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Survivors bear witness to Nazi eugenics :: Latest Museum News :: PIONEER PRESS ::
"Who would have thought that in 1933, handicapped people, ill people would be murdered? This never occurred to anyone. It was beyond all imagination."
Antje Kosemund, who spoke those words, was the sister of Irma, a victim of Nazi euthanasia when she was a teenager.
Irma, she said, learned to talk later than her other siblings. When she involuntarily entered a children's ward during the war, she was the oldest one there at age 13 while the youngest was age 3.
Irma and the other children were subjected to Illegal human medical experiments. "They were horribly starved and reduced to mere skeletons. Most died of exhaustion and hunger and doses of medicines or they were given a lethal injection," Kosemund said.
The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center's new traveling exhibition, "Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race" includes a sampling of such testimonies. They bear witness to the horrific ramifications of Nazism's roots in biology and genetics.
The exhibition explores how so-called public health measures undertaken in the name of progressive social reform led first to the murder of Germany's mentally and physically disabled citizens and ultimately to the murder of European Jews.
Paul Eggert was one of 13 children in his family. Born to neglectful parents, he had to beg for food for his brothers and sisters and never went to school.
Taken to a city hospital in Bielefield, he was sterilized in 1940.
"I was operated on but they told me nothing" he said. "I really felt crushed. We wanted very much to have children but we could not because of my operation at Bielefield."
Helga Gross, a deaf child, was sterilized 1939 when she was 16.
"They explained to the deaf children that they didn't want deaf children -- that they had to be sterilized because they didn't want deaf children who would grow up and be deaf as well," she said. "We were young. We really didn't understand. The man who came from the government came to our school and told the teacher to choose which children we should send to the hospital for sterilization."
When Dorothea Buck was sterilized in 1937, she was 19.
"I was simply taken away from home and I received no visitors, but I did not know they were not allowed to visit me so I felt totally abandoned," she said. "When I learned that I had been sterilized, I realized I could never work in a kindergarten as I had planned or have any social profession. I was devastated. My life's dream was destroyed. I would be marked by the stigma of inferiority for the rest of my life."
Irene Hizme and Rene Slotkin were 6-year-old twins when they were deported to Auschwitz. After four months, they were separated from their mother and then separated from each other.
"I can only recall a soul-piercing cry from our mother," Hizme said. "And I know we didn't want to let go. But we were forcibly taken from her."
The twins' mother was one of 3,700 people killed that night. The two children survived, somehow knowing that each other was alive although they were subjected to painful medical testing.
"I hate doctors," Hizme said. "The blood from my neck was extremely painful but I knew I couldn't cry and I didn't. I never cried."
"Who would have thought that in 1933, handicapped people, ill people would be murdered? This never occurred to anyone. It was beyond all imagination."
Antje Kosemund, who spoke those words, was the sister of Irma, a victim of Nazi euthanasia when she was a teenager.
Irma, she said, learned to talk later than her other siblings. When she involuntarily entered a children's ward during the war, she was the oldest one there at age 13 while the youngest was age 3.
Irma and the other children were subjected to Illegal human medical experiments. "They were horribly starved and reduced to mere skeletons. Most died of exhaustion and hunger and doses of medicines or they were given a lethal injection," Kosemund said.
The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center's new traveling exhibition, "Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race" includes a sampling of such testimonies. They bear witness to the horrific ramifications of Nazism's roots in biology and genetics.
The exhibition explores how so-called public health measures undertaken in the name of progressive social reform led first to the murder of Germany's mentally and physically disabled citizens and ultimately to the murder of European Jews.
Paul Eggert was one of 13 children in his family. Born to neglectful parents, he had to beg for food for his brothers and sisters and never went to school.
Taken to a city hospital in Bielefield, he was sterilized in 1940.
"I was operated on but they told me nothing" he said. "I really felt crushed. We wanted very much to have children but we could not because of my operation at Bielefield."
Helga Gross, a deaf child, was sterilized 1939 when she was 16.
"They explained to the deaf children that they didn't want deaf children -- that they had to be sterilized because they didn't want deaf children who would grow up and be deaf as well," she said. "We were young. We really didn't understand. The man who came from the government came to our school and told the teacher to choose which children we should send to the hospital for sterilization."
When Dorothea Buck was sterilized in 1937, she was 19.
"I was simply taken away from home and I received no visitors, but I did not know they were not allowed to visit me so I felt totally abandoned," she said. "When I learned that I had been sterilized, I realized I could never work in a kindergarten as I had planned or have any social profession. I was devastated. My life's dream was destroyed. I would be marked by the stigma of inferiority for the rest of my life."
Irene Hizme and Rene Slotkin were 6-year-old twins when they were deported to Auschwitz. After four months, they were separated from their mother and then separated from each other.
"I can only recall a soul-piercing cry from our mother," Hizme said. "And I know we didn't want to let go. But we were forcibly taken from her."
The twins' mother was one of 3,700 people killed that night. The two children survived, somehow knowing that each other was alive although they were subjected to painful medical testing.
"I hate doctors," Hizme said. "The blood from my neck was extremely painful but I knew I couldn't cry and I didn't. I never cried."