reality
11-15-2003, 03:12 PM
'mentally ill' in prisons :)
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1068814567294900.xml
Sunday, November 9, 2003 copyright 2003 San Francisco
Chronicle | Feedback
URL:
sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/11/09/ING9C2QSKB1.DTL
Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent
and exterminated
millions in his quest for a so-called Master Race.
But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed
master Nordic race
didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in
the United States, and
cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came
to power. California
eugenicists played an important, although
little-known, role in the American
eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing.
Eugenics was the pseudoscience aimed at "improving"
the human race. In its
extreme, racist form, this meant wiping away all human
beings deemed
"unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a
Nordic stereotype.
Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national
policy by forced
sterilization and segregation laws, as well as
marriage restrictions,
enacted in 27 states. In 1909, California became the
third state to adopt
such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners
coercively sterilized some
60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands,
forcibly segregated
thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers
in ways we are just
learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive
sterilizations were
done in California, and even after the war, the state
accounted for a third
of all such surgeries.
California was considered an epicenter of the American
eugenics movement.
During the 20th century's first decades, California's
eugenicists included
potent but little-known race scientists, such as Army
venereal disease
specialist Dr. Paul Popenoe, citrus magnate Paul
Gosney, Sacramento banker
Charles Goethe, as well as members of the California
state Board of
Charities and Corrections and the University of
California Board of Regents.
Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk
had it not been for
extensive financing by corporate philanthropies,
specifically the Carnegie
Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the
Harriman railroad fortune.
They were all in league with some of America's most
respected scientists
from such prestigious universities as Stanford, Yale,
Harvard and Princeton.
These academicians espoused race theory and race
science, and then faked and
twisted data to serve eugenics' racist aims.
Stanford President David Starr Jordan originated the
notion of "race and
blood" in his 1902 racial epistle "Blood of a Nation,"
in which the
university scholar declared that human qualities and
conditions such as
talent and poverty were passed through the blood.
In 1904, the Carnegie Institution established a
laboratory complex at Cold
Spring Harbor on Long Island that stockpiled millions
of index cards on
ordinary Americans, as researchers carefully plotted
the removal of
families, bloodlines and whole peoples. From Cold
Spring Harbor, eugenics
advocates agitated in the legislatures of America, as
well as the nation's
social service agencies and associations.
The Harriman railroad fortune paid local charities,
such as the New York
Bureau of Industries and Immigration, to seek out
Jewish, Italian and other
immigrants in New York and other crowded cities and
subject them to
deportation, confinement or forced sterilization.
The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German
eugenics program and even
funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before
he went to Auschwitz.
Much of the spiritual guidance and political agitation
for the American
eugenics movement came from California's
quasi-autonomous eugenic societies,
such as Pasadena's Human Betterment Foundation and the
California branch of
the American Eugenics Society, which coordinated much
of their activity with
the Eugenics Research Society in Long Island. These
organizations -- which
functioned as part of a closely-knit network --
published racist eugenic
newsletters and pseudoscientific journals, such as
Eugenical News and
Eugenics,
and propagandized for the Nazis.
Eugenics was born as a scientific curiosity in the
Victorian age. In 1863,
Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin,
theorized that if talented
people married only other talented people, the result
would be measurably
better offspring. At the turn of the last century,
Galton's ideas were
imported to the United States just as Gregor Mendel's
principles of heredity
were rediscovered. American eugenics advocates
believed with religious
fervor that the same Mendelian concepts determining
the color and size of
peas, corn and cattle also governed the social and
intellectual character of
man.
In a United States demographically reeling from
immigration upheaval and
torn by post-Reconstruction chaos, race conflict was
everywhere in the early
20th century. Elitists, utopians and so-called
progressives fused their
smoldering race fears and class bias with their desire
to make a better
world. They reinvented Galton's eugenics into a
repressive and racist
ideology. The intent: Populate the Earth with vastly
more of their own
socioeconomic and biological kind -- and less or none
of everyone else.
The superior species the eugenics movement sought was
populated not merely
by tall, strong, talented people. Eugenicists craved
blond, blue-eyed Nordic
types. This group alone, they believed, was fit to
inherit the Earth. In the
process, the movement intended to subtract emancipated
Negroes, immigrant
Asian laborers, Indians, Hispanics, East Europeans,
Jews, dark- haired hill
folk, poor people, the infirm and anyone classified
outside the gentrified
genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists.
