that a deaf Israeli, who was a Hungarian
survivor, returned to the Mexico Street School after the fall of the communist
regime, but was not allowed entry by authorities. Subsequently, Sela became
the director of the Hungarian branch of the Joint. Using the influence of his
office, he was able to arrange for a commemorative service and the installa-
tion of a memorial plaque. See Israel Sela, “Welcome Presentation” (unpub-
lished videotape proceedings of the Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe, 1933–
1945 Conference, Washington, D.C., 1998). The Hungarian Organization of
Jewish Deaf has a website with both Magyar and English language options.
(See www.jcc.hu/communit/Enmhzse.html.) The current president is
Mihaly Hollo (e-mail address: [email protected]).
202 John S. Schuchman and Donna F. Ryan

Deaf Survivors’ Testimony:

An Edited Transcript

John S. Schuchman and Donna F. Ryan

I n the summer of 1997, Donna Ryan and I interviewed a dozen deaf

Hungarian Jews. Although neither of us speaks Hungarian nor uses
Hungarian sign language, we believe that this transcript is a reason-
ably accurate English translation of the narratives that follow. Our
initial interviews with a dozen Hungarian deaf Jews occurred in the
summer of 1997 in Budapest. I conducted them with the assistance
of Hungarians who translated from spoken Hungarian to spoken
English. Our sign language interpreter, Vilma Dostal, translated to
and from signed Hungarian to spoken Hungarian. Ryan operated a
video camera and took notes throughout the interviews. The follow-
ing summer, we were able to bring four of the survivors to Washing-
ton, D.C., to participate in the “Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe, 1933–
1945” conference. Again, with the aid of Vilma Dostal and survivor
Harry Dunai, who is fluent in both signed Hungarian and American
Sign Language, the survivors—Peter Farago, Miklos Klein, Klara
Erdosi, and Judit Konig—shared some of their experiences with the
audience. We used two translators for spoken Hungarian and spo-
ken English. In the summer of 1999, I interviewed Harry Dunai at
his home in California. Using American Sign Language, Dunai cor-
roborated and amplified some of the information provided earlier
by the other Budapest survivors. The following summer in Budapest,
these same survivors spoke to the students and an assemblage of
the Hungarian Association of Deaf Jews. Mrs. Dostal interpreted
and yet another Hungarian translated from spoken Hungarian to
spoken English. In total, we have used four different translators
for spoken Hungarian to spoken English. In addition, Donna Ryan
and I have communicated in gesture and shared Hungarian and

202
 Deaf Survivors’ Testimony: An Edited Transcript 203

Survivor panel testifies at “Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe” conference

co-sponsored by Gallaudet University and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum, 1998. Seated left to right: Peter Farago, Miklos Klein, Judit
Konig, and Klara Erdosi. Courtesy of Gallaudet University Department of
Government and History.

American signs with these survivors one on one in social situations

since 1997. The basic narratives that these survivors have commu-
nicated to us and others have remained constant. We have added
clarifying comments in brackets.
204 John S. Schuchman and Donna F. Ryan

Survivor Testimony
Klara Erdosi: Camp Experiences, Including Ravensbrück

Arrival at the Camp

They were very rude with us, the soldiers. We were eighty to a
hundred pushed into a wagon [cattle car]. Everybody wanted to
find themselves a better place . . . as well as for their baggage. The
windows were very tiny and the train started. At night the train
stopped. We got off. For about seven days, the train went until we
arrived. . . . [at Ravensbrück] I could see many children. They were
very dirty and disheveled. My heart was hurting from watching
this. I was patient, I was trying to control myself. We lay down in a
huge yard. The next day they called us, they undressed us com-
pletely naked, they shaved off all our hair, they gave us prisoner
uniforms . . . . At a table in a corner they were putting the hair into
packages, a whole pile of gold, a pile of watches, a pile of photo-
graphs, a pile of shoes, clothes were—we were looking in this huge
hole, I was trembling. We received this prisoner uniform, we put a
kerchief on our head, everybody retained their shoes. This was very
odd to be bald.

<h3>Speaking about Other Deaf Prisoners</>

Klara Erdosi’s family photo. At far left, Klara at age thirteen. Mid-picture
is her sister with her fiancé. Courtesy of Mrs. Erdosi, Budapest.
 Deaf Survivors’ Testimony: An Edited Transcript 205

Everybody was very cold. We were there for about two months. I
met two other deaf people, two other deaf women. There were three
of us. Three of us were in one bed, with a doctor’s daughter. I got
very scared because I found some lice. I told my sister, “I found
lice.” She said, “What, are you nuts? Everybody got lice.” “Every-
body?” I asked. “Don’t you bathe?” “No,” she said. “Everybody
got lice.” It was very strange.

One deaf woman was very ill; she had dysentery. She asked for
some underwear. I had only two pair. She was arguing with me
that I should give them to her. The other women’s legs were com-
pletely swollen.

We were working in the mud, sweeping the area in January . . . .

There were high-ranking officers sitting at a table. My sister warned
me, to make sure I don’t show them that I limp because my legs
were frozen. You could see that anybody that showed any kind of
imperfection or limp, they would separate them right away. My
sister spoke German. Therefore, I was stepping very carefully, no-
body would notice that I was limping . . . . I told all the deaf people
how they’d separate us and abuse us. They [the other deaf prison-
ers] said, “Don’t you like the deaf?” I said, “I listen to my sister
and I try to be with her. Maybe we would go to a better place.”

Two weeks later . . . my sister she was separated and she . . . said
that I [Klara] am deaf and can work, and together they took us.
The next day, I said bye. I said farewell to my deaf friends—only
after the war did I find that all my deaf friends had died.

Work at the New Camp, Near Leipzig

It was written on my papers that I was deaf. As a deaf person, they
wouldn’t let me work in this [munitions] factory. They were beat-
ing us with whips quite frequently. Everybody would receive beat-
ings. Those that died, it happened that those that—either they
couldn’t control themselves from bowel movements, and they put
them out into the yard . . . where they froze to death. I was sent out
to dig out the graves, and I was the ‘crier ’ because I would cry. I
would dig graves for these people that froze to death. First all three
[other prisoners] were taken to dig graves, but afterwards the two
were separated and I was left the only one because I cried the most.
My hands were hurting . . . it was very cold. I wasn’t strong. My
sister was much stronger than me. I was digging the graves. We
were fighting. We stole from each other.
206 John S. Schuchman and Donna F. Ryan

A woman found out, one of the soldier women found out that I was
a hairdresser, and twice a month I had to go and do her hair. [Other
times] I had to go to the toilet to clean, or to clean off the snow.

My sister got beaten very often, and it hurt me quite a bit because
I couldn’t do anything to help her, because if I tried to help they
would beat me as well. I have very terrible memories of this, my
leg hurt terribly, I cried, cried.

Peter Farago: Experiences as a Ten-Year-Old Child

at Bergen-Belsen
They sent us from the train and they separated us from our moth-
ers. I was crying, I wanted to be with Momma, I wanted to be with
my mother. They chased me back. Amongst the children I was there
and I was completely disoriented, helpless. The only thing I was
lucky that there was a saving angel. A Polish boy [named Pavel]
was a child of deaf parents, about fourteen or fifteen years old,
blonde, blue-eyed, tall boy. He took my hand, he said, “Don’t sign.”
I was very scared, I was wondering why shouldn’t I sign. He said
again, “Don’t sign.” I said, “I can’t hear.” He said, “Be quiet.” He
was holding my hand as my brother and he said, “Just relax.”
Amongst the children, I don’t want to make up stories, but there
were about two thousand. I was amongst two thousand children.
When I was a young kid, I didn’t care about this, but now I re-
member how spoiled and what a crybaby I was. And Pavel said,
“Don’t sign. Don’t use hand signals.” And I always did whatever
he told me and I followed his advice.

Everyday we went, we were taken to a place where we used oil

cloth to wash the [munitions casings], and the German soldier gave
me some bread. Every night he gave us some kind of a black soup
and carrots and beets . . . . I couldn’t understand why, as a ten-
year-old what—many children got sick and died.

Liberation
Pavel was much stronger than me, always stood by me, and he told
me that American soldiers or Russian soldiers were coming, but I’d
never forget there was huge bombing going on. There were dust clouds
everywhere. You couldn’t see anything . . . . One child died from
the–during the bombing. Many children . . . . Pavel was my savior.
 Deaf Survivors’ Testimony: An Edited Transcript 207

The war finished, Pavel said to me “The war is over.” He said he was
returning to Poland to his home. Maybe his parents are still alive. “And
what should I do?” I asked him. I felt I was all alone in the world.

