“Twenty doctors and three administrators — twenty-two men and a single woman — stood accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. They had participated in Hitler's euthanasia program, in which around 200,000 mentally and physically handicapped people deemed unfit to live were gassed to death, and they performed fiendish medical experiments on thousands of Jewish, Russian, Roma and Polish prisoners.”
MORE AT:
'Less Than Human': The Psychology Of Cruelty
David Livingstone Smith
Nazis might kill children who looked or behaved differently.
"Jason Tharp, 45, said wrote "It's Okay to Be a Unicorn!," to promote inclusion among children, and he was prepared to read it to students at an elementary school north of Columbus, Ohio on April 6.
The day before the scheduled reading, Tharp said he received a call from the principal of Buckeye Valley Local School District's saying higher-ups did not approve of the book and believed it could have a "gay agenda.""I just said, did somebody think I made a gay book? And he's like, 'Yeah,' and I'm like, 'Because why? Rainbows and unicorns?'" Tharp told USA TODAY, adding that the principal confirmed that as the reasoning.
Tharp said he found this rather confusing since the school knew about his visit for two years, and the school's administration ordered over 500 of his books to be distributed to the kids six weeks prior to his visit.
A school parent shared concerns about the book to the superintendent, Tharp said.
"This parent had gone through my social media and saw that I was supportive of LGBT," he said. "What it turns out was that it was one parent that came in and said that apparently, I was coming in with an agenda to recruit kids to be gay."
Tharp emphasized his book had no reference to the LGTBQ community, but that he created the character of a unicorn since they are non-threatening and lovable."
MORE AT:
USA TODAY
'It's Okay to Be a Unicorn' author said school nixed his reading to students over 'gay agenda' fears
by Jason Tharp (Author, Illustrator)
"In the liberal suburbs of Fairfax County, Virginia, conservative parents like Carrie Lukas have come to local school board meetings to air their frustrations with the failures of the public school system during the Covid-19 pandemic. In late January, Lukas used her two minutes during public comment to criticize mask mandates and call for school privatization.
But when Lukas came to the microphone, she represented more than her family. As the president of a right-wing think tank called the Independent Women’s Forum, Lukas also advanced the interests of her billionaire donors: some of America’s wealthiest people who, for decades, have backed efforts to defund public schools, attack teachers unions, and undermine the scientific community.
The various crises in public education during the pandemic — both real and manufactured — have offered a prime opportunity for wealthy interests to advance this agenda. Meanwhile, Republicans nationwide hope that carrying the “parents party” mantle will help win over suburban voters and carry them back to power in national elections."
MORE AT:
Grassroots or Astroturf? Inside the Republicans’ Rebranding as the “Parents Party”
In a suburban Virginia district, right-wing operatives get involved in local school board politics, with help from billionaire donors.
April 5 2022, 9:13 a.m.
Nazis killed children who looked or behaved differently:
"As Adolf Hitler consolidated his power at home in anticipation of war, he moved not only against Jews, Sinti, and Roma but also against those Aryans whom he considered “unworthy of life”—people with epilepsy, alcoholism, birth defects, hearing loss, mental illnesses, and personality disorders, as well as those who had vision loss or developmental delays or who even suffered from certain orthopedic problems. Hitler viewed them as “marginal human beings” who had to make a case for their own survival at a time when the nation was preparing for war.
The first to be eliminated were too young to speak on their own behalf. In fall 1938, the parents of a severely disabled infant petitioned Hitler for the right to kill their child. He granted the petition and saw in the request an opportunity to encourage what he called “mercy killings” or “euthanasia.” In fact, according to science historian Robert N. Proctor, the goal was not to provide mercy to the victims but to improve the “Aryan” race and make hospital beds and personnel available for the coming war.
Hitler also thought that the war might minimize protests from Germans who learned of the deaths. According to Hitler’s chief medical officer, “The Führer was of the opinion that such a program could be put into effect more smoothly and rapidly in time of war, and that in the general upheaval of war, the open resistance anticipated from the church would not play the part it might in other circumstances.”
The following spring, Hitler set up a committee of physicians to prepare for the murder of mentally and physically disabled children. Known as the Reich Committee for the Scientific Treatment of Severe Hereditary and Congenital Diseases, the group was told to keep its mission secret. In August 1939, just two weeks before the invasion of Poland, committee members asked doctors and midwives to fill out a questionnaire that would identify children born with various deformities or disabilities. Initially, the focus was on children under the age of three. The committee claimed it was using the information “to clarify certain scientific questions.” In fact, it was used to determine which children would be allowed to live…
The operation was later expanded to include not only children but also teens and adults, and it was given the codename “T-4.” One “euthanasia expert” excused the murders by arguing: “The idea is unbearable to me that the best, the flower of our youth, must lose its life at the front, in order that feebleminded and asocial elements can have a secure existence in the asylum.” Another suggested that a physician’s duty is to rescue the “fit” for the future by weeding out the “unfit” in the present…
Among Germans who knew of the euthanasia program, many supported it. In some cases, the parents of mentally or physically disabled children 'were eager to rid themselves of the stigma of having ‘defective children.’
Racial ideology and propaganda in the 1930s had also helped to build support in Germany for eliminating mentally ill adults. In addition, according to Proctor:
Doctors were never ordered to murder psychiatric patients and handicapped children. They were empowered to do so, and fulfilled that task without protest, often on their own initiative. Hitler’s original memo . . . was not an order, but an empowerment, granting physicians permission to act.
In some places, doctors used mobile gassing vans to carry out the killings. By June 1940, the vans were being replaced with gas chambers that resembled showers. Proctor adds: “By August 24, 1941, when the first phase of this ‘adult operation’ was brought to an end, over 70,000 patients from more than one hundred German hospitals had been killed.” The operation would turn out to provide a model for the subsequent murder of millions of Jews, Roma and Sinti, and others in gas chambers.”
MORE AT:
FACING HISTORY AND OURSELVES
No comments:
Post a Comment
You can add your voice to this blog by posting a comment.