Hitler's Forgotten Victims

Between 1939 and 1945 the Nazi regime systematically murdered hundreds of thousands of adults and children with physical and mental disabilities. Their euthanasia programme was designed to eliminate anyone who, according to Nazi ideology, threatened the purity of the German race. Hitler s Forgotten Victims explores the development and workings of this nightmarish process, a relatively neglected aspect of the Holocaust, drawing on the rich historical record as well as scores of exclusive interviews with disabled Holocaust survivors. It includes the Children s Killing Programme, in which tens of thousands of children with physical and mental disabilities were murdered by their physicians, usually by starvation or lethal injection, as well as the AktionT4 programme, in which adults with disabilities were disposed of in six official centres, and the development of the Sterilisation Law, which allowed the forced sterilisation of at least 500,000 young adults with disabilities.