[Hungarians] told me that we should start walking. I was very

skinny . . . . For about eight or ten days we were walking, we were
begging for food wherever we could. I couldn’t cry at that stage. I
could see the others—I was just following with them. We—when
got into Hungarian territory but I still couldn’t understand, I didn’t
know for sure that we were in Hungary. . . . I was a young kid, and
there again I was begging for food. I was afraid of—very hungry,
and I was a very pretty child and they felt sorry for me. I can never
forget this. We arrived [Gyór, near the Austrian border]—acci-
dentally I noticed my mother ’s back. I said, “Mom, mother,” and
my mother just fainted on the spot. Just a moment [tearful, Farago
recomposes himself].

Peter Farago upon his return from the

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 1945.
Courtesy of Peter Farago, Budapest.
208 John S. Schuchman and Donna F. Ryan

My mother became so sick, she was trembling, I got very scared. I

was afraid for her. And then she finally got up . . . . I told her we
were going to Budapest. And I’ll never forget we were on the train
in 1945, the first of May we arrived . . . where we received money,
clothes. Unfortunately, I was full of fleas, they had to shave our
hair. My mother didn’t have fleas, just me . . . . I can never forget.

After Arriving Home

Everything valuable that I had was all stolen from us. My mother
said, “Doesn’t matter as long as we’re alive.” They moved us to
Budapest and we lived there. In 1983, my mother passed away from
cancer. I nursed her, she died in my arms. I nursed her for thirty-
seven years and it was too short a time for me.

Schuchman: Peter, you said that Pavel told you not to sign. How
did the two of you communicate?

Peter Farago: He always told me what to do, but he was very . . .

subtle about it. I didn’t know why he was so—why he was always
hiding messages. I realize now had they found out, they would
have killed me. I have three saving angels. First, on the wagon [rail-
road car] towards Auschwitz, they bombed the train tracks and
the train had to turn around—had to return, make a detour towards
Austria. I was with my mother at that stage. In Bergen-Belsen, Pavel
was the other one that saved my life. I don’t want to meet Pavel
right now. I’m very worried what might have happened to him.
I’d rather not find out. The meeting would be very painful for me.

Judit Konig: The Budapest Ghetto

From the throes of death we escaped three times . . . . I cannot
describe. My life was very sad indeed. We were, on November 4,
1944, we had papers. We were walking . . . with a pass—autho-
rized pass. One of the deaf people, I am grateful to him. It turns
out that the pass originated from Raoul Wallenberg. My mother
paid a lot of money to get this certificate. I cannot describe . . . .
When they took us to the Mexico Street, on the whole way . . . we
had to walk with raised arms. Everything that was on us was sto-
len . . . . For fourteen days, we were in semi-prisoner status. Mrs.
Galambos, my friend, she had a tiny infant. In this house we were,
to tell you the truth, I admit we were stealing, because every house
 Deaf Survivors’ Testimony: An Edited Transcript 209

we went in we ripped whatever we could and we turned it into

diapers and whatever we needed. But, thank God, we survived.
Now that infant is 54 years old, I’ll never forget . . . . The Arrow
Cross was coming and we were alive . . . . They found us and took
us to the ghetto . . . . We wanted to stay together, but it didn’t suc-
ceed. They [Arrow Cross] put them on a train [but] I disappeared—
from the—I knew what would happen to me if I got on that train.

[Later recaptured and marched to the Danube River] I was shot

three times in three different places of my body. I had a very sad
life. It destroyed my life . . . . I can’t talk more about this, it hurts. I
would like to finish this, I don’t have any family. I’m all alone, all
alone. It’s horrible . . . I don’t want to talk about anything anymore.
Thank you very much.
✛

Judit Konig proudly displays her yellow star.

Courtesy of Judit Konig, Budapest.
210 John S. Schuchman and Donna F. Ryan

Miklos Klein

Deaf Members of the Arrow Cross

They never helped us. When I was in Budapest, I was hiding all
over the place. They were hunting down the deaf [sic]. . . He [deaf
member of Arrow Cross] was looking for Jewish families. He would
arrest Jews and expropriate their valuables. He always wore a
weapon and an armband. [His] wife went to school with me. His
wife happened to be Jewish. One day I met him and he asked me,
“What are you going to do—What are you looking for?” I told him
he’d better watch out because I was strong . . . [but, he] was just
laughing. I told him to be careful, “Your wife is Jewish, don’t do
anything foolish.” He was really stealing a lot of valuable suitcases,
but he was, he had a lot of suitcase—He was a robber. Four or five
deaf were with him together in this. I don’t know where they took
all the stuff that they stole. But this is what I could remember of
him and his gang.

Labor Brigade and Bergen-Belsen

I received my induction notice and I went to . . . a labor camp.
Many, many of us were there. We had to make a trip to Budapest
[where] they gave us a medical examination. They denied that I
was deaf. They said that I could hear and that I was just pretend-
ing. The doctor nevertheless gave me a certificate. . . . I escaped
constantly . . . . [After several episodes of escape and rearrest], I
couldn’t find any safe place . . . . In the Deaf Mute Institute in Mexico
Street, there were many, many of us. I thought there I would be
lucky and nobody would bother me. Early in the morning, there
was a raid. They surrounded the ghetto and they took us . . .Judit
was there, with her mother . . . . The next morning, they put us in
wagons and they took us . . . . About eighty of us were crammed
into a [train] wagon. There was no air, no oxygen, nothing to drink.
In ten days slowly we were advancing toward the border. At the
border, they gave us something to eat—salted rice. We asked for
water. They said, “No, we don’t have any.” We started the train
again—towards Bergen-Belsen. In three days, we arrived at Bergen-
Belsen. We were very thirsty . . . . Those who could speak German
were reading all the signs . . . . We were in a concentration camp.
We did not know how many people were in the concentration camp.
They took everything from us. All of our packages; everything that
was with us. They separated the elders from the young ones. Twelve
 Deaf Survivors’ Testimony: An Edited Transcript 211

deaf mutes together—we were together. In the concentration camp,

we suffered quite a lot. That was the reality. Somebody was listen-
ing secretly to a radio. We listened to Voice of America. We suc-
ceeded to hear that the liberation of the Jews was imminent. They
took us to Czechoslovakia. One died, of the twelve deaf, in Czecho-
slovakia. Klein Lajos died on the train. Ten of us remained, sur-
vived. We didn’t go any further. We stopped there. There was a lot
of bombing, air raids. That train wagon toppled over. The Ameri-
can troops liberated us . . . . There were other pockets of resistance.
They still were fighting.

Liberation from Bergen-Belsen.

I was very very skinny, I was just skin and bones. Slowly, slowly I
was starting to recuperate. The American doctors were helping me.
I was fortified some. The American soldiers left and the English

Miklos Klein upon his return from the Bergen-Belsen

concentration camp, 1945. Courtesy of Miklos Klein,
Budapest.
212 John S. Schuchman and Donna F. Ryan

soldiers came. And then the next wave was the Russian soldiers
who took charge . . . . The Russian said, “What are you doing now?
You cannot stay here. Go home. Don’t stay here.” Among the ten
deaf, two died, eight returned home. Under the Russian flag we
arrived home. It took us quite a while for the journey, about twelve
days, and when we arrived in Budapest, we saw the horrible state
of affairs in Budapest.

