The Nazi ‘Euthanasia’ Killings – The Long Shadow of History

Introduction (Rainer Schulze)

The victims of the Nazi Euthanasia killings are arguably the most forgotten or overlooked victims of Nazi racial and population policies. Very few of those targeted survived, and those who did left no testimonies: With the all-pervading view that disability and mental illness was something to be ashamed of, families hid the fate of those murdered just as much as they hid those disabled people who survived the Nazi Euthanasia killings…

On 10-12 June 2016, the Gedenkstätte Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz in Berlin hosted an international symposium which aimed to change this. Taking its cue from volume 5 of The Holocaust in History and Memory (Schulze, 2012) which focused on the Nazi ‘euthanasia’ killings with contributions by disabled and non-disabled scholars and activists, the Berlin symposium brought together scholars from a wide range of disciplines, Holocaust educators as well as some disability activists to discuss the linkages between the ‘euthanasia’ killings and the Holocaust…

The symposium featured a special panel discussion with representatives of the German disability community about the ‘Long Shadow of the Nazi Euthanasia Killings’… In the following, participants of the Sunday panel discussion on the ‘Long Shadow of the Euthanasia Killings’ summarise their statements. Originally, this article was written for the journal The Holocaust in History and Memory but due to funding cuts this journal had to cease publication.

It took almost nine years until we found a new opportunity to publish the article, and we are grateful that the Zeitschrift für Disabilities Studies agreed that the main arguments which we had set out had lost nothing of their relevance – if anything, they have become even more relevant in the light of recent developments in Germany, the United States and other countries…