Children…

The handicapped and “asocials”
In the 1920s, some German scientists began advocating
the killing of people they referred to as “useless entities”.
By this, they meant certain groups of handicapped and
mentally disabled citizens. The expression “life unworthy
of life” was coined. Such ideas were quickly absorbed
by the Nazis, whose ideology called for society to aid
the “healthy” and eliminate the “sick” and “inferior”.
Jews and “Gypsies” were regarded as external threats
to the German “national body”, while the mentally and
physically handicapped, along with others who did not
fit in the “people’s community”, also to be contained
and combatted. Classed as economically “unproductive”,
they were considered a too “heavy burden” for
“healthy” and “productive” members of society to bear.
From a racial-biological point of view, they were considered
“inferior”. Their “negative” qualities were believed
to be hereditary, thereby constituting a mounting danger
to the well-being of the “national body”.
In their enthusiasm to “cleanse” both German society
and the “Aryan race”, the Nazis persecuted and
imprisoned thousands of citizens from a group of
people arbitrarily labelled “asocials”. This group even
included prostitutes and those who refused a job offer.
The Nazi ideology simply punished those whose way
of life was regarded as offensive. This included petty
criminals, who, according to the science of “criminal
biology” prevalent in Germany at the time, were considered
to be biologically “inferior”. Individuals who fell
into this category were forcibly sterilised or castrated. In
the concentration camps they wore a black triangle and
were very low down in the camp hierarchy, with slight
chances of survival.
Taken in the Buchenwald concentration camp sometime between 1938
and 1940, the propaganda picture above shows a group of handicapped
Jewish men. Handicapped people were considered “useless” and only
fit to serve as “objects” for pseudo-medical research. These men are
unlikely to have remained alive for long after this picture was taken.
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