✛
 A Call for More Research 213

Part IV
Concluding Thoughts
 A Call for More Research 215

A Call for More Research

Peter Black

When asked in the summer of 1998, prior to the conference on

“Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe,” what bibliography I might sug-
gest for background reading before the event, I responded that there
was precious little (I must admit, with some embarrassment that I
was unaware at the time of Horst Biesold’s Klagende Hände).1 That
there was and remains little published not only necessitated hold-
ing this conference, but also justified this related publication.
The issue of how deaf people were treated under Nazi rule raises
questions about how a society responds in terms of medicine, therapy,
and social policy to those whose physical or mental makeup lies
somewhat outside what that society defines as “normal” or “typi-
cal.” Until recent decades, our modern, highly educated, civilized
societies tended to marginalize those who were unable to partici-
pate in ways deemed typical. Even today, with special facilities in
place—or in conception—to permit broader access and participation
in general society, such individuals—and often their families as
well—continue to endure isolation, however well-meaning and sym-
pathetic many in the general population may be. Under Nazi rule,
German medical, social welfare, and public health authorities, col-
laborating with a national police detective force, exercised frighten-
ing power to prevent all forms of social “deviation.” Working from
a starting point in 1933 that ranged from mildly disinterested sym-
pathy to indifference or even neglect, Nazi authorities and German
officials implemented an activist agenda of isolation, sterilization,
and, ultimately, mass murder.
Bullies and thugs did not inspire the most brutal persecution of
deaf people and others placed outside the typical sphere of social

215
216 Peter Black

behavior. The driving force behind this persecution was the ambi-
tions of a highly educated, professional middle class. Shortly before
the “Deaf People in Hitler ’s Europe” conference opened, a Florida
educator asked me the following question relating to support in
Germany for Nazi persecution of the Jews: “Where were the edu-
cated people?” Surely, she reasoned, those with education must have
known such policies were wrong. Sadly, I had to respond that many
of the educated not only acquiesced, but also advocated and imple-
mented the so-called Final Solution of the “Jewish Question.”2 Like-
wise, men and women with significant levels of education planned
persecutory policy towards other social “out-groups,” often tarring
them with “inferior” racial characteristics to justify the heartless
measures they implemented. Education without an instinctive ap-
preciation for the value, not only of human life in the abstract, but
for each individual human life, is a dangerous instrument indeed.
Awareness and understanding of the cruel betrayal of deaf people
by the very professionals in whom they placed their trust is another
justification for this conference and this related publication.
Only in the last decade and a half have scholars begun to exam-
ine the theory and practice of Nazi persecution and murder of those
persons that they deemed inferior due to a perceived physical or
mental disability. In this collection, Henry Friedlander and Robert
Proctor have provided two of the most careful, thoughtful, and elo-
quent pieces on this subject. With their colleagues, Michael Burleigh,
Wolfgang Wippermann, and Michael Kater, they have uncovered
ideological, institutional, and even personnel links between Nazi
racist prejudice and genocidal policy against the Jews and Nazi ef-
forts to identify, isolate, sterilize, or murder those deemed to be
“handicapped.” 3 The persecution of other social out-groups, such
as the Gypsies, so-called asocials, and those whom the Nazis identi-
fied as “professional criminals” has only recently received scholarly
attention.4
These scholars have focused primarily on the perpetrators: the
scientists and professors who developed the field of racial hygiene;
the physicians and health care professionals who implemented public
health policy in the Third Reich; and the law enforcement profes-
 A Call for More Research 217

sionals and police psychologists who developed the field of crimi-

nal biology. A murderous mixture of all three groups implemented
the “euthanasia” program and conducted vicious experiments on
human beings during the Second World War. It is important to place
the fate of deaf people under Nazi rule more clearly into the context
of Nazi aims to eliminate all forms of what was perceived as deviant
behavior from the utopian German society they intended to create.
Equally important to understand is the connection the Nazis drew
between each of the social out-groups and harmful “nuisances.” In-
deed, the notion of “cleaning up the streets” was so important to broad
sections of the German middle class that they were prepared to sup-
port or at least acquiesce in all Nazi policy geared toward that aim.5
I realize that this approach might founder upon sensitivities in
the deaf community about association with mentally disabled people
and Gypsies, let alone asocials and criminals. This certainly has been
the reaction among some in the Gypsy community and is fully un-
derstandable as each community goes through the process of un-
covering its historical past. On the other hand, if we close our eyes
and minds to the realities of these historical mental linkages, I fear
that a genuine understanding of the foundations of support—or at
least indifference—from German society to Nazi persecution of vul-
nerable social out-groups will escape us.
At the conference “Deaf People in Hitler ’s Europe,” Friedlander
and Proctor revealed the historical context for the Nazi persecution
of deaf persons by explaining and analyzing the ideology and insti-
tutions that had direct impact on the segregation, torture, steriliza-
tion, and murder of those whom the Nazis considered disabled. In
an article written specially for this volume, Patricia Heberer has dem-
onstrated masterfully how the perverse notions of public health, bio-
logical science, social concerns, and financial needs flowed together
to support the implementation of the first instance of Nazi problem-
solving by mass murder—the “euthanasia” program. In all three
papers, the lethal combination of professor, physician, and police-
man stand out.
In this volume, Proctor analyzes how the so-called science of “race
hygiene” developed through the application of social, nationalist, and
218 Peter Black

class prejudice to biology and genetics. He outlines how members

of the medical profession in particular were drawn to the National
Socialist banner because the Nazis promised them funding for re-
search and positions, job security and good salaries, and, ultimately,
the opportunity to test “scientific” theory on living human subjects.
Proctor demonstrates how professor and physician drafted and de-
veloped sterilization laws and the Nuremberg race laws and, later,
staffed the agencies and organizations that would eventually define
what life was worth living. Especially discomforting are his refer-
ences to the models that our own United States, with the race laws
of the southern states and the sterilization laws of a number of states,
offered to Nazi eugenicists and racists.
As he did in his exceptional book, Friedlander focuses on the
ultimate aim of Nazi policy, euthanasia, and on its implementation
in killing centers throughout the German Reich. He explains how
the Nazis defined their victims, how they planned mass murder and
sought to keep its implementation secret, and how the medical pro-
fessionals looted the very bodies of their victims for gold and or-
gans. Moreover, Friedlander alerts us to the astonishing and sad fact
that the post-war German government refused for decades to pro-
vide compensation for the victims of sterilization, based on an un-
willingness to invalidate Nazi-era health legislation.
Patricia Heberer offers an analysis of how the persecution and
the murder of disabled people formed part of a broader campaign to
proscribe from German society all those who were “hereditarily com-
promised,” asocial, or “unproductive” and whose very existence al-
legedly placed a genetic and financial burden on the state. She dem-
onstrates how eugenics theory took a radical and violent turn in
Germany after Hitler came to power and how it informed public
health and social policy as it radicalized from legislated isolation to
sterilization to murder. Authorities sought to legitimize their inten-
tions among the German population through propaganda films that
dehumanized mentally disabled people. They organized
pseudoscientific tours of institutions with the intent of demonstrat-
ing to Germans the alleged worthlessness of these lives. The au-
thors of school math books even included problems to calculate
 A Call for More Research 219

the potential savings if one no longer had to finance the survival of

institutionalized disabled people. Heberer drives home her key point
that the marginalization and murder of the “unfit” were components
of the perverted vision of a Nazi utopian society.
But what of the deaf community? We know much about the Jew-
ish communities targeted for murder. We know less, but still some-
thing, of the Gypsy communities that the Nazis destroyed. Before
this conference, we knew virtually nothing about the response of
the deaf community, the blind community, or the countless other
individuals and groups that the Nazis targeted for sterilization and
murder. Due to a distinct language (the various national forms of
signing), deaf communities throughout the world not only devel-
oped a culture prior to the Nazi catastrophe, but also a means of
expressing the essence of that culture to the hearing world. Here,
the presentations of Jochen Muhs and Horst Biesold draw our atten-
tion to a community that was well formed, articulate, and conscious
of its ability to contribute fully to modern society in the Germany of
the early 1930s. To those who would doubt the level of identity and
organization of the deaf community in Germany prior to Nazi rule,
I can only recommend a viewing of the film Verkannte Menschen (Mis-
judged People).
Muhs courageously tackles a difficult issue: that of collabora-
tion in the deaf community. Deaf men joined the SA and the NSKK
(Nationalsozialistische Kraftfahrerkorps or National Socialist Motorized
Corps). Deaf children camped with their hearing contemporaries in
the Hitler Youth; deaf citizens joined the Nazi Party. Both deaf chil-
dren and deaf adults, like their hearing fellow citizens, were caught
in the initial enthusiasm and optimism that accompanied Hitler ’s
rise to power.
Persons rendered deaf by accident or nonhereditary disease were
generally exempt from sterilization laws and were generally spared
euthanasia. Unlike Jews and Gypsies, some deaf Germans faced the
same options as hearing Germans. Indeed, in his interviews, Muhs
heard some of the familiar excuses: “Hitler brought order”; “the Nazis
ended unemployment”; “we didn’t know about the Jews.” From these
comments, it seems that deaf Germans who were not stigmatized
220 Peter Black

