International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2014

January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in 1945, was declared International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust by the United Nations in 2005.

The memorial day this year is built around the theme "Journeys through the Holocaust".

From the gallery, World War II, the Holocaust, http://wodumedia.com/world-war-ii-the-holocaust/

My e-pal Nick Walker, on Facebook:

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. One thing that I wish were more widely remembered is that disabled people were among the first targets of the Nazis. The rhetoric of the Nazi eugenics movement portrayed the disabled as "burdens" whose existence was an economic drain, a "crisis" that society couldn't afford. The Nazis borrowed this rhetoric from the early 20th Century eugenics movement in the U.S.A., and, once they'd had success using it to justify the mass murder of the disabled, they used variations of the same rhetoric to justify the mass murder of every other group they targeted. Remember this today, and remember it every time you hear anyone describe the lives of disabled people as "burdens," or talk about any sort of disability in terms of societal "crisis" or how much it "costs non-disabled people."

Bob Wright, co-founder of Autism Speaks, 2012:

"Autism is a global public health crisis. The costs are staggering and will continue to rise as prevalence continues to increase." 

Via Emily Titon:

Translated Text: "60,000 Reichsmark is what this person suffering from a hereditary defect costs the People's community during his lifetime. Fellow citizen, that is your money too. Read '[A] New People', the monthly magazine of the Bureau for Race Politics of the NSDAP.""

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Wikipedia:

Action T4 was the name used after World War II for Nazi Germany's "euthanasia program" during which physicians murdered thousands of people who were "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination". The programme officially ran from September 1939 to August 1941, and it continued unofficially until the end of the Nazi regime in 1945.

During the official stage of Action T4, 70,273 people were killed at various extermination centres located at psychiatric hospitals. Evidence was revealed at the Nuremberg Trials that German and Austrian physicians continued the euthanization of patients after October 1941, and that a total of about 275,000 people were murdered under T4. Based on files recovered after 1990, 21st century research provides evidence that at least 200,000 physically or mentally handicapped people were killed in gas chambers, by medication, or deliberate starvation between 1939 and 1945.

Comments

[David J McDonagh]

I have been trying to post a reply to a post on the Boycott Autism Speaks facebook page but there is no space for me to enter a comment. Can someone please alert the page administrators to a possible error on the page? I have no other way of contacting them.