How? By identifying so-called defective family trees
and subjecting them to
lifelong segregation and sterilization programs to
kill their bloodlines.
The grand plan was to literally wipe away the
reproductive capability of
those deemed weak and inferior -- the so-called unfit.
The eugenicists hoped
to neutralize the viability of 10 percent of the
population at a sweep,
until none were left except themselves.
Eighteen solutions were explored in a
Carnegie-supported 1911 "Preliminary
Report of the Committee of the Eugenic Section of the
American Breeder's
Association to Study and to Report on the Best
Practical Means for Cutting
Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the Human Population."
Point No. 8 was
euthanasia.
The most commonly suggested method of eugenicide in
the United States was a
"lethal chamber" or public, locally operated gas
chambers. In 1918, Popenoe,
the Army venereal disease specialist during World War
I, co-wrote the widely
used textbook, "Applied Eugenics," which argued, "From
an historical point
of view, the first method which presents itself is
execution . . . Its value
in keeping up the standard of the race should not be
underestimated."
"Applied Eugenics" also devoted a chapter to "Lethal
Selection," which
operated "through the destruction of the individual by
some adverse feature
of the environment, such as excessive cold, or
bacteria, or by bodily
deficiency."
Eugenic breeders believed American society was not
ready to implement an
organized lethal solution. But many mental
institutions and doctors
practiced improvised medical lethality and passive
euthanasia on their own.
One institution in Lincoln, Ill., fed its incoming
patients milk from
tubercular cows believing a eugenically strong
individual would be immune.
Thirty to 40 percent annual death rates resulted at
Lincoln. Some doctors
practiced passive eugenicide one newborn infant at a
time. Others doctors at
mental institutions engaged in lethal neglect.
Nonetheless, with eugenicide marginalized, the main
solution for eugenicists
was the rapid expansion of forced segregation and
sterilization, as well as
more marriage restrictions. California led the nation,
performing nearly all
sterilization procedures with little or no due
process. In its first 25
years of eugenics legislation, California sterilized
9,782 individuals,
mostly women. Many were classified as "bad girls,"
diagnosed as
"passionate," "oversexed" or "sexually wayward." At
the Sonoma State Home,
some women were sterilized because of what was deemed
an abnormally large
clitoris or labia.
In 1933 alone, at least 1,278 coercive sterilizations
were performed, 700 on
women. The state's two leading sterilization mills in
1933 were Sonoma State
Home with 388 operations and Patton State Hospital
with 363 operations.
Other sterilization centers included Agnews,
Mendocino, Napa, Norwalk,
Stockton and Pacific Colony state hospitals.
Even the U.S. Supreme Court endorsed aspects of
eugenics. In its infamous
1927 decision, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell
Holmes wrote, "It is
better for all the world, if instead of waiting to
execute degenerate
offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their
imbecility, society can
prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing
their kind . . .
Three generations of imbeciles are enough." This
decision opened the
floodgates for thousands to be coercively sterilized
or otherwise persecuted
as subhuman. Years later, the Nazis at the Nuremberg
trials quoted Holmes'
words in their own defense.
Only after eugenics became entrenched in the United
States was the campaign
transplanted into Germany, in no small measure through
the efforts of
California eugenicists, who published booklets
idealizing sterilization and
circulated them to German officials and scientists.
Hitler studied American eugenics laws. He tried to
legitimize his anti-
Semitism by medicalizing it, and wrapping it in the
more palatable
pseudoscientific facade of eugenics. Hitler was able
to recruit more
followers among reasonable Germans by claiming that
science was on his side.
Hitler's race hatred sprung from his own mind, but the
intellectual outlines
of the eugenics Hitler adopted in 1924 were made in
America.
During the '20s, Carnegie Institution eugenic
scientists cultivated deep
personal and professional relationships with Germany's
fascist eugenicists.
In "Mein Kampf," published in 1924, Hitler quoted
American eugenic ideology
and openly displayed a thorough knowledge of American
eugenics. "There is
today one state," wrote Hitler, "in which at least
weak beginnings toward a
better conception (of immigration) are noticeable. Of
course, it is not our
model German Republic, but the United States."
Hitler proudly told his comrades just how closely he
followed the progress
of the American eugenics movement. "I have studied
with great interest," he
told a fellow Nazi, "the laws of several American
states concerning
prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny
would, in all
probability, be of no value or be injurious to the
racial stock."
Hitler even wrote a fan letter to American eugenics
leader Madison Grant,
calling his race-based eugenics book, "The Passing of
the Great Race," his
"bible."