as “hereditarily compromised” responded to the new regime in the

same ways as hearing Germans. The Nazis also “coordinated” orga-
nizations for deaf people; schools for deaf children continued to func-
tion until the war, although with new teachers acceptable to the
Nazis. Moreover, media aimed at the deaf community printed simi-
lar propagandistic drivel as that aimed at the hearing population.
Because they could not hear whispered rumors, deaf people may
have been even more susceptible to the corrosive effect of print and
newsreel media. Deaf participants in the Nazi movement and deaf
bystanders are an integral part of this story, which requires much
more research in order to even tell, let alone analyze.
Does this mean that deaf persons could become good Nazis?
Should we assume that they could participate in the National So-
cialist regime and the society it hoped to construct? Not really; deaf
paramilitary organizations were soon dissolved and deaf schools
were closed during the war. Finally, as was usual with Nazi practice
during wartime, when the choice was between sterilization or kill-
ing, the Nazis usually killed. For many—how many we do not
know—the cause of deafness had no influence on their fate.
At the “Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe” conference, Horst Biesold
sensitized us to the pain and shame experienced by deaf persons
deprived by the Nazi state of their right to bear children. He de-
scribed the unwillingness even to speak of what they called the
Hitlerschnitt.6 The reluctance to talk about wartime pain and humili-
ation was reinforced by post-war official silence. Biesold angrily ex-
claimed that only in May 1998, one month before this conference opened,
did German legislators invalidate Nazi laws regarding deaf people.
Biesold rightly called for more research. We do not know how
many deaf persons were killed; we do not know how many were
institutionalized or incarcerated. We do not know whether they could
find consolation and solidarity with one another as victims in the
lonely struggle to survive Nazi tyranny. We need to establish whether
resistance was possible, whether it was attempted, and what options
were available. We do not know whether the regime always distin-
guished in practice between those born deaf and those who became
deaf; and, if it did, what effect this cruel distinction had on relations
 A Call for More Research 221

between deaf people. We need to know more about the persecution

and disappearance of deaf Jews and deaf Gypsies, and we should
find out more about what happened to deaf people in other coun-
tries. How many of those nameless residents of institutions whom
the SS and police units murdered in occupied Poland and the Soviet
Union were deaf? Finally, we know little of how deaf people coped
with Nazi terror while suffering under it and even less of how deaf
survivors cope with the painful memories today.
Jochen Muhs and Horst Biesold spoke of the importance of re-
cording and preserving the memory of deaf individuals’ experiences
during the Nazi era. They have both collected numerous testimo-
nies, as has John Schuchman. At the conference, brave and sensitive
survivors came, in some cases thousands of miles, to record their
experiences in a language that is unknown to most of us who are
hearing. As difficult as giving testimony must have been for the sur-
vivors, I could then and can now only applaud and admire their
courage in speaking. Knowledge of their experiences has intrinsic
value for both those who cannot hear and those who can. Jewish or
non-Jewish, their accounts provide a frightening color and moving
intensity to a history that all of us, deaf and hearing, still struggle to
understand. Because it took such courage to give, historians and lay
persons will treasure this gift for generations to come.
As we approach the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II,
we are sadly reminded that time is running short to draw upon such
evidence directly given by deaf survivors of the Nazi regime and to
flesh out the often dry and opaque, if chilling, picture provided in
the documentation of the period, filled as it is with passive voice
and euphemistic expressions. In offering us an interpretation of the
individual stories of Hungarian deaf Jewish survivors as well as ex-
cerpts from actual translations of survivor’s testimonies, the editors
of this volume, Ryan and Schuchman, have taken an extraordinary
step toward preserving some of this memory. They have also taken
a bold step toward opening the deaf world to hearing people.
In recording these experiences, deaf survivors and deaf scholars
can play a special role, not only for the deaf community, but also for
all of us. At the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, we deal
222 Peter Black

every day with the importance of memory and its preservation.

Through hundreds and thousands of testimonies of Jewish survi-
vors of the Holocaust and other victims of the Nazi regime, the mu-
seum and other repositories in the United States and Europe can
offer present and future generations a vivid, authentic picture of what
it was like to struggle against and endure Nazi persecution.
For those deemed disabled, this preservation of memory should
and must be undertaken. All of us will benefit from some under-
standing of how these precious lives were assaulted by the Nazis in
a mania for a racial purity that could only exist in their imagina-
tions. These testimonies are especially important now because some
of the victims, particularly those with mental and communication
disorders, insofar as they survived at all, cannot today convey the
heart-wrenching agony of their experiences.
The members of the deaf community (and the blind community)
are in a position to speak for themselves. If they are willing, they
might also speak as representatives of the so-called disabled popu-
lation. Deaf survivors have the language to convey their experiences.
Deaf scholars have the academic tools to record, analyze, and place
these experiences within a historical context. The history of the per-
secution of deaf people and other persons deemed disabled is vi-
tally important to all of us, because it was that notion that some lives
are without worth that goes to the core of what is uniquely evil about
the Nazi regime and what makes the Holocaust a seminal event of
the past century.
As all of us who work in this field know, within ten or twenty
years time, the survivors will no longer be here to share with us
their experiences first hand. This awareness is made more oppres-
sive by the fact that research into the history of deaf people under
Nazi rule is just beginning. It is especially important that both deaf
and hearing scholars, who have the interest, drive, and academic
skills, begin to place those experiences into a proper historical con-
text. Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe offers us a remarkable starting point.
Does the reader need to be reminded that there is still much work to
be done?
 A Call for More Research 223

Notes
1. Now available in English: Horst Biesold, Crying Hands: Eugenics and
Deaf People in Nazi Germany (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press,
1999).
2. Peter Black, “Well-Educated Killers: The RSHA Office Chiefs and the
‘Final Solution,’” in The Holocaust and Justice, ed. Ron Smelser, vol. 4 of
Lessons and Legacies, (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2002).
3. Henry Friedlander, The Origins of the Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to
the Final Solution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995);
Robert N. Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988); Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliver-
ance: “Euthanasia” in Germany 1900–1945 (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1994); Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State:
Germany 1933–1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); and
Michael Kater, Doctors under Hitler (Chapel Hill: University of North Caro-
lina Press, 1989). See also Götz Aly, Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and
Racial Hygiene (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).
4. See, for instance, Michael Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid: Die
nationalsozialistische “Lösung der Zigeunerfrage” (Hamburg: Christians, 1996);
Guenter Lewy, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2000); Wolfgang Ayaß, “Asoziale” im Nationalsozialismus (Stuttgart:
1995); Patrick Wagner, Volksgemeinschaft ohne Verbrecher: Konzeptionen und
Praxis der Kriminalpolizei in der Zeit der Weimarer Republik und des
Nationalsozialismus (Hamburg: Christians, 1996); and Burkhard Jellonnek,
Homosexuelle unter dem Hakenkreuz: Die Verfolgung von Homosexuellen im
Dritten Reich (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1990).
5. See especially the new book by Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler, Consent
and Coercion in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 9–50,
90–120.
6. Essentially a vasectomy.
 Index 225

Index

abortions, forced, 22, 170 Behr, Hilde, 90

Albreghs, Fritz, 4, 75, 107; career of, 81– Bell, Alexander Graham, 99, 111n. 4
82, 87; consolidation of deaf associa- Bergen-Belsen, 172, 176, 179, 187–88, 193,
tions and, 83; deaf unit of the 194; Peter Farago’s testimony on,
Sturmabteilung and, 84–85; interna- 206–8; Miklos Klein’s testimony on,
tional deaf associations and, 99, 210–12
112n. 5 Berlin: deaf Jews in before the Nazis, 92;
alcoholism: forced sterilization and, 54 deaf organizations in, 80–81
American Annals of the Deaf, 114 Berlin Central Association, 84
American Jewish Joint Distribution Com- Berlin Deaf Swimming Club, 91
mittee, 6, 182 Berlin-Neukölln. See Training Institute
American Medical Association, 39 for Teachers of the Deaf in Berlin-
American Society of Deaf Artists, 99 Neukölln
anti-Semitism: in Hungary, 173, 174; Bernburg, 26, 61, 63, 64
medicalization of, 41; in the medical Bewer, Herr, 128–129
profession, 43; Nazi racial ideology Beyer, Max, 120n. 3
and, 16 Biesold, Horst, 4, 76–77, 219, 220, 221
Appellate Hereditary Health Courts, 36 Binding, Karl, 24
Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie, biologism, 47n. 4
33 blacks: U.S. racial policies and, 38–39
Arrow Cross, 6, 171, 179, 193; attack on Blätter fur Taubstummenbildung, 88, 115
Konig family, 190–91; deaf members, blind persons: forced sterilization and,
186, 210; Miklos Klein’s testimony 21, 22, 54
on, 210; Mexico Street School and, “Blood Protection Law.” See Law for the
180–81, 194, 195; political influence Protection of German Blood and
in Hungary, 173, 174; Zionist resis- German Honor
tance and, 198n. 34 blood types, 35–36
Association of German Deaf Gymnastic Bock, Gisela, 55
and Sports Clubs, 81 Bouhler, Philipp, 23, 25, 41, 60, 63, 65
Association of Socialist Physicians, 42 Brack, Viktor, 23, 41
Asylum for the Deaf at the Pauline Home brain: removal from T4 program victims,
in Winnenden, 149–58 27
asylums. See mental institutions Brandeis, Louis, 18
Auschwitz, 12, 26, 63, 92; Hungarian deaf Brandenburg hospital/killing center, 26,
Jews and, 172, 183; Mengele’s medi- 40, 61
cal experiments, 27, 35–36 Brand, Joel, 179
“Authorization for the Destruction of Brandt, Karl, 23, 25, 60, 65
Life Unworthy of Life” (Binding and Brill, Tobias, 115
Hoche), 24 Brunner, Karl, 87
Buchenwald, 63
Baden Association of the Deaf in Heidel- Buck, Carrie, 17–18
berg, 132 Budapest, 172; Arrow Cross violence in,
Balkanyi, Charlotte, 178, 183, 194, 198n. 180–81; geography of, 198n. 27; num-
28 ber of Jewish schools in, 196n. 13;
Ballier, Hedwig, 92 Soviet liberation, 181
Ballier, Wilhelm, 3–4, 74, 82–83, 98, 104, Budapest ghetto: creation of, 179–80;
107, 113n. 14 Judit Konig’s testimony on, 208–9
bar mitzvahs, 195n. 5 Burleigh, Michael, 110, 216
Beck, K., 129

