The Deaf Holocaust: Deaf People and Nazi Germany

Monday 7 February 2005, 7.00pm, BBC TWO
Repeat: Friday 11 February 2005, 3.00am, BBC ONE

• The Deaf Holocaust: quick facts
• The Deaf Holocaust: web resources and further reading

As part of the season of programmes commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Holocaust and the liberation of Auschwitz, Clive Mason visits the killing centre of Hadamar to investigate the development and impact of the Nazi policy of enforced sterilisation and the murder of deaf and disabled people, which took place in Germany between 1933 and 1945. Members of the German deaf community, who are still living with the legacy of this brutal Nazi policy, tell their moving stories for the first time on television.

A longer version of this programme, with the title Life Unworthy of Life, was first shown in March 2004.

The Aryan race: eradicating the inferior
When the Nazi party came to power in Germany in 1933, they promised stability, prosperity and national renewal to a country which, since its defeat in the First World War, had suffered constant social and economic upheaval. Yet as with all totalitarian regimes, there was a darker side.

Hitler was obsessed with racial purity - with the idea that nature had created a superior Aryan race, an elite with the quickest minds and most able bodies. Therefore, by the laws of nature, anyone judged ‘inferior’ or 'weak' should be eradicated to protect the 'purity' of the gene pool. Into this category came Jews, gypsies, black people, gay people - plus deaf and disabled people.

Sterilisation
In July 1933, the Nazi regime introduced a controversial new law to prevent the 'unfit' from having children. They enforced the sterilisation of certain defined groups including: blind, manically depressed, physically malformed, promiscuous women and deaf people. Those thought to have hereditory deafness had to attend a medical examination to decide whether they should be sterilised.

Though there was an appeals procedure, the vast majority were turned down.

Education
It’s estimated that some 17,000 deaf people were sterilised between 1933 and 1945 - the youngest was only 9 years old. Given that there was no national register of deaf or disabled people in Germany, many were given over to the authorities by teachers of the deaf - the very people trusted with their care and support. Some Nazi educationalists even began to question the right of deaf children to be educated at all, believing the education of the 'inferior' to be wasteful.

Abortions
From sterilisation, it was just a short step to preventing the birth of deaf and disabled children.

In 1935, doctors were given the legal right to terminate pregnancies by force if an inherited genetic condition, such as deafness, was suspected. Abortions were carried out as late as six months into the pregnancy.

Deaths of 'Useless Eaters'
In 1939, the Nazi policy towards deaf and disabled people took an even more sinister and horrific turn. Hitler decided that Germany should be rid of 'useless eaters' and that deaf and disabled children should be killed. Newborn babies with physical 'defects' were removed from their mothers and killed. Children who were judged to have mental or physical disabilities were taken to special children's wards and killed by lethal injection or starvation. The parents were often informed that their children had died of natural causes. It is estimated that nearly 2000 deaf children were killed in this way.

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