Now, the American term "Nordic" was freely exchanged
with "Germanic" or
"Aryan." Race science, racial purity and racial
dominance became the driving
force behind Hitler's Nazism. Nazi eugenics would
ultimately dictate who
would be persecuted in a Reich-dominated Europe, how
people would live, and
how they would die. Nazi doctors would become the
unseen generals in
Hitler's war against the Jews and other Europeans
deemed inferior. Doctors
would create the science, devise the eugenic formulas,
and hand-select the
victims for sterilization, euthanasia and mass
extermination.
During the Reich's early years, eugenicists across
America welcomed Hitler's
plans as the logical fulfillment of their own decades
of research and
effort. California eugenicists republished Nazi
propaganda for American
consumption. They also arranged for Nazi scientific
exhibits, such as an
August 1934 display at the L.A. County Museum, for the
annual meeting of the
American Public Health Association.
In 1934, as Germany's sterilizations were accelerating
beyond 5,000 per
month, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe,
upon returning from
Germany, ebulliently bragged to a colleague, "You will
be interested to know
that your work has played a powerful part in shaping
the opinions of the
group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this
epoch-making program.
Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been
tremendously stimulated by
American thought . . . I want you, my dear friend, to
carry this thought
with you for the rest of your life, that you have
really jolted into action
a great government of 60 million people."
That same year, 10 years after Virginia passed its
sterilization act, Joseph
DeJarnette, superintendent of Virginia's Western State
Hospital, observed in
the Richmond Times-Dispatch, "The Germans are beating
us at our own game."
More than just providing the scientific roadmap,
America funded Germany's
eugenic institutions.
By 1926, Rockefeller had donated some $410,000 --
almost $4 million in
today's money -- to hundreds of German researchers. In
May 1926, Rockefeller
awarded $250,000 toward creation of the Kaiser Wilhelm
Institute for
Psychiatry. Among the leading psychiatrists at the
German Psychiatric
Institute was Ernst Rüdin, who became director and
eventually an architect
of Hitler's systematic medical repression.
Another in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute's complex of
eugenics institutions
was the Institute for Brain Research. Since 1915, it
had operated out of a
single room. Everything changed when Rockefeller money
arrived in 1929. A
grant of $317,000 allowed the institute to construct a
major building and
take center stage in German race biology. The
institute received additional
grants from the Rockefeller Foundation during the next
several years.
Leading the institute, once again, was Hitler's
medical henchman Ernst
Rüdin. Rüdin's organization became a prime director
and recipient of the
murderous experimentation and research conducted on
Jews, Gypsies and
others.
Beginning in 1940, thousands of Germans taken from old
age homes, mental
institutions and other custodial facilities were
systematically gassed.
Between 50,000 and 100,000 were eventually killed.
Leon Whitney, executive secretary of the American
Eugenics Society, declared
of Nazism, "While we were pussy-footing around ... the
Germans were calling
a spade a spade."
A special recipient of Rockefeller funding was the
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in
Berlin. For decades,
American eugenicists had craved twins to advance their
research into
heredity.
The Institute was now prepared to undertake such
research on an
unprecedented level. On May 13, 1932, the Rockefeller
Foundation in New York
dispatched a radiogram to its Paris office: JUNE
MEETING EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
NINE THOUSAND
DOLLARS OVER THREE YEAR PERIOD TO KWG INSTITUTE
ANTHROPOLOGY FOR RESEARCH ON
TWINS AND EFFECTS ON LATER GENERATIONS OF SUBSTANCES
TOXIC FOR GERM PLASM.
At the time of Rockefeller's endowment, Otmar Freiherr
von Verschuer, a hero
in American eugenics circles, functioned as a head of
the Institute for
Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. Rockefeller
funding of that
institute continued both directly and through other
research conduits during
Verschuer's early tenure. In 1935, Verschuer left the
institute to form a
rival eugenics facility in Frankfurt that was much
heralded in the American
eugenics press. Research on twins in the Third Reich
exploded, backed by
government decrees. Verschuer wrote in Der Erbarzt, a
eugenics doctor's
journal he edited, that Germany's war would yield a
"total solution to the
Jewish problem."
Verschuer had a longtime assistant. His name was Josef
Mengele.
On May 30, 1943, Mengele arrived at Auschwitz.
Verschuer notified the German
Research Society, "My assistant, Dr. Josef Mengele
(M.D., Ph.D.) joined me
in this branch of research. He is presently employed
as Hauptsturmführer
(captain) and camp physician in the Auschwitz
concentration camp.