225
226 Index

Cann, Philipp, 120n. 3 deaf Germans: forced sterilizations, 4, 5,

Carmel, Simon, 6 21–22, 37, 54, 106, 108, 170; impor-
Carnegie Institute, 2 tance of preserving Holocaust
Carrel, Alexis, 39 memories, 221–22; during the Nazi
“Casti connubi” (Catholic encyclical), 147 era, 4–5, 78–80, 93–95, 111, 219–20;
censorship: of films, 109–10 Nazi eugenics and, 170; in Nazi or-
Certificate of Marital Fitness, 56 ganizations, 84–86; Nazi Party and,
Charitable Foundation for Institutional 107–9; opposition to the Nazis, 84;
Care, 26 sterilization and T4 killing program
child euthanasia program, 24–25, 60, 62, survivors in modern Germany, 28–
69n. 30 29, 95; in the Sturmabteilung, 82, 84–
Cold Spring Harbor, 2, 66n. 2 86; T4 program and, 5–6
Comité International des Sports deaf Hungarian Jews: “Deaf People in
Silencieux (CISS), 87 Hitler’s Europe” conference, 168,
concentration camps see also individual 192, 202; gathering of survivors’ tes-
camps; Sonderbehandlung 14fr13 kill- timony, 202–3; Holocaust experi-
ing operations, 62–64; survivor’s tes- ences, 170, 171–72, 175–81, 185–92,
timony on, 204–8, 210–12; T4 killing 193–94, 204–12; Holocaust stories
centers and, 28 and testimony, 192–93, 204–12; im-
Congenitally Ill (film), 57 portance of the Mexico Street
Conrad, Herr, 143, 147 School to, 194–95; labor brigades
criminals: forced sterilization and, 37, 55 and, 184–86, 190, 193; post-war ex-
periences, 181–84; vocational stud-
Dachau, 63 ies and, 184
Damaschun, Herr, 160n. 10 deaf Jews (see also deaf Hungarian Jews);
Davenport, Charles B., 16 Holocaust survivors, 6–7; lack of in-
deaf associations/organizations: consoli- formation about the fate of, 167–68;
dation with Reich Union for the Deaf marginalization of, 169, 195n. 5;
of Germany, 73, 74, 107; coordination number in Germany before the Na-
under the Nazis, 82–84; interna- zis, 92; persecution of, 90–92; schools
tional, 112n. 5; in Weimar Germany, in Europe, 170, 171
80–82 deaf-mute persons: T4 killing program
deaf children: in Hitler Youth, 86, 89; and, 70n. 40
Kindertransport movement, 120n. 3; Deaf Olympics, 99, 107
T4 killing program and, 25 “Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe” (confer-
deaf community (see also deaf German ence), 168, 192, 202, 217
community); differences between deaf persons (see also deaf Germans; deaf
deaf children and deaf adults, 100– Hungarian Jews; deaf Jews); Holo-
101; importance of preserving Holo- caust and, 15, 169–70; using sign lan-
caust memories, 221–22; interna- guage in public and, 197n. 21; as
tional conferences, 99; Nazi viewed by eugenicists, 99
Gleichschaltung period and, 75, 81, Deaf Sport Club of Budapest, 192
83, 84, 107; Nazi Party and, 73–74; deaf sports clubs, 81, 83
role of deaf schools in, 170; sense of death camps (see also concentration
place and, 194 camps; individual camps); killing cen-
deaf education/schools: Hungarian, 170– ters; role of physicians in, 12
71; Jewish, 170, 171; Kurtz Lietz on, Deutsch, Izráel, 172, 176–78, 180, 181,
114–20n. 3; under the Nazi regime, 182, 183, 184, 194, 196n. 11 (see also
75–76, 88–90, 108–9; role in the deaf Dunai, Harry)
community, 170 Deutsche Gehörlose, Der, 84, 86, 91
deaf German community: differences be- Deutsches Ärzteblatt, 41
tween deaf children and deaf adults, Deutschnationalen, 42
100–101; profile of, 3–4; self-percep- Dillingen institution. See District Instruc-
tion of oppression in, 98; state of tional and Vocational Institution for
prior to the Nazis, 99–100; Verkannte Deaf Girls in Dillingen
Menschen and, 98, 100, 106, 200n. 69 Dirr, Mother Agreda, 147–49
 Index 227

disabled persons: child euthanasia pro- 62, 69n. 30; expansion of, 40; Final
gram, 24–25, 60, 62, 69n. 30; failure Solution and, 40–42; initiation in Po-
of Germany to recognize survivors land, 39–40; issues for historical re-
of Nazi eugenics program, 28–29; search, 217, 218; medical profession
German/Nazi eugenics and, 2–3, 49– and, 40, 45; number people of mur-
50, 52–53, 56–58; Marriage Health dered during, 39; overview of, 11–12;
Law and, 22–23; Nazi dehumaniza- rationales for, 39; starvation and, 40;
tion of, 56–58, 110; Nazi efforts to de- utilitarian doctrine of, 59–60
fine and identify, 23; Nazi racial ide- Expert Advisory Council on Questions of
ology and, 16; “negative” eugenics Population and Racial Policy, 52
and, 51; numbers forcibly sterilized, Eyrich, Dr., 152, 153
4; racial hygiene and, 44; starvation
during World War I, 58; T4 killing Farago, Peter, 172, 175–76, 177, 182–83,
program and, 23–28 184, 192, 194, 198n. 35, 202, 206–8
District Instructional and Vocational In- feebleminded, 67n. 8; forced sterilization
stitution for Deaf Girls in Dillingen, and, 17–18, 21, 22, 54–55
142–43, 146–49 “Fifty Years Later” (exposition), 78
documentary films: dehumanization of films: deaf community and, 98; dehu-
disabled persons, 56–57; Misjudged manization of disabled persons, 56–
People, 4, 74–75, 82–83 57, 110; in Germany, 100; Nazi cen-
Dostal, Vilma, 192, 202 sorship and, 109–10; Verkannte
Down’s Syndrome, 60 Menschen, 4, 74–75, 82–83
Dunai, Harry, 170, 192, 196n. 11, 202 (see Final Solution. See Holocaust
also Deutsch, Izráel) Fischer, Eugen, 19, 139
Flossenbürg, 63
Eastern workers, 65–66, 70n. 45 folie circulaire, 21
Eglfing-Haar state hospital, 25, 57, 70n. Förster, Harry, 91
45 Fraenkel, Heinrich, 109
Eichberg, 58, 70n. 45 Frankfurt Institute for Hereditary Biol-
Eichmann, Adolf, 6, 174, 175 ogy and Race Hygiene, 20, 35
Eisenblatter, Kurt, 90 Frick, Wilhelm, 19, 35, 52, 53
elderly: euthanasia program and, 40, 65 Friedlander, Henry, 3, 40–41, 169, 216,
employment discrimination, 102 217, 218
Engelmann, Karl, 87
epilepsy: forced sterilization and, 21, 22, Galambos, Erno, 188
54 Galton, Francis, 16, 50
Erbartz, Der, 37 gas chambers, 26, 41–42, 61
Erbe, Das (film), 57 Gehring, Wilhelm, 85
Erbkrank (film), 57, 110 Gemeinnützige Stiftung für
Erdosi, Klara, 185, 188–90, 192, 193, 194, Anstalts-pflege, 26
202, 204–6 genealogical charts: of Herr Heidbrede,
eugenics (see also German/Nazi eugen- 141; of Oskar Rönigk, 137
ics); Alexander Graham Bell and, General Association for Support of the
111n. 4; Catholic opposition to, 147; Deaf, 91
history and beliefs of, 16–17; “nega- “genetic counseling centers,” 38
tive” strategies, 51; notions of hered- “genetic registries,” 35
ity and, 50; origins and development Genetics Doctor, The (journal), 37
of, 50; “positive” strategies, 50–51, German Deaf League, 88
99; primary objectives of, 50; in the German Deaf Sports Association, 87, 88
United States, 2, 17–18 German Medical Association, 37, 41
eugenics education, 5, 122 “German” method, 112n. 9 (see also oral
Eugenics Record Office (U.S.), 66n. 2 education)
euthanasia program, 3 (see also T4 killing German/Nazi eugenics (see also public
program); adult killing operation, health strategies, Nazi; racial hy-
60–61; banality and popularity of, 40; giene); American eugenics move-
child killing operation, 24–25, 60, ment and, 18; deaf Germans and, 170;
228 Index

