Disabled Survivors Behind the Holocaust history – Auschwitz
“Don’t hate. Because hate brings criminality and hate brings death. I saw it, I was there.”Edith Friedman Grosman
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Auschwitz_Entrance_2006.jpg
Terror, nightmares never go away, scar memory impacts forever, silent and shocking lives impact on many people with disabilities, Deaf people including other people and children.
This month -75 years after Soviet troops liberated the camp. Have we learn any history of Auschwitz at school or not? Did we know about Aktion T-4 (T-4 Program for forced euthanasia) at school?
Since leaving High School, I visited one of the Deaf with CP (Cerebral Palsy and speech impaired) persons and his parents for a social afternoon tea. This person name Jacek and his parents came out to New Zealand after the war as a new life. His mother was Polish, and his father was German. Jacek’s father was silent during our afternoon tea, and I could not understand why he was so quiet. Later Jacek’s mother told me about the Holocaust and terrible times during World War Two. I was taken back that they came out after the war and managed to survive the nightmares of living in the Polish Ghetto. I asked the mother whether there were any people/children with disabilities survive or living in the Polish Ghetto. Her answer was short – Yes, there were many people/children with disabilities, but their lives cut short in a cruel way of death. A few people/children with disabilities managed to survived during the war.
If you are wondering about Jacek and whether he was born in the Polish Ghetto or in New Zealand. Jacek, along with his two other brothers born in Waikato, New Zealand, not long after they arrived here.
I began to join the Deaf History International group in late 1984 and start exploring people/children with disabilities’ lives at the concentration camps across Europe. I recall that there were a few Deaf survivors came to New Zealand, but I never met them. I read one article about a Deaf survivor who never understands why he was sterilised after unable to give any children to his Deaf wife. His GP noticed his Deaf man’s forearm bearing a tattoo number, and this Deaf man admitted that he was one of the Deaf survivors. Then his GP began to do research and discovered Aktion T-4 and Nazi eugenics. The Deaf survivor learned more information about this horror treatment from his GP, and he never knew about it.
The Deaf people were not only one that survived because there were millions of people/children with disabilities died at the concentration camps. Yes, there were more than 400,000 disabled women, including young girls, boys, and men, who became sterilised against their wishes.
On the other hand, there were a small number of disabled people and children managed to escape, stay at one of the ‘horror’ institutions or to survive behind the walls of the houses and workplaces.
One of the stories from the Deaf survivors – Doris Fedrid, can be found here https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn39665
One blind man – Max Edelman spent his life in several concentration camps along with his brothers. his brother and some of the inmates saved him and protected him throughout terror lives. Here is a website that is good to read. https://www.nfb.org/sites/www.nfb.org/files/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm04/bm0405/bm040508.ht
Here is another example of one person, and this person was Otto Weidt. He owned a workshop for the Blind and Deaf in Berlin, Germany, for he was blind and partially deaf against deportation. He hid around 30 Blind nd Deaf Jewish in the cellar of the workshop. https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/weidt.html
https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/movies-tv/musical-in-the-making-will-show-how-7-dwarf-troupe-survived-the-holocaust Musical in the making will show how 7-dwarf troupe survived the Holocaust
Excellent websites – United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Yad Vashem The World Holocaust Remembrance Center