Anthropological testing of the most diverse racial
groups in this
concentration camp is being carried out with
permission of the SS
Reichsführer (Himmler)."
Mengele began searching the boxcar arrivals for twins.
When he found them,
he performed beastly experiments, scrupulously wrote
up the reports and sent
the paperwork back to Verschuer's institute for
evaluation. Often, cadavers,
eyes and other body parts were also dispatched to
Berlin's eugenic
institutes.
Rockefeller executives never knew of Mengele. With few
exceptions, the
foundation had ceased all eugenics studies in
Nazi-occupied Europe before
the war erupted in 1939. But by that time the die had
been cast. The
talented men Rockefeller and Carnegie financed, the
great institutions they
helped found, and the science they helped create took
on a scientific
momentum of their own.
After the war, eugenics was declared a crime against
humanity -- an act of
genocide. Germans were tried and they cited the
California statutes in their
defense -- to no avail. They were found guilty.
However, Mengele's boss Verschuer escaped prosecution.
Verschuer re-
established his connections with California
eugenicists who had gone
underground and renamed their crusade "human
genetics." Typical was an
exchange July 25, 1946, when Popenoe wrote Verschuer,
"It was indeed a
pleasure to hear from you again. I have been very
anxious about my
colleagues in Germany . . . I suppose sterilization
has been discontinued in
Germany?" Popenoe offered tidbits about various
American eugenics luminaries
and then sent various eugenics publications. In a
separate package, Popenoe
sent some cocoa, coffee and other goodies.
Verschuer wrote back, "Your very friendly letter of
7/25 gave me a great
deal of pleasure and you have my heartfelt thanks for
it. The letter builds
another bridge between your and my scientific work; I
hope that this bridge
will never again collapse but rather make possible
valuable mutual
enrichment and stimulation."
Soon, Verschuer again became a respected scientist in
Germany and around the
world. In 1949, he became a corresponding member of
the newly formed
American Society of Human Genetics, organized by
American eugenicists and
geneticists.
In the fall of 1950, the University of Münster offered
Verschuer a position
at its new Institute of Human Genetics, where he later
became a dean. In the
early and mid-1950s, Verschuer became an honorary
member of numerous
prestigious societies, including the Italian Society
of Genetics, the
Anthropological Society of Vienna, and the Japanese
Society for Human
Genetics.
Human genetics' genocidal roots in eugenics were
ignored by a victorious
generation that refused to link itself to the crimes
of Nazism and by
succeeding generations that never knew the truth of
the years leading up to
war. Now governors of five states, including
California, have issued public
apologies to their citizens, past and present, for
sterilization and other
abuses spawned by the eugenics movement.
Human genetics became an enlightened endeavor in the
late 20th century.
Hard-working, devoted scientists finally cracked the
human code through the
Human Genome Project. Now, every individual can be
biologically identified
and classified by trait and ancestry. Yet even now,
some leading voices in
the genetic world are calling for a cleansing of the
unwanted among us, and
even a master human species.
There is understandable wariness about more ordinary
forms of abuse, for
example, in denying insurance or employment based on
genetic tests. On Oct.
14,
the United States' first genetic anti-discrimination
legislation passed the
Senate by unanimous vote. Yet because genetics
research is global, no single
nation's law can stop the threats.
Edwin Black is author of the award-winning "IBM and
the Holocaust" and the
recently released "War Against the Weak" (published by
Four Walls Eight
Windows), from which this article is adapted.
chance martin, Project Coordinator
STREET SHEET
A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness, San
Francisco
468 Turk Street, San Francisco, CA 94102
415 / 346.3740-voice ? 415 / 775.5639-fax
streetsheet@sf-homeless-coalition.org
http://www.sf-homeless-coalition.org
As always, feel free to copy and share, as well.
