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
Quick facts
Fact 1: The Nazi party created an organisation called REGEDE - the Reich Union of the Deaf in Germany. Many German deaf newspapers and social groups were abolished.
Fact 2: REGEDE was led by the Deaf Nazi Fritz Albreghs, the 'Fuhrer of the Deaf'. He used both sign and speech to get across the Nazi message.
Fact 3: A deaf storm-trooper motorcycle unit patrolled deaf neighbourhoods, violently harassing political opponents and terrorising deaf Jews.
Fact 4: In July 1933, the Nazi regime introduced a controversial new law to prevent the ‘unfit’ from having children by enforced sterilisation of certain defined groups, including the deaf and disabled.
Fact 5: Many Protestant church leaders with deaf congregations promoted the sterilisation legislation.
Fact 6: The leader of the women’s section of REGEDE - although not hereditarily deaf - was voluntarily sterilised. She then toured Germany persuading others to follow her example.
Fact 7: It’s estimated that some 17,000 deaf people were sterilised between 1933 and 1945 – the youngest was 9 years old.
Fact 8: Doctors terminated pregnancies by force if an inherited genetic condition, such as deafness, was suspected. Children with mental and physical disabilities were killed by lethal injection or starvation.
Fact 9: The T4 Program targeted disabled and deaf adults living in institutional care homes. They were taken to hospital killing centres, such as Hadamar.
Fact 10: After the war, Deaf and disabled victims of sterilisation struggled to get compensation. They never received an offer of support, counselling or pension rights.
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