life for blind people?

[harry6116]

hey all,
this is a question that i have been sitting on for quite some time.
I realised that the Nazis killed disabled people how ever, when on google the Little bit of information that I can gleem from my research shows that blind people did have some rights.
as a blind person i am very interested to know what if any info you all have.
i did read that the main blind Association past a resolution that band joos from accessing the blind institutions in around 1934-35 but can't confirm this.
i am also interested in the lives of people with other disabilities.
i would like to know about there daley lives.

thanks for any help

Michael

[Maxschnauzer]

Hey Michael,

Here is an interesting paper called Hitler's Unwanted Children http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/r/ ... d-children.

According to this article

The Marriage Law of 1935 prohibited persons with "hereditary
illnesses" to marry. Blindness, deafness, physical disabilities and mental
handicaps were designated hereditary illnesses.

.

Of course that applied to hereditary blindness not blindness as a result of accident, war injury, etc.

[harry6116]

hey,
thanks for your info. will have a look at that right now.

[wm]

This is from Disability in Twentieth-century German Culture by Carol Poore:

Horst Biesold has shown that in some institutions and schools for the deaf, teachers reported over 50 percent of their pupils or sterilization. Less research has been done on the history of blind people during the Third Reich, but it appears that between 2,400 and 2,800 were sterilized, and some of these were pupils reported by teachers in schools for the blind.

Since we know almost nothing about the daily lives of blind, deaf, and physically disabled civilians during the Third Reich, it is impossible to arrive at any general conclusions about what their attitudes toward these organizations were. Careful reading of the sources. however, gives glimpses of how complex the relationship was between the organizations and disabled people as a whole. For one thing, although the organizations’ official journals were heavily censored, at times there are hints of differing opinions about how to interpret disability that are somewhat more complex than might be expected. For another, the life stories of a few exceptional disabled individuals from this time shed some light on how they tried outside the official organizations to continue self-help projects that they had begun during the Weimar Republic.

The synchronization of organizations of blind people under national socialism is shown most clearly by their support for the sterilization Law. On December 23, 1933, for example, the German Association of Blind Academics sent a statement to the Propaganda Ministry agreeing with the provisions of the law but criticizing the way in which blind people were portrayed in eugenic propaganda. They urged their members whose blindness was hereditary to make the great sacrifice of volunteering to be sterilized for the good of the German people rather than waiting to be forced. The statement went on to note, however, that in contrast to earlier decades, when blind people had received sympathy and help, the prevailing one-sided eugenic view of them as inferior was provoking dislike and even contempt for them among the public. These prejudices, the statement declared, were undeserved since blind people—even the hereditary blind—were not to blame for their fate.
Obviously the Propaganda Ministry paid no attention to this appeal for more tolerance.

A few instances are known that indicate the distance between some blind people and the synchronized organizations for the blind. In September 1933 in the journal Blindenwelt (Blind World), for example, an anonymous writer urged readers not to join these organizations, fearing that if they identified themselves as blind in this way they would be in greater danger of sterilization.
The blind scholar and activist Rudolf Kraemer. who will be discussed in greater detail in the following pages, published a critique of eugenics that led to his expulsion from a leading position in the German Association of the Blind. Max Schtiffler, a blind member of the Communist Party, had secured many benefits for blind people in Dresden during the Weimar Republic and was removed from his position in the Bavarian Association of the Blind in March 1933.
Mex Telschow, who had founded the Association of Blind Industrial Workers in 1919, was removed from his post in 1933 because he opposed Gleichschaltung.
Betty Hirsch. a blind Jewish teacher who ran a private vocational school for blind people in Berlin, went into exile in England in 1934 and escaped the fate of her relatives, who died in concentration camps. All these individuals advocated concepts of self-help and social integration that were totally at odds with the synchronized organizations. which lined up with Nazi ideology to accept eugenic measures and the curtailing of life possibilities for blind people.

[wm]

And there was the so called blind Schindler - Otto Weidt. From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Weidt

Otto Weidt was the owner of a workshop in Berlin for blind and deaf. During the Holocaust, he fought to protect his Jewish workers against deportation and he has been recognised for his work as one of the Righteous Men of the World's Nations. The Museum of Otto Weidt's Workshop for the Blind remains on the original site of the factory and is dedicated to his life.

The Museum: http://www.museum-blindenwerkstatt.de/en/first-of-all/

[harry6116]

These posts were extremely illuminating.
thanks for the info.

Michael