Written by Robert Douglas   

Berlin now has a memorial to recognize the estimated 300,000 mentally ill and disabled Germans and other Europeans the Nazis murdered in the name of scientific research and racial purity.

Meanwhile, it doesn’t even occur to many Americans to acknowledge the countless number of mentally ill and disabled human beings we continue to let suffer and sometimes die in the name of thrift.

In the case of Germany, it’s appropriate to keep erecting reminders of the darkest period in their history. And this latest memorial is particularly fitting in that it focuses on policies and practices that started the Nazis on the slippery slope toward the Holocaust.

It started with this notion that, through genetic engineering, you can build a better human race. The notion — called eugenics — became popular early in the 20th Century, not only in Germany but in the U.S. And, in fact, the Nazis looked to American research and proponents of eugenics for inspiration.

The documentary, Nazi Medicine (now available on Netflix), cites a Virginia facility that sterilized “misfits.” It shows a clip from the 1934 film, America’s Children, in which a judge sentences a bride-to-be to be sterilized because she had relatives who were crippled and feeble-minded. It also discussed how eugenicists called for immigration quotas for southeastern Europeans because they were short, dark and prone to crimes and sexual immorality.

While some Americans bought into eugenic theories, it was the Nazis who put them into practice. Nazi Medicine focuses on how Hitler used doctors in his attempt to develop a master race – first by sterilizing the mentally and physically disabled, then using them in experiments. Experiments that included submerging subjects in freezing water for long periods to test how long an airman could survive in frigid waters when his plane goes down. Ultimately Nazi doctors used their helpless subjects to help perfect techniques for using gas on a massive scale to kill Jews and others that posed a threat to racial purity.

Don't be smug

On the occasion of the opening of the new Berlin monument to recognize their first round of victims, Americans should guard against being smug. Not only do the Nazis credit us with our pioneering work which ultimately let to Hitler’s attempted Final Solution, our record as a nation is not without taint — historically and in the present.

Slavery declared that whites were the master race when it came to blacks. The Tuskegee syphilis experiment continued to study the progression of the disease even after there was a known cure. More than 30 states at some time have had laws allowing mandatory sterilization of criminals and the mentally disabled in their institutional care. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan slashed federal funding for mental health, resulting in less institutional care and an increase in untreated homeless people. And funding cuts have continued since.

Maybe it’s time this country built a monument the disabled and mentally ill. It certainly would be cheaper than providing for their care.
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Robert Douglas is a former union official and former business editor for The Palm Beach Post and Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. You can contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .