In Germany and occupied Austria, people with disabilities were the first to fall victim to National Socialist mass murder, propagated under the euphemistic term of “euthanasia.” For racist and economic reasons they were deemed unfit to live. The means and methods used in these crimes were applied later during the Holocaust — perpetrators of these first murders became experts in the death camps of the so-called “Aktion Reinhardt.”
Over the course of the Second World War the National Socialists aimed to exterminate people with disabilities in the occupied territories of Western Europe, and also in Eastern Europe.
This publication presents the results of the latest research on these murders in the German occupied territories, as discussed at an IHRA conference held in Bern in November 2017.
This publication includes contributions on:
We use comparative scholarship, education, and commemoration to build a world without genocide.
This resource concisely explores how we might engage in comparative analyses between the Holocaust and other atrocities.
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