Holocaust Remembrance Day – This was also mass murder

Her great-grandmother was murdered in Hadamar in 1941; she was a victim of “Aktion T4”. These victims are an often overlooked group. But there is a memory in your family.

Yes, that’s mainly because of my grandmother. She was 28 years old when her mother was gassed and was already clairvoyant enough in 1945 to realize that it was a murder. Her commitment to the victims of the extermination campaigns intensified in the late 80s, when several factors came together: she retired and had more time, and the trial against the killing doctors Ullrich, Endruweit and Bunke took place in 1986, which she greatly enjoyed pursued intensively. She documented a lot and became very active when she founded the Association of People Victims of “Euthanasia” and Forced Sterilization in 1987.

You were born in 1977 and are now continuing your grandmother’s memory work…

Yes, that is typical, it is usually the oldest child or grandchild who carries on this type of remembering. However, they are often women.

How is your commitment viewed in your family?

There are, so to speak, two family strands: one, very right-wing, suppresses and denies the issue. In the second strand, my strand so to speak, there is a great awareness of the topic. I conducted interviews with the third and fourth generations, and without exception, all of them knew from an early age that there was a Nazi victim in the family. That’s the case with me too. I can’t say when this awareness arose – I grew up with this knowledge.

Interview

Andreas Hechler was born and grew up in West Berlin in 1977, studied European ethnology and gender studies and worked for many years in adult education, process support, evaluation and gender-reflected pedagogy. Further information about his areas of work can be found at: www.andreashechler.com

I imagine this to be difficult: there is no place for some groups of victims in the memory discourse.

Yes, many of those persecuted by the Nazis were deliberately ignored and played off against each other and the Federal Republic always relied on the biological solution, i.e. their death. The Nazi “euthanasia” victims were only recognized as a Nazi victim group very late, namely in 1988. Recognition as “persecuted” victims is still pending today. This would include both full legal recognition and enable claims within the meaning of the Federal Compensation Act. In a similar way, this applies to those who were forced to be sterilized, those who were persecuted as homosexual, “career criminals” or “anti-social” and many others. Beyond this, the persecuted groups mentioned do not generally appear in the memory discourse, neither in the official nor in the private and familial context.

You talk about various acts of extermination. It seems to me that the commemoration focuses primarily on “Aktion T4”.

That’s how it is, and that’s a problem. I think it’s because of the symbolism of the gas chambers. In addition to “Aktion T4”, there was also the so-called child euthanasia, the systematic killing of psychiatric inmates in the conquered eastern territories at the beginning of the Second World War, and after “Aktion T4” there was “Aktion Brandt”, in which The murder continued in a decentralized manner with deprivation of food, neglect and injections. In my opinion, all of these victims should be remembered.

Does that happen too?

There are memorials primarily where people were gassed as part of “Aktion T4”. In the intermediate institutions and other clinics where murders took place, the commemoration varies greatly – from nothing at all to a memorial stone to exhibitions. Incidentally, most of the T4 memorials are still psychiatric hospitals to this day. You can still stand in front of a sign tree today and on the left there is a sign pointing to the physio and on the right to the former gas chamber. I also don’t know how one is supposed to get healthy in a place like that. This is probably also a consequence of the fact that the commemoration – if it takes place – came and still comes primarily from the group of perpetrators: doctors and nursing staff. In the history of the founding of memorial sites, there was an explicit exclusion of disabled people, always on the grounds that the topic was “too overwhelming” for them. The memorial in Hadamar was the first to open and, for example, in cooperation with the “Human First” association, it developed tours led by mentally impaired people. This greatly influenced the perspective of visitors. For example, the garage where people arrived in gray buses only to be murdered by gas was previously photographed almost exclusively from the outside. As people who would have been gassed back then were led through the area, there were more and more photos from inside this garage. This shows how important this change of perspective is: there is a much stronger identification.

Nevertheless, today’s murders and acts of violence against the disabled are always treated as a “private tragedy.”

Ableist mass murder usually differs from racist mass murders, for example, in that in the former the perpetrator and victim have typically known each other for a long time and the violent act takes place where there are ableist structures: i.e. in homes, clinics and institutions, i.e. “at home « or at the place of work. There is no strong awareness that these institutions are potentially dangerous, and this also has to do with the inadequate reappraisal after 1945. The hunger house in the Erlangen sanatorium and nursing home was recently demolished, in which around 1,000 people were killed during the second phase. It is being built over with a building for the Max Planck Society, whose predecessor society was significantly involved in Nazi medical crimes. The medical and administration building was the only authentic place left standing. All of this is symbolic: the location of the perpetrators remains, the location of the victims is destroyed and built over by an organization with a history of Nazi perpetrators. It must also be said that medicine continues to benefit today from the knowledge gained through research on murdered people, not least in brain research. There is hardly any social awareness of this.

If we look at the social debates, we see a clear intensification of ableist tendencies.

Yes, the veneer of civilization is very thin. This also became clear during the Corona pandemic, when we had a triage discussion in no time. The current euthanasia debate is also a good example of this: the fact that there is talk of the “right to die” completely disconnected from German history is dangerous. And also on the social left, who should actually know that this society is eager to kill people, whether in the Sahara or the Mediterranean.

I also don’t have the impression that there is much impetus coming from politics to intensify the work of remembrance.

In December 2023, the federal government issued itself a certificate regarding the Nazi “euthanasia” victims: “From a cultural remembrance perspective, recognition of these victim groups has been fully achieved.” This is such an outrageous, cynical, arrogant impudence! This must be countered by the fact that, from a culture of remembrance perspective, far too little has happened in this country so far. The vast majority of people have no idea at all about the topic. But it’s not just about memory work, it’s about much more. First and foremost, it’s about “Never again!”, about destroying the foundations of dividing people into “worthy of living” and “unworthy of living.” Dealing with the past cannot be separated from the present. Therefore, it is also about the marking and care of graves in which victims of Nazi euthanasia lie, about compensation payments or about an urgently needed ban on cassation, i.e. a ban on the destruction of relevant documents. Because: Document destruction is still happening, and things are not getting better as a result of the closure and privatization of clinics. In mid-2022 there was a good proposal from the party Die Linke, which, among other things, wanted to classify those murdered as those persecuted by the Nazi regime and introduce other sensible changes. All other parties have shabbily refused this request because of some partisan squabbles. Two years later there was a similar but much more softened proposal from the Greens, FDP, CDU and SPD, in which many important points were missing. This was supposed to be decided on the very day Donald Trump was elected and the coalition imploded. This means the topic is once again off the table.

On the other hand, there are certainly increasing initiatives from relatives, from civil society and also in the arts to make the victims heard.

That’s true, but this commemoration must also be critically monitored. Especially with the victims of these murders, you quickly end up in the trap of normalization, which means that the victims are deprived of their disability in order to enable identification by the non-disabled audience. The feature film “Fog in August” from 2016, for example, tells the story of a child who is not disabled. There is always the danger that the victims will be whitewashed, and the implicit message is that the murder of the “really” sick people is somehow more understandable. The real stories are not hero stories. People got some fucking disease, became socially isolated, then the Nazis came and killed them. Complete. This happened very often. For various reasons, the survivors were unable or unwilling to tell their story. The stigmatization and embarrassment remained, similar to that of those who were forced to be sterilized, even after the extermination had ended. That’s why there are hardly any survivor stories. This makes learning about this topic much more difficult.