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A review by anakuroma
Hitler's Forgotten Victims: The Holocaust and the Disabled by Suzanne E. Evans
5.0
Please note this review comes from a white, transgender disabled person.
TW: Death, murder, ableism, ableist slurs, discrimination, torture, forced sterilisation, dismemberment, experimentation, death by starvation.
First of all this book was written in coordination with Disability Rights Advocates, so I thanked all the deities that be that it wasn't a non-disabled person writing their pity and ignorance from the outside, as is so often the case.
The main theme that is explored in both the intro and outro of this book is that NONE OF THESE EVENTS STARTED OR HAVE ENDED WITH THE NAZIS. Which is SO incredibly important. Other countries have been discriminating and torturing, sterilising and murdering disabled folks long before the nazis came to power, and continue to this day. The whole message of this book is two-fold:
1: To remember these forgotten victims,
2: And that by remembering them we see what lead to these atrocities, and how little things have changed for disabled folk even to this day.
So the book isn't "This sucked but we won, yay!" but rather a call to arms about the injustices we still see today and why fighting them is so important.
This book gets an absolute 5 stars, despite a few criticisms I have, but I will share them:
There was a lot of repetition, and normally I would find that grading, but in this case I found it important. It helped me really carve the important details into my brain so I can really build on this knowledge.
Another critique is the wish for more personal stories from disabled folk. However, this may not have been due to a myriad of factors, such as the lack of education and resources offered disabled folks. Also that they were never told anything when being taken from their families or transfered to other 'mental institutions' and their belongings all destroyed. I am keen now to hunt and see if I can find any other personal stories after reading this book.
Lastly, I would have loved to have seen anything mentioned about Hans Asperger or autism as these are very much intertwined subjects.
Despite any critiques, I cannot recommend enough the importance of this book. A great tool for disability advocates, people wanting to understand why disabled folk are far from done fighting for equal rights, teachers, historians, parents...pretty much everyone alive needs to read this.
TW: Death, murder, ableism, ableist slurs, discrimination, torture, forced sterilisation, dismemberment, experimentation, death by starvation.
First of all this book was written in coordination with Disability Rights Advocates, so I thanked all the deities that be that it wasn't a non-disabled person writing their pity and ignorance from the outside, as is so often the case.
The main theme that is explored in both the intro and outro of this book is that NONE OF THESE EVENTS STARTED OR HAVE ENDED WITH THE NAZIS. Which is SO incredibly important. Other countries have been discriminating and torturing, sterilising and murdering disabled folks long before the nazis came to power, and continue to this day. The whole message of this book is two-fold:
1: To remember these forgotten victims,
2: And that by remembering them we see what lead to these atrocities, and how little things have changed for disabled folk even to this day.
So the book isn't "This sucked but we won, yay!" but rather a call to arms about the injustices we still see today and why fighting them is so important.
This book gets an absolute 5 stars, despite a few criticisms I have, but I will share them:
There was a lot of repetition, and normally I would find that grading, but in this case I found it important. It helped me really carve the important details into my brain so I can really build on this knowledge.
Another critique is the wish for more personal stories from disabled folk. However, this may not have been due to a myriad of factors, such as the lack of education and resources offered disabled folks. Also that they were never told anything when being taken from their families or transfered to other 'mental institutions' and their belongings all destroyed. I am keen now to hunt and see if I can find any other personal stories after reading this book.
Lastly, I would have loved to have seen anything mentioned about Hans Asperger or autism as these are very much intertwined subjects.
Despite any critiques, I cannot recommend enough the importance of this book. A great tool for disability advocates, people wanting to understand why disabled folk are far from done fighting for equal rights, teachers, historians, parents...pretty much everyone alive needs to read this.