Hadamar

Today I watched a recording of a BBC special edition of a program called “See Hear”. It’s a special interests program of a group which I will get to in a minute. The program was a shortened version of one that appeared last year and was broadcast I assume because of the recent anniversary of Auschwitz. The program was about the persecution of the vulnerable groups in Nazi Germany starting with sterilisation and leading to mass murder. This persecution being a state sanctioned one in that it was enshrined in a law aimed specifically at the disabled. As I said earlier the program is a special interests, one which covers the issues for deaf people and focused on this group as being one of the many that came under the Nazi German state’s benevolent eye.

Watching this program for the second time still left me with the same quiet anger that you could have for any psychopathic insane individuals who would leave a bloodstained mark on history

The children who fell in the various vulnerable categories were the first to feel the hand of the Nazi state having been betrayed by the very profession that all parents trust – teachers.

They were identified to the medical authorities as candidates for sterilization.

These “patients” in this mass sterilisation program were as young as nine years old. The efficiency of the Bureaucracy that rounded them up did not apply to the practice of good medicine as there were often cases of septicemia.



Having already taken the step to ensure that these people would die out within a generation, the regime took the next logical step in removing them from society. This was done by transporting groups of people via ambulance or coach with blacked out windows to a special building. There up to sixty people at a time were crowded into a room and told to take off their clothes. The doctors would check over them pretending to perform a medical examination. They were then told that they were going to have a shower and with these last words the doctors left the room. Having locked the door they turned on the tap to release carbon monoxide into the room to suffocate them.

After their death their bodies would be taken to the basement after having first removed any gold teeth. Moved to the basement they would be loaded several bodies at a time into an incinerator and burnt. Up to 70,000 people were murdered here, most of whom could not even physically defend themselves if need be. The parents were often told that their children had died of natural causes. The operators of this facility even held a death celebration with beer and food around the 10,000th corpse, being so proud of the statistics of death. Eventually the local civilian population and various groups became suspicious about the number of people not coming out and the chimney incineration smoke and they protested about what was going on. The Nazi government in an effort protect its image, closed down the facility and shipped everything east towards Poland.

If any of this sounds familiar then it would be because this art of death learnt, practiced and perfected by its operators was eventually used on Jews and other groups in the extermination camps of Auschwitz, Birkenhoff and Treblinka

All of this was justified by the state declaring that these groups were useless eaters or a “burden”. Roll that word around your mind and the image you get from it

BURDEN - load, encumbrance, incumbrance, onus -- (an onerous or difficult concern; "the burden of responsibility"; "that's a load off my mind")

Now cast your eyes and ears over the media events that have recently occurred from the UK about the issue of who should be allowed into UK and the scandal over who should get Incapacity benefits. The conservative party wants health checks on all potentional immigrants refusing those who do not meet the health criteria. Citing the need to avoid “burden ” on both the country and especially the NHS although they don’t know what to do if it’s an asylum seeker / refugee, I would be curious to see what they would do if it was a disabled person. The labour government in the meantime has decided to reform the incapacity benefits system into one that gets the disabled into work. Which in theory would work only if:

a) The government made sure the NHS did their job of giving the disabled or incapacitated the support they need to either recover or get on with their lives.
b) The government enforced the law of disability discrimination on the employers who just don’t want to know and sees such a group as burden on their finances.


Recently on BBC on a program called the politics show the minister for the disabled referred to the issue of a toothless disability discrimination act as one in which it was expected that the disabled should be pursing legal action against those who break the law in order to enforce it. Could you imagine taking the same action if the law was for gender or race discrimination?

This all from your local friendly neighborhood government who talks about social inclusion for this group and for some of its own departments are strangely exempt from this law, for those who are not are breaking the law. Very much the “do as I say “rather “do as I do” Even amongst the debates that were held on the BBC website “Have your say” there were many members of public who would refer to the issue of burden both on immigration health checks and especially incapacity benefits. I see this as an underlying trend of national discrimination of many different groups from age to gender. For the disabled and in particular the deaf I have seen the trend of ignorance getting worse since the early 90s as if a whole new generation had taken the reins of society with their ethos of eugenics. Is the UK going back to the dark ages? The last time a country made an issue of burden, they murdered the group in question.


By the way the name of the facility where 70,000 vulnerable people were murdered is HADAMAR












Some links for further information.

www.bbc.co.uk/seehear/extra
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/closeup/holocaust/faq.shtml
www.bbc.co.uk/seehear/extra/nazispecial/ www.bbc.co.uk/seehear/extra/nazispecial/nazifactsheet.shtml