German/Nazi eugenics continued: Hartheim Statistics, 62

defining and identifying disabled Heberer, Patricia, 217, 218, 219
persons, 23; euthanasia program (see Hefelmann (German agronomist), 41, 45
euthanasia program); failure of mod- Heidbrede, Herr, 138–41, 162n. 38
ern Germany to recognize disabled Heinecke, Samuel, 102, 112n. 9
survivors, 28–29; “gene and race cul- Heitfuss, Wilhelm, 90
tivation” strategy, 53; Holocaust and, hereditary diseases: German sterilization
3, 11; issues for historical research, law on, 21
217–19; Marriage Health Law, 22–23; Hereditary Health Courts, 12, 36, 47n. 6,
Nazification of, 52; notions of hered- 53–54; Pastor Müller and, 151–52,
ity and social problems, 13; origins 153, 154, 157
of, 50; pro-natal and anti-natal poli- heredity: in eugenics theory, 50; in Nazi
cies, 55–56; radicalization during eugenics and racial ideology, 13, 15,
World War II, 13, 23; radicalization 16
following World War I, 18–19, 51–52; Herzog, Ludwig, 82
rise of the Nordic wing, 19–20; steril- Hessen-Nassau, 58
ization law and forced sterilizations, Himmler, Heinrich, 36, 43, 63, 174
4, 5, 20–22, 53–55; targeting of dis- Hitler, Adolf: Nazi occupation of Hun-
abled persons and the “unfit,” 2–3, gary and, 172, 174; Nuremberg laws
49–50, 52–53, 56–58; teacher-collabo- and, 38; racial hygiene and, 20, 33;
rators (see teacher-collaborators); T4 killing program and, 24, 27–28,
teacher training in, 15, 122; T4 killing 39, 61–62
program (see T4 killing program); Hitler Youth, 86, 89, 109, 219
use of “documentary” films, 56–57 Hoche, Alfred, 24
German Sign Language: Verkannte Hoffmann, W., 129
Menschen and, 101, 102 Hogen, Dr., 143, 146
German Society for Blood Group Re- Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 18, 24
search, 36 Holocaust: deaf persons and, 15, 169–70;
Germany (see also Weimar Germany); disabled persons and, 2–3; euthana-
treatment of survivors of T4 killing sia program and, 40–42; gas cham-
program and the sterilization law, bers, 41–42; groups victimized by, 1,
28–29, 95 2, 15–16, 167; historical awareness of,
Gestuno, 197n. 22 1–2; Hungarian deaf Jews and, 170,
gesture language, 197n. 25 171–72, 171–92, 175–81, 185–92;
Gleichschaltung period, 75, 81, 83, 84, 107 medical profession and, 41, 42, 43;
Gmelin, Walter, 153 Nazi eugenics and, 3, 11; Nazi ideol-
Goebbels, Joseph, 75, 87, 108 ogy of human inequality and, 15; re-
Goering, Hermann, 85 search issues, 215–22;
Gömbös, Gyula, 173 Sonderbehandlung 14fr13
Gottweiss, Emma, 84 operations and, 69n. 35; T4 killing
Gottweiss, William, 84 program and, 66
Grafeneck killing center, 26, 61 Holocaust survivors: accounts of, 1; deaf
Gross-Rosen, 63 Jews, 6–7; gathering testimony from,
Gross, Walter, 56 202–3; importance of preserving the
Grotjahn, Alfred, 20 memory of, 221–22; testimony of,
Günther, Hans F. K., 19 204–12
Gusen, 64 Holocaust (TV miniseries), 2
Gütt, Arthur, 52 Homberg Institution, 133, 135–38
Gypsies, 2; Holocaust and, 15–16, 167; “home signs,” 198n. 25
Nazi racial ideology and, 16 homosexuals, 2
“Horst Wessel Song,” 89
Hadamar institution/killing center, 26, Horthy, Miklos, 172, 185, 196n. 17
40, 58, 61, 65, 70n. 45 hospitals (see also individual institutions’);
Haina, 70n. 45 T4 killing program and, 25, 28
Hallervorden, Julius, 27 Hundertmark, Alexander, 128, 161n. 23
Hartheim killing center, 26, 61, 63, 64 Hungarian Association of Deaf Jews, 202
 Index 229

Hungarian Deaf Association, 184 Johnson Immigration Restriction Act, 17

Hungarian deaf Jews: importance of pre- Joint, the, 183, 198n. 37, 200n. 69
serving Holocaust memories, 221–22 Journal of the American Psychiatric Associa-
Hungarian Organization of Jewish Deaf, tion, 39
193 Judaism: marginalization of deaf per-
Hungary (see also deaf Hungarian Jews); sons, 169, 195n. 5
anti-Semitism in, 173, 174; Arrow
Cross violence in, 180–81; Commu- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropol-
nist control of, 183; deportation of ogy, Human Heredity, and Eugenics,
Jews from, 174, 175; Jewish resis- 35
tance, 198n. 34; labor brigades, 184– Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Genealogy
86, 190, 193; Nazi occupation, 172, and Demography of the German Re-
174; in World War II, 173–74 search Institute for Psychiatry, 19, 35
Huntington’s chorea (Huntington’s dis- Kanizsai, Dezso, 6, 172, 174, 175, 178, 180,
ease), 21, 54 181, 182, 193, 194
Kasztner, Rezso, 179
immigration: U.S. restrictions on, 17, 38 Kater, Michael, 216
Immigration Restriction Act, 38 Katz, Magda, 188
infants: T4 killing program and, 24–25 Kaufbeuren, 70n. 45
Information Office for Population Policy Kell, Alfred, 74, 98
and Race Cultivation, 56 Kentner, Antal, 184
Inheritance, The (film), 57 Kentner, Kalman, 184
International Committee of Silent Sports, killing centers (see also individual centers;
87 Sonderbehandlung 14fr13 killing op-
International Games for the Deaf, 75, 107 erations, 63; T4 killing program and,
International League for the Preservation 26, 27, 28, 61
of the Rights of Deaf People of the Kinderfachabteilung, 69n. 30
World, 87 Kindertransport movement, 120n. 3
International Red Cross, 179 Klarsfeld, Serge and Beatte, 2
Invalidenaktion, 62–64 Klauzal Square, 181
Invalid Operation, 62–64 Klein, Lajos, 188
Israelite Institution for the Deaf (Berlin- Klein, Miklos, 185–86, 187, 188, 192, 194,
Weissensee), 6, 92, 115 202; testimony on concentration
camp experiences, 210–12
Jehovah’s Witnesses, 2 Komoly, Otto, 179
Jewish Boys’ Orphanage (Budapest), 174, Konig, Mrs. Armin, 188
175, 178 Konig, Judit, 185, 188, 190–92, 194, 202;
Jewish Deaf and Blind School (Hungary), testimony on the Budapest ghetto,
174–75 208–9
Jewish Deaf Institute (Budapest), 188 Königsberg institution. See Provincial In-
Jewish Deaf-Mute National Institute and stitution for the Deaf in Königsberg
the Sir Ignaz Wechselman and Szofia Kristallnacht, 91
Neushloss Education Institute for Kroner, Paul, 88, 91
the Blind. See Mexico Street School Krumey, Hermann, 174, 178
Jewish Home for the Aged, 92
Jewish schools: in Budapest, 196n. 13; labor brigades: Hungarian deaf Jews
deaf, 170, 171 and, 184–86, 190, 193; Miklos Klein’s
Jews (see also deaf Hungarian Jews; deaf testimony on, 210
Jews); Budapest ghetto and, 179–80, Lajos, Klein, 211
208–9; deportation from Hungary, Law Against Dangerous Habitual Crimi-
174, 175; early racial hygiene policy nals, 55
and, 33; Holocaust and, 15–16, 167; Law for the Prevention of Offspring with
in the medical profession, 43; Hereditary Diseases, 2, 20–22 (see
Nuremberg laws and, 38; resistance also sterilization law)
in Hungary, 198n. 34 Law for the Protection of German Blood
job discrimination, 102 and German Honor, 56
230 Index

