Crying hands : eugenics and deaf people in Nazi Germany / Horst Biesold ; translation by William Sayers ; introduction by Henry Friedlander.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Biesold, Horst, 1939-

Standardized Title:

Klagende Hände. English

Language:

English

German

Subjects (All):

Deaf people--Government policy--Germany.

Deaf people.

Deafness.

Medicine--Germany--History--20th century.

Medicine.

Eugenics--Germany--History--20th century.

Eugenics.

Social Darwinism--Germany.

Social Darwinism.

Eugenics--history.

Biological Evolution.

History, 20th Century.

Social Values.

Germany.

Deaf people--Government policy.

Medical Subjects:

Deafness.

Eugenics--history.

Biological Evolution.

History, 20th Century.

Social Values.

Germany.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xix, 230 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Washington, D.C. : Gallaudet University Press, 1999.

Summary:

When the Nazis assumed power in Germany in 1933, they wasted no time in implementing their radical policies, first by securing passage of the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases. Among those designated by this law as "congenitally disabled" were deaf people. Horst Biesold's newly translated book examines this neglected aspect of Nazi "racial hygiene" through interviews with more than 1, 000 deaf survivors of this brutal law that authorized forced sterilizations, abortions, and eventually murder. 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 have finally been acknowledged.

Contents:

From Social Darwinism to National Socialism

The concept of hereditary deafness under National Socialism

Teacher-collaborators

Forced abortions

Deaf collaboration: REGEDE

Deaf resistance

The Jewish deaf in Germany

Sterilizations's legacy

Euthanasia and deaf Germans.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 211-222) and index.

Print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Biesold, Horst, 1939- Klagende Hände. English. Crying hands.

ISBN:

9780585105925

0585105928

OCLC:

43475908