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Horst Biesold. Interpreter Teacher of the Deaf Ally Scholar. “My deaf friends will have to forgive me that I eventually opted for scholarly publication. … new threats that are now signaled by genetic engineering…”
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Created by P. Durr, NTID Dept. of Cultural and Creative Studies
Horst Biesold • Interpreter • Teacher of the Deaf • Ally • Scholar
“My deaf friends will have to forgive me that I eventually opted for scholarly publication. … new threats that are now signaled by genetic engineering…” • “I wanted to expose, uncompromisingly, the role of deaf education in the complicity of educators in the illegal Nazi state.”
From Social Darwinism to National Socialism • Darwin’s ideas of Natural Selection • German Eugenicists expanded these ideals • (late 1800s) • Concept of “racial hygiene” • Economic efficiency – remove “social burden”
Boeters’ Letter (1923) • “… since in many cases the consent of parents and others is not to be had at any price, even though the necessity of an operation is clearly evident for anyone not himself a mental defective, I urge the introduction of legislative coercion.”
Nazis as Teachers • “racial hygiene” practices • estimated hereditary Deafness to be as high as 35 % • opposition to racial hygiene rhetoric before 1933 small • Myth – teachers of the disadvantage had a “rescue mentality”
School admin. and teachers’ attitude - • “better one too many sterilized than one too few.”
The Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases • July 14, 1933 • Legalized sterilization if “strong likelihood that the offspring will suffer from severe hereditary physical or mental defects”
Social Darwinism Continuum • Preventing life leads to Exterminating life • Legalized forced abortions followed • Euthanasia • Final Solution
Schizophrenia Manic-depressive psychosis Huntington’s chorea Severe alcoholism Epilepsy Blindness Deafness Severe Physical Deformity Feeblemindedness Hereditary Diseases
Methods of Sterilization • Vasectomies – local anesthesia – outpatient • Female sterilization – general anesthesia – inpatient • Crushing, severing, or removal of Fallopian tubes • Removal of uterus • Sterilization by X rays
Estimate – 17,000 congenitally deaf persons must have undergone forced sterilization • Accurate figures are difficult – school withheld documents or destroyed them
Comments by Victims • “monstrous violation of human rights” • “lifelong incompleteness of marital relations” (spouses should be counted as victims) • “It was an extremely painful torture, the doctor bored around in the sensitive part of my vagina with his finger. I suffered terrible pain…Almost always I have pain during intercourse..”
General Findings about Victims • 54 % of respondents were females • Youngest 9 yrs old – oldest 50 • most btw 22-30 yrs old • Turned in by health authority, Nazi party, school • Most sterilizations btw 1935-1937
Survivor • “My deaf brother NN was not sterilized …He had two healthy children. My sister… also had seven healthy children. I still suffer from it, and question why it was just me who had to suffer a fate with such terrible consequences.”
“About three months after the operation, my fiancé said to me that we had to break up; he couldn’t be expected to keep a wife with a ‘Hitler cut’ for the rest of his life” • “My fiancé backed out of the marriage because I could no longer have children. That happened to me three times, so that I withdrew more and more from life.”
“…It was just like holding a doll without feelings in my arms.”
Biesold’s Research Findings • Almost 50% experience physical pain • 76% have psychological pain • Many unmarried due to sterilization • Many divorced due to sterilization • Suffering of teenage victims disproportionately high
Biesold’s Research Findings Con’t. • Bodily integrity violated • Depression due to uprooting • Sense of Shame and inferiority • Suicide and attempts • Isolation • Some deaths from operation • Infanticide
Forced Abortions • Of 662 respondents, 57 being forced to terminate a pregnancy • 23 women aborted during or after the sixth month
“Killing my baby and the sterilization operation that was carried out at the same time took from eight o’clock in the morning until one in the afternoon. I will never forget the screaming and swearing of that awful woman doctor; it is stamped into my memory.”
Euthanasia and Deaf Germans • Euthanasia – mercy killing of those “unworthy of life” / useless eaters • Moved to secluded, primitive lodging • Death by starvation, gassing, lethal injection • 1939 focusing on disabled children • T4 Program killing of disabled adults
Euthanasia and Deaf Germans Con’t. • T4 program killed 70,000 people – gas chambers disguised as shower rooms • 1941 T4 Program on hold from protest • 1941 Extermination of Jews begins • Wild euthanasia of disabled via starvation • Deaf with other disabilities killed
Letter from a former student to Director Singer 1960 • “… 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?…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.”
Singer’s Response • “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… 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
