Disability rights leaders remember Holocaust

Web posted at 17-Apr-98 00:53 Central European Time

Disability Rights Advocates, with its sister organization in Budapest, Hungary will launch the "Disability Holocaust Project" today, the day before the "Day of Remembrance," to remind people of this historical chapter and that discrimination has not ended.

According to Disability Rights Advocates, 275,000 adults and children with disabilities were killed and 400,000 forced to be sterilized during the Holocaust (1931-1944).

According to the U.S.-based disability advocacy organization, the mechanisms for mass murder, such as carbon monoxide poisoning of "shower rooms," were first developed for the execution of men, women and children with disabilities and then later used upon the Jewish population. People who were blind, physically or mentally impaired or deaf were labeled as "useless eaters" and "lives not worthy of life." The old were killed in their nursing homes, children were murdered in their schools.

People with disabilities, including Autism and Asperger's Syndrome, still lead lives of isolation and poverty, pushed to the margins of society and segregated by formidable architectural and attitudinal barriers.

Larry Paradis commented: "We begin this project in the Bay Area, the birthplace of the disability rights movement. We want people to learn about the pain and death that disabled people endured so that myths and stereotypes, still so prevalent, are put to rest so that such events are never repeated."

Disability leaders will make available their indictment of the medical profession and announce an action plan for the establishment of a reparations fund, apology and memorialization of this tragic historical event.

More information is available at the e-mail address DRALegal@aol.com.

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