BOOK

Crying Hands:  Eugenics and Deaf People In Nazi Germany

 

Biesold, Horst.  Crying Hands:  Eugenics and Deaf People In Nazi Germany. Washington, DC:  Gallaudet University Press.  1999.  210 Pages (including notes).  ISBN: 1563680777.

 

REVIEW

 

Dr. Horst Biesold, in providing us access to his doctoral research and the resultant dissertation, enlightens his readers on the topic of the plight of the German hearing-impaired community in and around the war years. 

 

From the back cover:

 

Crying Hands meticulously delineates the antecedents of Nazi eugenics, beginning with Social Darwinism (postulated in the mid-nineteenth century) and tracing the various sterilization laws later initiated throughout the world, including many passed and practiced in the United States.  This exceptional scholarship is movingly paralleled by the human faces fixed to the numbing statistics, as in story after story those affected recount their irretrievable loss, pain, and misplaced shame imposed upon them by the Nazi regime.  Through their stories, told to Biesold in German Sign Language, they have given voice to the countless others who died from the specious science practiced by the Third Reich.  And now their own trials finally have been acknowledged.

 

I would suggest when reading this book to begin with Dr. Henry Friedlander’s Introduction, and then move to the Appendices.  Dr. Friedlander, author of The Origins of Nazi Genocide:  From Euthanasia to the Final Solution, uses his own research to paint a portrait of the escalation of exclusionary practices against not only Jews and Gypsies (Sinti and Roma), but the handicapped as well.  Friedlander reports:

 

As soon as the Nazis had assumed power, they moved with alacrity to implement their racial and eugenic program.  The disabled were among the first victims targeted by exclusionary legislation.  On July 14, 1933, just four and a half months after assuming power, Hitler and his cabinet promulgated a sterilization law for persons suffering from a variety of mental and physical disabilities, and in the process defined the groups to be excluded from the national community.  This law, issued with the cumbersome name of Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases, served as the cornerstone of the regime’s eugenic legislation.  A sterilization law had already been prepared in Prussia, the largest of the German federal states, during the final years of the Weimar republic, but had never been passed by the legislature.  The new German government simply adopted this Prussian law, but, unlike the Prussian model, the new law included provisions for compulsory sterilization.  Taking effect on the first day of 1934, the law eventually led to the sterilization of approximately 375,000 German nationals (pages 4-5).

 

Readers new to this topic will find that Friedlander provides ample background information to advance into Biesold’s very specific research. 

 

The Appendices (there are three) include The Questionnaire, Questionnaire Data, and Documents Written by and in Support of Gertrud Jacob (corresponds to pages 121-29).  I did not pursue the reading of this text in the fashion I am recommending – I had not previously read Dr. Friedlander’s Origins…, and thus had a limited knowledge of the T4 program (this was the Nazi office in charge of “racial hygiene” – T4 stands for nothing other than the address of the building that housed the main offices).  The appendices prove most helpful in knowing how it was that Biesold collected his data, and in how the stories that unfold in the main body came to be told.  See below for suggested discussion and/or assignments for this material.

 

As for the main text, Biesold provides the "scaffolding" necessary to promote understanding of his topic.  Even the neophyte to this subject matter can grasp this narrative and its historical and moral implications.  Beginning with a general survey of the concept of Social Darwinism and then taking it to German-specific interpretation, Biesold lays the foundation for what was to come, and most importantly, how a climate of cooperation by the authorities was fostered.  He then moves into a discussion of the concept of hereditary deafness from a scientific/medical point of view, and from the distorted National Socialist point of view.  Here the reader comes to the realization that moral or not in the first place, this Nazi brand of Social Darwinism plays by an entirely different set of rules.

 

As he moves through his further explorations, Biesold sprinkles in relevant data concerning places and people.  His numbers are not overbearing, and really serve to augment his writing with hard statistics.  Indictments are levied against teacher/collaborators (the longest chapter in the book), the medical community, and even collaborators in and among the deaf population.  It seems no one in the hearing impaired community was spared, and perhaps that is the most damning aspect of Biesold’s findings – that this persecution meted out upon a relatively small percentage of the German populace was aided and abetted by so many societal functionaries.  The question begs to be asked:  to where could anyone have turned for succor?  Unfortunately, there were few places to find respite; Biesold does touch on resistance by the deaf victims, but his sterilization and murder numbers still prove too large.

 

NOTE:  The teacher or student of this material might also find it helpful to consult the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s online exhibit, Deadly Medicine, accessible at http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/deadlymedicine/.

 

PASSAGE/QUOTE FOR CLASSROOM USAGE

 

I use the series of primary documents found on pages 168-170, which describe an exchange of letters from various institutions with the family of a 57-year old woman who was murdered under the auspices of T4.  The documents can be passed out, or read aloud to the students for classroom discussion. 

