New exhibition exposes Nazi eugenics program

July 23, 2010

By MIKE ISAACS misaacs@pioneerlocal.com

Among the many words, the recorded testimony, the videos, the maps and charts, the photographs and the artifacts is an old empty crib.

It comes along well into the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center's new traveling exhibition, "Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race." But in its own way, this lonely crib seen against sterile white tiles is as chilling as any of the other exhibition displays -- a resonant reminder of the youngest victims of Nazi Germany's ghastly pediatric eugenics program.

The museum's new dense and comprehensive exhibition, designed by David Layman, takes visitors on a chronological journey from the origins of the "eugenics movement" to how that theory was used to foster racism and discrimination and eventually torture and murder.

Layman also designed the museum's permanent exhibition on the floor above, and it's easy to see the similarities. Like upstairs, the exhibition features a narrow and winding walkway leading visitors on an informative journey, the details becoming more horrifying and gut-wrenching as time passes by.

Produced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the new traveling exhibition offers much to digest. It's not surprising that it will be here for five months, longer than any of the traveling exhibitions that the museum has previously hosted.

"This is such a powerful content-rich and thought-provoking exhibition and an ideal one to have here one year into the museum," said Executive Director Rick Hirschhaut. "Our docents have had the benefit of a year of learning and leading visitors through the permanent exhibition, and now they are prepared to lead them through a very provocative and disturbing exhibit."

Exhibition curator Susan Bachrach trained docents the day before "Deadly Medicine's" opening, fielding a series of challenging questions likely to be echoed by visitors through the end of the year. This worthwhile museum addition is certain to spark all kinds of discussion -- not only in terms of history but also about current-day medical ethics and other difficult and thorny issues.

"Our special exhibits try to cover areas that we don't go into in the permanent exhibit," Bachrach said, explaining its origins at the Washington D.C. museum.

Once she began her meticulous research, Bachrach learned that the theory of eugenics -- the selective breeding applied to humans to improve the species -- was widely embraced and well before Nazi Germany came along.

"It was very surprising to me to see how much widespread support there was for this idea of eugenics," she said. "Today, we'd like to say eugenics was some kind of pseudo-science but we shouldn't say that when looking at it in the context of time. It's very important to realize that this wasn't just something on (the fringes). It was taken seriously."

In fact, Bachrach said, she found some American institutions such as the Museum of Natural History in New York and the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota to be uncooperative during her research. These institutions signed onto eugenics theory at one time and would rather forget their history, she said.

"When it comes to eugenics, there's a huge whitewash that continues to go on," she said. "The United States was very strong in the eugenics movement and that can be seen in state sterilization laws."

"Deadly Science" covers much of this ground and a lot more. As long ago as 1927 and as far away from Germany as Virginia, Carrie Buck was sterilized after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Virginia law allowing sterilization of persons judged to be "feebleminded."

In Germany, Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche seven years earlier wrote "Authorization of the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life," a book defending the principles of eugenics.

"If one ... imagines a battlefield covered with thousands of dead youths ... and then our institutions for idiots and their care ... one is most appalled by ... the sacrifice of the best of humanity while the best care is lavished on life of negative worth," they wrote.

The exhibition is peppered with these kinds of bone-chilling quotes and not simply from the most heinous of Nazi leaders but also from doctors, researchers and healers -- those charged with protecting the public good. In many cases, the "legitimacy" of science enabled the Nazis to persecute, murder and, ultimately, commit genocide.

"Our starting point is not the individual, and we do not subscribe to the view that one should feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty or clothe the naked," said Joseph Goebbels in 1938. "Our objectives are entirely different. We must have a healthy people in order to prevail in the world."

Germany's chronology with eugenics begins after World War I when ideas known as "racial hygiene" began to inform population policy, public health education and government-funded research. The Nazis from 1933 to 1939 touted the "Nordic race" as ideal and enacted laws and policies that carried this discrimination further than ever before.

In 1939 to 1945, World War II provided a pretext and cover to new programs for killing "undesirables" regarded as burdens on national resources, according to "Deadly Medicine." It is during this time when the children's euthanasia program began -- and with the collaboration of asylum directors, pediatricians, psychiatrists, family doctors and nurses.

The exhibition exposes viewers to the victims of this devastating period; photos of the faces of children who were killed or experimented on seem to cry out from the walls. One survivor in recorded testimony relates how she survived a children's institution that put young "patients" to death by having them walk into showers that soon filled with lethal gas.

"Deadly Medicine" never loses sight of how such actions could occur and of the contributions of "legitimate science" to make them happen.

"Many of those who had earlier rejected euthanasia as a eugenics measure came to support murder 'for the good of the Fatherland,'" the exhibition material reads.

Perhaps this is the most incomprehensible component of the history of eugenics in Nazi Germany. And the component that museum planners want visitors never to forget.

"This exhibit further reinforces that even the most highly-educated, well-trained engaged citizens of society can be co-opted for evil and tragic purposes and consequences," Hirschhaut said. "It's another reminder of the sanctity of individual choice and that the decisions we make in life can have an impact for good or for evil."

From: http://www.pioneerlocal.com/holocaustmuseum/news/2529600,skokie-exhibit-072910-s1.article