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During the holocaust over 100,000 disabled people were exterminated
under the Nazi's policy of Eugenics and Euthanasia - the doctors and nurses trained
to kill the disabled later worked in Auschwitz and other death camps. Hundreds
of thousands more disabled people were 'legally' sterilised - the Nazi's taking
on a eugenic philosophy which the Americans and British had led the way in since
the turn of the 20th century.
Most people still do not know of the Nazi Holocaust of the 'useless eaters' or
those 'unworthy of life'. Few disabled people are even aware of their role in
the development of the Holocaust.
The disabled victims of the Holocaust are rarely mentioned in discussions of the
Holocaust. Why? For many disabled people the prejudice continues: over five million
of us have been aborted since the 1960s due to a fear that we might be different
or a burden on the state. Countless others of us are trapped in ghettos, socially
excluded, as a result of institutionalisation, poverty and hopelessness. We are
still feared and despised, objects of charity. In Britain thousands of disabled
people are still trapped in Charity institutions to this day; unable to have even
the faintest of ordinary lives let alone fulfil their potential.
We, the disabled, are not disabled because of our bodies or our minds - we are
disabled by society's denial of disabled people's citizenship: our right to be
different / our right to be human.
In a world obsessed with normality we seek to preserve the earth's bio-diversity
whilst at the same time we edge closer to denying the same right for human-diversity.
The Americans and British again lead the way at the turn of the 21st Century -
this time in the field of genetic theory and practice.
Disabled people are entitled to their place in history and the future. Allow us
to be proud to be whom and what we are. There are still no Holocaust memorials
to disabled people; and as long as disabled people, their history and their lives,
are not remembered we will continue to be shut away and 'spoken for' as pitiable
objects of charity; we will continue to be denied our citizenship.
To rephrase a well-known American: As long as there is a lower class, I am in
it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free. As long as there are
institutionalised disabled people, I am still trapped. As long as disabled people
die you can not be truly alive.
The disabled victims of the Nazi Holocaust live in the disabled around us. They
are our brothers and sisters - they are also our mothers and fathers. If the extermination
of the disabled had been stopped what followed may never have happened.
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