"Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about some- thing which, in fact, was false." — Bertrand Russell SOCIETAL VALUES: Slight regard for people with developmental disabilities; concern with economic depression and war.

In Nazi , 908 patients were transferred from Schoenbrunn, an institution for retarded and chronically ill patients, to the "installation" at Eglfing-Haar to be gassed. A monument to the victims now stands in the courtyard at Schoenbrunn. Nazis sterilized 400,000 Beginning in the 1930s, At the outbreak of World War II, Hitler ordered widespread "mercy Germans and exterminated targeted people with disabilities and the killing" of the sick and disabled. The Nazi euthanasia program, code- over 200,000 persons with elderly as a drain on public resources. During the 1930s, people with disabilities in Germany are referred to as “useless eaters.” named , was instituted to eliminate "." disabilities.

PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES – OVER 200,000 – ARE THE FIRST VICTIMS OF .

At Hospital in Germany, The first killings were by star- Doctors, not soldiers, were put in charge of killing As a final act of abandonment, tens of more than 10,000 people with vation, then by . the elderly and people with disabilities. thousands of people who died in our state disabilities were killed between Gas chambers soon became the institutions were buried anonymously, in January and August of 1941. preferred method of execution. graves marked only by numbers. People After being gassed, the bodies of the time believed having names on the were cremated. grave markers would be an embarrassment to the families of the deceased.

• In 1994, a group of self-advocates and allies began a project called Remembering with Dignity to place names RESPONSES TO on the numbered DISABILITY: Dr. graves at Minnesota’s institutions, and to get (In the US) Abandonment in In Nazi Germany a Catholic bishop, Clemens von Galen, delivered a sermon in Munster Cathedral an apology from the institutions; few services attacking the Nazi euthanasia program calling it state for years of abuse, "plain murder." neglect, and abandon- available in the community. In 1941, Hitler suspended Aktion T4, which had accounted for nearly a hundred thousand deaths ment. by this time. The euthanasia program quietly continued using drugs and starvation instead of gassings.

1900 1903 1906 1907 1910 Sigmund Freud U.S. Congress Rome State Custodial Indiana passes Letchworth Village, publishes bars immigration Asylum for Unteachable sterilization law. an institution for the The Interpretation of epileptics. Idiots in New York feeble-minded, of Dreams. opens a farm colony 1909 opens in New York. (The Brush Colony). Gunnar Dybwad, 1899 "Grandfather of the Self- Boston starts special Research Department at the Advocacy Movement," is born education classes. 1904 Martin Barr publishes Training School at Vineland, in Germany. Teachers are sent to Mental Defectives. NJ is begun. Henry H. Massachusetts Institution 1901 Goddard is hired to head Clifford Beers, a young busi- for the Feeble-minded at Philadelphia, PA the laboratory. nessman who had a mental Waltham and Elwyn starts special breakdown and recovered, Institute in Pennsylvania education classes. writes about it in for training. A Mind That Found Itself.