Law for the Protection of the Hereditary mentally ill: forced sterilization and, 54;
Health of the German Nation, 2, 22– Nazi efforts at dehumanizing, 56–58,
23 (see also Marriage Health Law) 110; “negative” eugenics and, 51;
Law to Reduce Unemployment, 68n. 17 starvation during World War I, 40, 58
League of German Teachers of the Deaf, Merxhausen, 70n. 45
90 Meseritz-Obrawalde, 28, 40, 70n. 45
Lehmann, Gotthold, 88, 121–26, 160n. 10, Mexico Street School: Arrow Cross and,
161n. 13 180–81, 194, 195; deaf Jews sent to
Leipzig concentration camp, 189, 205–6 Bergen-Belsen from, 177, 184, 185,
Lenz, Fritz, 19, 33, 34, 36 201n. 78; experiences of deaf Jews
Levi, Primo, 1 during World War II at, 172, 175, 186,
Levy, A., 88 190, 193; formal name of, 171; impor-
Lietz, Kurt, 75–76, 108–9, 114–20 tance to Hungarian deaf Jews, 194–
Limburg euthanasia trial, 45 95; location of, 198n. 27; Red Cross
Linden, Herbert, 24 camp at, 178–79; re-opening follow-
Liptay, Bella, 198n. 35 (see also Pollak, ing World War II, 183
Bella) military personnel: as T4 killing program
Little’s Disease, 60 victims, 65
London, Felix, 88, 95 miscegenation laws, 38
Lück, Gerhard, 86 Misjudged People (film), 4, 74–75, 82–83
Muhs, Jochen, 4, 6, 73–74, 219, 221
Maesse, Herr, 137, 159 Müller, Max, 89
magazines. See periodicals Müller, Pastor, 150–58
Majdanek, 12 Mutterkreuz, 55
manic-depressive disorder, 21; forced
sterilization and, 54 Nationalist Socialist Motorized Corps,
Man the Unknown (Carrel), 39 219
Manvell, Roger, 109 National Socialist Physicians League, 42
Markus, Ruchama, 92 National Socialist Welfare Association, 83
Marriage Fitness Certificate, 23 Nationalsozialistische Kraftfahrerkorps, 219
Marriage Health Law, 22–23, 38, 56, 59 Nazi medical research: Mengele’s medi-
Mauer-Öhling, 70n. 45 cal experiments at Auschwitz, 27,
Mauthausen, 63, 64, 92 35–36; T4 killing program and, 27;
Mayer, Gerhard, 90 twin studies, 35
medical profession: anti-Semitism in, 43; Nazi organizations: deaf Germans in, 84–
euthanasia program and, 40, 45; 86
forced sterilization and, 36–37, 53; Nazi Party: attitudes toward deaf per-
Holocaust and, 41, 42, 43; Jewish sons, 107–9; “deaf branch,” 82; deaf
physicians, 43; Nazi medical re- Germans and, 78–80, 83, 93–95, 111,
search, 27, 35–36; Nazi racial hygiene 218–19; Gleichschaltung period, 75,
and, 3, 12, 34, 42–44; Nuremberg 81, 83, 84, 107
laws and, 38; relationship with Na- Nazi Training Camp I, 160n. 13, 162n. 38
zism and, 42–46, 218; Neuengamme, 63
Sonderbehandlung 14fr13 killing op- newspapers, deaf, 83–84
erations and, 63; status of physicians Niederhagen, 63
under the Nazis, 44; T4 killing pro- NSDAP. See Nazi Party
gram and, 24–25, 61, 66 NSKK. See Nationalist Socialist Motor-
medical science: crisis in, 43; racial hy- ized Corps
giene and, 34–36; relationship with Numerus Clausus Act (Hungary), 173
Nazism and, 42–46 Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial, 25, 47n. 7, 60,
“Memoir Upon the Formation of a Deaf 66
Variety of the Human Race” (Bell), 99 Nuremberg Laws, 3, 16, 19, 22, 38–39
Mengele, Josef, 27, 35–36 nursing homes: Operation Brandt and, 65
Mennecke, Fritz, 60
mental institutions: marginalization of, Operation Brandt, 64–65
58–59; public tours of, 57 Opfer der Vergangenheit (film), 57
 Index 231

oral education: Samuel Heinecke and, 33–34; Nuremberg laws, 38–39; ori-
112n.9; as presented in Verkannte gins and early history of, 32–33, 50;
Menschen, 101–2 sterilization law, 20–22, 36–37; tar-
Organization for the Advancement of the geting of disabled persons, 3;
Jewish Deaf, 90–91 teacher-collaborators (see teacher-
Ostarbeiter, 65–66, 70n. 45 collaborators); in the United States,
66n. 2
Palestine, 183 Rassenhygiene. See racial hygiene
Pauline Home in Winnenden, 149–58 Ravensbrück concentration camp, 63, 92,
Pavel (Polish boy), 194, 206, 207, 208 188–89, 193, 200n. 68, 204–6
periodicals: depictions of the congenital Reche, Otto, 36
and mentally ill, 57–58 REGEDE. See Reich Union for the Deaf of
Pfaffenrode, 70n. 45 Germany
Pfannmüller, Hermann, 25 Rehoboth Bastards and the Problem of Misce-
Pfingsten, Georg, 138 genation Among Humans (Fischer and
physicians. See medical profession Rüdin), 19
“Place of the School for the Deaf in the Reich Committee for the Scientific Regis-
New Reich, The” (Lietz), 108–9, 114– tration of Severe Hereditary Ail-
20 ments, 24–25
Ploetz, Alfred, 33, 36, 50, 52 Reich Cooperative for State Hospitals
Poland: Nazi euthanasia program and, and Nursing Homes, 26
39–40 Reich, Felix, 88, 89, 92, 115, 120n. 3
Pollak, Bella, 172, 175, 178, 181, 183, 184 Reich Film Law, 109–10
(see also Liptay, Bella) Reich Ministry for Propaganda and Edu-
Posen, 39–40 cation of the Masses, 83
Proctor, Robert, 216, 217–218 Reich Ministry for Science, Education,
Professional Association of German and Culture, 89
Teachers of the Hearing-Impaired, 90 Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft Heil- und
propaganda films. See films Pflegeanstalten, 26
Provincial Institution for the Deaf at Reich Union for the Deaf of Germany
Soest, 126–28, 130–32 (REGEDE), 4; Fritz Albreghs and, 75,
Provincial Institution for the Deaf in 81–82, 87; Wilhelm Ballier and, 113n.
Königsberg, 128–29 14; consolidation of deaf associations
Prussia, 20 and, 73, 74, 83, 107; consolidation of
psychiatrists, 26 deaf newspapers and, 84; founding
public health strategies, Nazi (see also of, 81; Gleichschaltung period and, 83,
German/Nazi eugenics; racial hy- 84; Ludwig Herzog and, 82; persecu-
giene); euthanasia program, 59–66; tion of deaf Jews, 90–91; Alfred
“gene and race cultivation” strategy, Reifke and, 94; Heinrich Siepmann
53; marginalization of institutions, and, 88; support of Nazi racial hy-
58–59; pro-natal and anti-natal poli- giene, 160; Verkannte Menschen and,
cies, 55–56; sterilization law, 53–55; 82–83, 98
sterilization of criminals, 55; targeting Reifke, Alfred, 94–95
of the “unfit,” 49–50, 52–53, 56–58; Reischsverband der Gehörlosen
use of “documentary” films, 56–57 Deutschlands, 4
public labor service: in Hungary, 184–86 Revesz, Mrs. Andor, 188
Roboz, Otto, 174–75
racial hygiene (see also German/Nazi eu- Roma, 2, 16, 167 (see also Gypsies)
genics; sterilization law); biological Roman Catholic Church: opposition to
imagery and, 34; euthanasia pro- eugenics, 147; teacher-collaborators,
gram, 11–12, 39–42; Hitler’s rise to 142–43, 147–49
power and, 20; Holocaust and, 3; is- Rönigk, Oskar, 133, 135–38
sues for historical research, 216–19; Roosevelt, Franklin D., 179
major institutions, 35–36; medical Rüdin, Ernst, 19, 35, 36, 52
profession and, 12, 34, 42–44; medical Rudolf Virchow Hospital, 123
science and, 34–36; Nazification of, Ryan, Donna, 168, 170, 202, 221
232 Index