"Painting is poetry which
is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which
is heard but not
seen." ~ Leonardo da Vinci "Prison is designed to
break everyone's spirit
and destroy one's resolve. To do this, the authorities
attempt to exploit
every weakness, demolish every initiative, negate all
signs of
individuality, all with the idea of stamping out that
spark that makes each
of us human and each of us who we are." ~ Nelson
Mandela
http://wwf.org http://greenpeaceusa.org
http://www.peta.org http://www.webreleaf.com
http://www.peaceforall.com
http://www.freedonation.com
http://www.PetitionPetition.com
http://www.e-thepeople.com http://www.speakout.com
http://www.petitiononline.com http://www.alphacdc.com
http://www.progressivesecretary.org
http://www.care2.com
http://www.workingforchange.com
http://www.actionize.com
http://www.halftheplanet.com
http://www.causeaneffect.org
Helpsites and places where twigs of poetree grow
http://www.clearlandmines.com
http://www.giveaminute.org/
"http://www.buildaschool.org"
http://www.nationalactionnetwork.org
Metaphorical Poet
http://pub103.ezboard.com/bthemetaphoricalpoet
Autumn Leaves
http://www.sondra.net/al/
Enjoy an autumnal eve' as you can. Ciao, for now. i
look forward.... What do
you think? Viva la evolution, viva green party.
jamesmnordlundreality
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1068814567294900.xml
Sunday, November 9, 2003 copyright 2003 San Francisco
Chronicle | Feedback
URL:
sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/11/09/ING9C2QSKB1.DTL
Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent
and exterminated
millions in his quest for a so-called Master Race.
But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed
master Nordic race
didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in
the United States, and
cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came
to power. California
eugenicists played an important, although
little-known, role in the American
eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing.
Eugenics was the pseudoscience aimed at "improving"
the human race. In its
extreme, racist form, this meant wiping away all human
beings deemed
"unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a
Nordic stereotype.
Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national
policy by forced
sterilization and segregation laws, as well as
marriage restrictions,
enacted in 27 states. In 1909, California became the
third state to adopt
such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners
coercively sterilized some
60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands,
forcibly segregated
thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers
in ways we are just
learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive
sterilizations were
done in California, and even after the war, the state
accounted for a third
of all such surgeries.
California was considered an epicenter of the American
eugenics movement.
During the 20th century's first decades, California's
eugenicists included
potent but little-known race scientists, such as Army
venereal disease
specialist Dr. Paul Popenoe, citrus magnate Paul
Gosney, Sacramento banker
Charles Goethe, as well as members of the California
state Board of
Charities and Corrections and the University of
California Board of Regents.
Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk
had it not been for
extensive financing by corporate philanthropies,
specifically the Carnegie
Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the
Harriman railroad fortune.
They were all in league with some of America's most
respected scientists
from such prestigious universities as Stanford, Yale,
Harvard and Princeton.
These academicians espoused race theory and race
science, and then faked and
twisted data to serve eugenics' racist aims.
Stanford President David Starr Jordan originated the
notion of "race and
blood" in his 1902 racial epistle "Blood of a Nation,"
in which the
university scholar declared that human qualities and
conditions such as
talent and poverty were passed through the blood.
In 1904, the Carnegie Institution established a
laboratory complex at Cold
Spring Harbor on Long Island that stockpiled millions
of index cards on
ordinary Americans, as researchers carefully plotted
the removal of
families, bloodlines and whole peoples. From Cold
Spring Harbor, eugenics
advocates agitated in the legislatures of America, as
well as the nation's
social service agencies and associations.
The Harriman railroad fortune paid local charities,
such as the New York
Bureau of Industries and Immigration, to seek out
Jewish, Italian and other
immigrants in New York and other crowded cities and
subject them to
deportation, confinement or forced sterilization.
The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German
eugenics program and even
funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before
he went to Auschwitz.
Much of the spiritual guidance and political agitation
for the American
eugenics movement came from California's
quasi-autonomous eugenic societies,
such as Pasadena's Human Betterment Foundation and the
California branch of
the American Eugenics Society, which coordinated much
of their activity with
the Eugenics Research Society in Long Island. These
organizations -- which
functioned as part of a closely-knit network --
published racist eugenic
newsletters and pseudoscientific journals, such as
Eugenical News and
Eugenics,
and propagandized for the Nazis.
Eugenics was born as a scientific curiosity in the
Victorian age. In 1863,
Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin,
theorized that if talented
people married only other talented people, the result
would be measurably
better offspring. At the turn of the last century,
Galton's ideas were
imported to the United States just as Gregor Mendel's
principles of heredity
were rediscovered. American eugenics advocates
believed with religious
fervor that the same Mendelian concepts determining
the color and size of
peas, corn and cattle also governed the social and
intellectual character of
man.
In a United States demographically reeling from
immigration upheaval and
torn by post-Reconstruction chaos, race conflict was
everywhere in the early
20th century. Elitists, utopians and so-called
progressives fused their
smoldering race fears and class bias with their desire
to make a better
world. They reinvented Galton's eugenics into a
repressive and racist
ideology. The intent: Populate the Earth with vastly
more of their own
socioeconomic and biological kind -- and less or none
of everyone else.