 

Questions for discussion:

 

1. In the first communication, on page 168 – what is the tone of the letter?
2. Is there anything in the letter that you would consider suspicious?
3. In regard to the second example of correspondence, found on page 169 – is the tone of this letter different from the first?  If so, how?
4. What would be your response if you received this letter concerning a loved one in your life?  What actions could you/would you take, if any?
5. In the last letter (page 169-70) it is reported that the woman has died.  What requests does the hospital make of the family?
6. Research pulmonary tuberculosis and miliary tuberculosis.  In your opinion, is this a cause of death that you would have believed?  [For research on the Internet, one option might be the following website, from the Center For Disease Control:  http://www.cdc.gov/nchstp/tb/faqs/qa_introduction.htm#Intro3] (accessed May 17, 2005).
7. What is the tone of the last letter?  What recourse do you think the family would have had?  How do you feel any efforts at “pressing the issue” would have been viewed by the authorities?

 

Also useful is an excerpt found on page 27, in which a German teacher of the hearing impaired, once a staunch supporter of the “right to life” for the deaf – in writings as late as 1933 – writes in 1940:

 

But neither training nor welfare [of deaf persons] should be promoted to the detriment of the people as a whole, in that they might create the possibility of founding families and thus through heredity transmit the affliction, thereby contributing to the degeneration of the race.  The educational and extra-educational care for the deaf will be acceptable to the people only in conjunction with eugenic and race-hygienic measures, as stipulated in the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases of July 14, 1933 (page 27).

 

Questions for discussion:

 

1. What could cause or convince a person with acute knowledge of persons with a particular disability, and with the goal of defending those persons, to change his or her position?
2. In your opinion, do you think this was a sudden change or a progressive change?
3. What options do you think were available to this teacher, Mr. Schumann?
4. What do you think the change in stance, from one of his status, meant for the deaf community he served (or formerly served)?
5. Can you name several ways a person could become deaf?  Of those, which are hereditary? For Internet research, please see http://www.disability.vic.gov.au/dsonline/dsarticles.nsf/(Pages)/Deafness_-_a_range_of_causes?OpenDocument (accessed May 17, 2005).
6. What arguments might you make to counter the contentions of the German teacher?

 

RATIONALE FOR USAGE/UNIT RELEVANCE

 

Biesold’s book fits in with any discussion of T4 and its history/implications.  Any discussion about the non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust would also benefit from the reading and/or discussion of this text.  Additionally, I firmly believe that for any student to get a real grasp of the magnitude not only of the numbers of victims but also of the enormity of the numbers of perpetrators/collaborators/bystanders that were necessary for the death toll to reach its final conclusion, the role of the everyday functionary cannot be dismissed.

 

CLASSROOM METHOD OF USAGE

 

I would use this book to supplement class discussion on the T4 program.  It also ties in well in any discussion on the role of trust parents and students place in their schools and medical personnel.  See below for a specific assignment regarding Biesold’s research.

 

STUDY QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION GUIDE

 

The following exercise correlates to pages 171-74, which is the questionnaire the author used in collecting his data, and to pages 182-83, which is part of the summary of his findings.  Copies of the questionnaire and the summary tables should be made available to students either as handouts or overhead transparencies.  These should not be handed out until after the assignment is completed.

 

The T4 Program in Germany

 

Group assignment (groups of 3-4 students):  You are a PhD candidate doing research on the role of the T4 program among the deaf population of Germany in and around the 1920’s-1930’s.  It is your goal to assess the “damage” done to this demographic group by the Nazis.  It is your task to create a questionnaire that will be mailed to known survivors who were institutionalized at some time during the reign of the Nazi party.  Consider the following aspects and points of information (what follows is not an exhaustive list of what you should be interested in finding out) for your document –

 

1. You will need their name.
2. You will need their current contact information.
3. You will need to know a little family history, as well as present situation (# of children if any, etc.).
4. What was their schooling situation?
5. Ask about their experiences – encourage them to give details.
6. Ask about knowledge of their experiences – when did they know what was happening to them?
7. Ask how their lives have been affected by their experiences.

 

The group’s questionnaire should be typed and formal looking.  Please use the following format:

 

• 8 ½ x 11 inch paper
• 1 inch margins on all sides
• Times New Roman or similar typewriter font, 14-point type
• Numbered outline format, with ample space or lines where narrative answers are required

 

Group members should be prepared to discuss their line of thinking on specific questions they chose to ask, and to make assumptions on the types of information they might have gotten back from respondents.  The teacher may elect to make overheads of your documents for class viewing. 

 

You have one class period as a group to complete the assignment; it should be typed outside of class.