Nazi-era Cemetery for Mentally Ill to be Dug Up

[Judi Lynn]

Source: CBS News

Jan. 4, 2011
Nazi-era Cemetery for Mentally Ill to be Dug Up
The Remains of People Systematically Killed in Austrian Mental Hospital by Nazis to be Exhumed for Construction Project

(AP) VIENNA - A disused hospital cemetery will be dug up in March in the search for victims methodically killed by the Nazis because of physical or mental disabilities, officials said Tuesday.

The cemetery in the western Austrian town of Hall contains the remains of 220 people. Officials at the hospital told reporters that, while not all were believed to have been victims of a Nazi euthanasia campaign, evidence indicated that at least some could have been targets of the organized killings.

The Nazis described those killed - some physically or mentally handicapped, others homosexuals, Gypsies or others who did not fit Hitler's ideals - as "worthless lives."

Across Europe, 75,000 people, including 5,000 children, were killed for real or imagined mental, physical or social disabilities that did not fit Nazi pseudo-Aryan ideals. Hundreds of them were sent from psychiatric institute of the Hall hospital complex to the main killing site - a castle in the western Austrian town of Hartheim - where nearly 30,000 people were gassed to death or given fatal injections.



Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/04/world/main7212722.shtml

[prolesunited]

1. This haunts me

The Nazis described those killed - some physically or mentally handicapped, others homosexuals, Gypsies or others who did not fit Hitler's ideals - as "worthless lives."

How often have we heard our fellow Americans described that way.

[Riftaxe]

5. It was in vogue at the time

same thing happened under the leftist regimes unfortunately.

[prolesunited]

7. Yes, but I don't see the current leftists advocating

anything like this in the U.S. Nor are they degrading or trying to discard people viewed as "worthless." You certainly see plenty of this taking place among the GOP today in America. Nazis didn't jump straight to exterminating people either.

[lepus]

10. One of my biggest problems with the righties nowadays

is that they like to think of too many people as disposable.

[Kingofalldems]

9. Name them please and document them also.

[freshwest]

6. Yes, too much of Ayn Rand disciples running things. They call all but the chosen ones 'parasites.'

And our attempts to alleviate suffering and give disabled and poor people dignity a waste of effort. 'Collectivism' to survive as a herd of 'sub-humans.' And the duty of the Supermen is a moral one needed to cleanse the world of all of us who not as powerful as the psychopaths in business have become in these last few decades.

Some of the Nazi ideas were mixed in with the eugenics movements in the USA. I know so many people who have made it their life's mission to help such 'worthless mouths' and they achieved in their lives a level of human kindness that surpasses any such ideas of 'superiority.' I've also read that the Nazis rationalized that they were doing these people a favor.

Yes, I am frightened at what I see in America. Like that video of the Tea Party people degrading the Parkinsons's victim in Ohio. These are the people in charge. Will they do the same, just do it out of sight or in public by calling it collateral damage in budgets?

Just because it would be disorganized and without any uniforms or traveling involved, the results are the same.

[Odin2005]

2. I've read that during WW2 that Hans Asperger worked to protect his autistic patients from the Nazis.

he didn't not want them suffering the fate of these unfortunate people.

[old mark]

3. IIRC, one of these people wasa female relative Hitler's...There is a good article on Eugenics here:

Link: http://shoaheducation.com/t4.html

The Eugenics movement was very popular in the US, too...Many Puerto Rican women were involuntarily sterilized here in the US in a government program extending into the late 1960's...


mark

[Xithras]

4. It irks me that people describe this as a "Nazi" ideal.

Eugenics was adopted by the Nazi's, but was practiced worldwide and was FOUNDED here in the United States. Forced sterilizations and incarceration were the norm in the United States for nearly a half century for the extremely poor and those who were labeled as "genetically defective". They were largely abandoned in the U.S. after WW2, when focus on the Nazi's use of these techniques made its American practitioners less politically popular. Still, it didn't die off for decades...Oregon was the last state with an active sterilization program, and that program operated right up until 1981! In all, more than 60,000 Americans were sterilized against their will, and far more were incarcerated in government facilities to isolate them from the population.

Many of those people were sterilized and incarcerated for the "defect" of being homosexual.

To pretend that this was a "Nazi" crime is to gloss over our own ugly history with Eugenics.

[Arctic Dave]

8. K&R just for your post. The head in the sand mentality about what can happen

in the Good Ol USA needs to end. Our history here is just as stained as any other evil empire.