No nation carried sterilization as far as Hitler's Germany. Persons with disabilities - over 200,000 - are the first victims of the Holocaust. The atrocities caused by Hitler and the Nazi regime are well-known in the Jewish community. Most people think only of the great losses suffered by the Jews when the word "Holocaust" is mentioned. But the disabled were despised by Hitler and the regime because a disability of any kind was an abhorrent to the future of his dream of a perfect race. In his lunacy, Hitler believed by eradicating every disabled person, he could wipe out disability. Babies born deaf, blind or with even the slightest imperfection were immediately disposed of...
Did you know? Many organizations that support children with disabilities started after the Holocaust
in 1941, a Catholic bishop, Clemens von Galen, delivered a sermon in Munster Cathedral attacking the Nazi euthanasia program calling it "plain murder". Hitler suspended Aktion T4, which had accounted for nearly 100,000 deaths by this time. The euthanasia program quietly continued using drugs and starvation instead of gassing.
After the war in 1948, The General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights. This declaration was a direct result of the atrocities during W.W.II, but it was also the first formal steps to the Civil Rights movement. Many other disabled advocacy groups began soon afterwards, such as the United Cerebral Palsy Association (founded 1948), the National Association for Retarded Children (1950) and The Muscular Dystrophy Association (1950).
http://www.chairgrrl.com/DisabilityTimeline/holocaust.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment