Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) takes place every year on 27 January, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp. It is an international day to remember the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, alongside the millions of other people killed under Nazi persecution of other groups and in genocides that followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. It is an occasion for everyone to come together to learn, remember and reflect.
Every year, a theme is selected for HMD and this year it is Fragility of Freedom.
The Holocaust and Autism
I worried when I first wrote about Holocaust Memorial Day because I feared intruding on a grief that isn’t really mine. (So far as I know I have no Jewish or Gypsy, Roma or Traveller heritage, am not gay, and nor has my family been involved in any genocide that I know of.) However, I knew that the Nazis killed a lot of people with disabilities and that let me to some research. And that research led me to this heart-breaking quotation from a talk given by Professor Edith Sheffer on Autism and Disability in Nazi Vienna. Before you read on, I should mention that this blog comes with a very big trigger warning for child death and this quote will break your heart:
Elizabeth Schreiber who [Hans] Asperger … transferred could speak a single word: “Mama” that she was known to repeat over and over again at the killing centre. And she would cry and she would hug the nurse [who was going to kill her] for comfort. Both children [Elizabeth and her sister] died within just a few months of Asperger’s transfer.
10:58 into the video here or shown in the transcript.
The picture is of Elizabeth. I don’t know why Elizabeth was considered disabled by Hans Asperger but the fact that she had only one word makes me think of autism and related conditions. How many autistic children have delayed speech or say only a few words repeated over and over? If they had been born in another time and another place, they might have been killed by nurses who had been looking after them.
In the files there are also thank you notes – from some parents upon their children’s death – for having their children killed.
10:50 into the video here or shown in the transcript.
Clearly we are a world away from that terrible time and place when parents thought that if they had a “defective” child, their duty was to prevent “life unworthy of life” being a burden on the state. However, flickers of that attitude – that conformity to a “norm” is the only acceptable mode of being – remain. They remain in the differentiation between “high functioning” (those who can lead a “productive” life in society and the economy) and “low functioning” (those who depend on care). They also remain in the discomfort all we human beings feel in dealing with people who are different to us, and in prejudice about disability.
As a distant echo of that attitude from the 1930s and 1940s, some parents nowadays see their children’s autism as a great misfortune come to blight the family. I should make clear that I have considerable sympathy with those parents. But I can also see the terrible extreme that that attitude could reach – when a parent is so convinced that their child’s life is a life without hope, that they choose death for that child.
An autistic life is NOT a life without hope. It is not better to be dead than disabled. Being different is not wrong, and people who are different do not need to conform or die. I wish I didn’t need to say that but I fear that in some parts of our society that underlying view persists. Echoing the HMD theme, we, ordinary people, can play a bigger part than we might imagine in challenging prejudice today. I hope you will find a way to do so today and every day.
And if you’re not sure whether you feel the need to do anything, perhaps go back to Elizabeth Schreiber’s picture. Think about her saying “Mama” and clinging to the nurse who was murdering her for being disabled.
Holocaust Memorial Day Trust
Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT) is a registered charity, funded by the UK Government, to promote and support HMD. They provide resources and support for thousands of HMD activities every year in workplaces, youth groups, museums, prisons, schools, colleges and universities, places of worship, and more.
To learn more about HMD and this year’s theme, or to access free resources, visit hmd.org.uk
To contact HMDT, please email enquiries@hmd.org.uk or call 020 7785 7029.
Autistic Civil Servant 
Believe me, it is possible to love “low-functioning” autists fully and consider them worthy AND at the same time wish they were different and had more capabilities to deal with a world that – like it or not – will never completely be able to or want to accomodate their needs. As a parent to one such “low functioning” autistic child I can vouch for that perspective.
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That poor child calling for “Mama” was probably so terrified, and “Mama” was the only word she knew to ask for comfort (or mercy.)
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