SA. See Sturmabteilung techniques, 37; diseases and dis-

Sachsenhausen, 63, 88 abilities categorized by, 21, 53;
St. Joseph Private Institution for the Deaf groups victimized by, 54–55; He-
in Schwäbisch Gmünd, 142, 163n. 50 reditary Health Courts and, 21, 36;
St. Vitus’s dance, 21 initial number of sterilizations pro-
Salon International des Artistes posed, 53–54, 67n. 9; medical pro-
Silencieux, 99 fession and, 36–37, 53; number of
sanatoria. See mental institutions people sterilized under, 4, 21–22, 37,
Schafft, Hermann, 133 54, 108, 170; origin and passage of,
Schallmayer, Wilhelm, 33 20–21, 36; postwar deliberations
schizophrenia: forced sterilization and, concerning, 47n. 7; registry of cases
21, 22 of genetic illness, 36–37, 47n. 6; scal-
Schleswig Institution for the Deaf, 138– ing back of, 59; sterilization of
41, 144–45 criminals, 55; sterilization statistics,
Schmid, Franz, 142, 163n. 50 67n. 10; targeting of deaf persons, 4,
Schmid, Georg, 142, 163n. 50 5, 21–22, 37, 54, 106, 108, 170;
Schneider, Carl, 27 teacher-collaborators, 5, 76–77, 123;
School for the Jewish Deaf (London), —, Herr Bewer, 128–29; —, at the
120n. 3 District Instructional and Vocational
Schorsch, Ernst, 88–89 Institution for Girls in Dillingen,
Schuchman, John S., 6, 74, 168, 221 145–49;—,Gotthold Lehmann, 123;
Schultze, Walter, 38 —, number of students reported on,
Schuman, Paul, 115 159; —, at the Pauline Home in
Schürmann (teacher of the deaf), 123, Winnenden, 149–58; —, response of
124–25 deaf persons to, 159–60; —, Oskar
science: Nazi racial hygiene and, 34–36; Rönigk, 135–38; —, Franz Schmid,
Nazi relationship with, 44–46 142; —, Georg Schmid, 142; —,
Sela, Israel, 6, 199n. 37, 201n. 78 Edwin Singer, 129, 132–33, 136; —,
Siepmann, Heinrich, 84, 87–88 Herr Wegge, 126–28, 130-32; treat-
sign language: communication between ment of survivors in modern Ger-
foreigners and, 197n. 22; public use many, 28–29, 95
of, 197n. 21; Verkannte Menschen and, sterilization laws (U.S.), 17–18, 37
101, 102, 104 Stimme, Die (deaf newspaper), 83–84
Singer, Edwin, 129, 132, 134–35, 136, Sturmabteilung (SA): deaf members, 82,
162n. 26 84–86, 219
Sinti, 2, 16, 167 (see also Gypsies) Szálasi, Ferenc, 173, 180
Social Darwinism, 32, 50
social problems: Nazi eugenics theory Taft, William Howard, 18
and, 13 Taubstummenfreund, Der deaf newspaper),
Society for Race Hygiene, 19 83–84
Soest institution. See Provincial Institu- teacher-collaborators, 5, 76–77; Herr
tion for the Deaf at Soest Bewer, 128–29; Herr Heidbrede, 139–
Sonderbehandlung 14fr13 operations, 42; Gotthold Lehmann, 121–26; Pas-
62–64, 69n. 35 tor Müller, 150–58; number of stu-
Sonnenstein/Pirna, 26, 61, 63 dents reported on, 159; at the
spastic diplegia, 60 Pauline Home in Winnenden, 150–
“special treatment,” 62–64 58; in private institutions, 142, 145–
sports: deaf athletes and, 99; Deaf Olym- 58; response of deaf persons to, 159–
pics, 99, 107 60; Oskar Rönigk, 133, 135–38; Franz
starvation, 40, 58 Schmid, 142; Georg Schmid, 142;
State Institution for the Deaf at Berlin- Edwin Singer, 129, 132, 134–35, 136;
Neukölln, 88, 121–26 Herr Wegge, 126–28, 131–32
sterilization law (German), 75; amend- teachers of the deaf (see also teacher-col-
ments to, 22; American influence on, laborators); actions during the Nazi
37; deaf resistance to, 160; develop- period, 88–90; Berlin-Neukölln train-
ment of sterilization methods and ing institute, 121–26
 Index 233

T4 killing program, 3 (see also euthanasia film medium and, 98, 100; German
program); conquered Europe and, deaf community and, 98, 106; Nazi
195n. 3; development and adminis- racial hygiene policy and, 106–7;
tration of, 23–24; distribution and release of, 98; significance of title,
use of registration forms, 60–61; ex- 98–99; sign language and, 101, 102,
pansion of groups victimized by, 13, 104; theme of employment for deaf
62–66; failure of survivors to receive persons in, 200n. 69
restitution, 28; Final Solution and, Verkannte Menschen (film), 4, 74–75, 82–83
66; Hartheim Statistics, 62; killing Verlag, J. F. Lehmann, 33
centers, 26, 27, 61; looting of corpses, Verschuer, Otmar Freiherr von, 19–20, 27,
27; medical profession and, 24–25, 35
61, 66; murder of disabled adults, Victims of the Past (film), 57
25–26; murder of infants and young Volta Review, 114
children, 24–25 (see also child eutha-
nasia program); Nazi medical re- Wachlenberg, Leo, 181, 198n. 35
search and, 27; number of people Wagner, Gerhard, 36, 41, 52
murdered, 27–28, 62; Operation Wagner, J.-E., 142
Brandt, 64–65; origins of, 60; Wallenberg, Raoul, 6, 179, 190
Sonderbehandlung 14fr13 operations, War Refugee Board (U.S.), 179
62–64; targeting of deaf people in, 5– Wegge, Herr, 126–28, 131–32, 161n. 22
6; temporary end to, 27–28, 61–62; Weicher, Sandor, 186, 187, 188
“wild euthanasia” and decentralized Weidt, Otto, 6
killings, 28, 62 Weimar Germany: deaf organizations in,
Thomas, Werner, 86, 109 80–82; eugenics movement during,
Thyssen, Fritz, 36 19–20, 51–52
Tiegenhof, 70n. 45 Weisz, Edith, 186, 194
Training Institute for Teachers of the Weisz, Miksa, 186
Deaf in Berlin-Neukölln, 121–26 Whitehead, I. P., 17–18
Treblinka, 26 Wiesel, Eli, 1
Tuz, Laszlo, 198n. 35 Wiesenthal, Simon, 2
twin studies, 35 “wild euthanasia,” 28, 62
Winnenden institution. See Pauline
UFA. See Universum Film AG Home in Winnenden
Union of German Girls, 86 Wippermann, Wolfgang, 216
Union of German Teachers of the Deaf, Wöller, Günther, 93
160n. 10 World Congress of the Deaf, 112n. 5
United States: eugenics and racial hy- World Congress of the International As-
giene movement in, 2, 17–18, 66n. 2; sociation of the Deaf, 87
influence on Nuremberg laws, 38–39; World Federation of the Deaf, 87, 88,
racial policies, 38–39; restrictions on 112n. 5
immigration, 17, 38; sterilization World Games of the Deaf, 93
laws and forced sterilization in, 17– World War I: German eugenics and, 18–
18, 37, 47n. 7) 19, 51–52; starvation of the mentally
United States Holocaust Memorial Mu- ill and disabled, 40, 58
seum, 221–22
U.S. Supreme Court, 17–18 Zionists: resistance in Hungary, 198n. 34
University of Missouri, 39
Universum Film AG (UFA), 100

Varges, Lovis, 87
Verkannte Menschen: banning of, 107; ba-
sic message and purpose of, 4, 74–75,
82–83, 100, 106, 110; competence of
deaf persons portrayed in, 103–4; de-
piction of job discrimination, 102;
depiction of oral education in, 101–2;