The superior species the eugenics movement sought was
populated not merely
by tall, strong, talented people. Eugenicists craved
blond, blue-eyed Nordic
types. This group alone, they believed, was fit to
inherit the Earth. In the
process, the movement intended to subtract emancipated
Negroes, immigrant
Asian laborers, Indians, Hispanics, East Europeans,
Jews, dark- haired hill
folk, poor people, the infirm and anyone classified
outside the gentrified
genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists.
How? By identifying so-called defective family trees
and subjecting them to
lifelong segregation and sterilization programs to
kill their bloodlines.
The grand plan was to literally wipe away the
reproductive capability of
those deemed weak and inferior -- the so-called unfit.
The eugenicists hoped
to neutralize the viability of 10 percent of the
population at a sweep,
until none were left except themselves.
Eighteen solutions were explored in a
Carnegie-supported 1911 "Preliminary
Report of the Committee of the Eugenic Section of the
American Breeder's
Association to Study and to Report on the Best
Practical Means for Cutting
Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the Human Population."
Point No. 8 was
euthanasia.
The most commonly suggested method of eugenicide in
the United States was a
"lethal chamber" or public, locally operated gas
chambers. In 1918, Popenoe,
the Army venereal disease specialist during World War
I, co-wrote the widely
used textbook, "Applied Eugenics," which argued, "From
an historical point
of view, the first method which presents itself is
execution . . . Its value
in keeping up the standard of the race should not be
underestimated."
"Applied Eugenics" also devoted a chapter to "Lethal
Selection," which
operated "through the destruction of the individual by
some adverse feature
of the environment, such as excessive cold, or
bacteria, or by bodily
deficiency."
Eugenic breeders believed American society was not
ready to implement an
organized lethal solution. But many mental
institutions and doctors
practiced improvised medical lethality and passive
euthanasia on their own.
One institution in Lincoln, Ill., fed its incoming
patients milk from
tubercular cows believing a eugenically strong
individual would be immune.
Thirty to 40 percent annual death rates resulted at
Lincoln. Some doctors
practiced passive eugenicide one newborn infant at a
time. Others doctors at
mental institutions engaged in lethal neglect.
Nonetheless, with eugenicide marginalized, the main
solution for eugenicists
was the rapid expansion of forced segregation and
sterilization, as well as
more marriage restrictions. California led the nation,
performing nearly all
sterilization procedures with little or no due
process. In its first 25
years of eugenics legislation, California sterilized
9,782 individuals,
mostly women. Many were classified as "bad girls,"
diagnosed as
"passionate," "oversexed" or "sexually wayward." At
the Sonoma State Home,
some women were sterilized because of what was deemed
an abnormally large
clitoris or labia.
In 1933 alone, at least 1,278 coercive sterilizations
were performed, 700 on
women. The state's two leading sterilization mills in
1933 were Sonoma State
Home with 388 operations and Patton State Hospital
with 363 operations.
Other sterilization centers included Agnews,
Mendocino, Napa, Norwalk,
Stockton and Pacific Colony state hospitals.
Even the U.S. Supreme Court endorsed aspects of
eugenics. In its infamous
1927 decision, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell
Holmes wrote, "It is
better for all the world, if instead of waiting to
execute degenerate
offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their
imbecility, society can
prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing
their kind . . .
Three generations of imbeciles are enough." This
decision opened the
floodgates for thousands to be coercively sterilized
or otherwise persecuted
as subhuman. Years later, the Nazis at the Nuremberg
trials quoted Holmes'
words in their own defense.
Only after eugenics became entrenched in the United
States was the campaign
transplanted into Germany, in no small measure through
the efforts of
California eugenicists, who published booklets
idealizing sterilization and
circulated them to German officials and scientists.
Hitler studied American eugenics laws. He tried to
legitimize his anti-
Semitism by medicalizing it, and wrapping it in the
more palatable
pseudoscientific facade of eugenics. Hitler was able
to recruit more
followers among reasonable Germans by claiming that
science was on his side.
Hitler's race hatred sprung from his own mind, but the
intellectual outlines
of the eugenics Hitler adopted in 1924 were made in
America.
During the '20s, Carnegie Institution eugenic
scientists cultivated deep
personal and professional relationships with Germany's
fascist eugenicists.
In "Mein Kampf," published in 1924, Hitler quoted
American eugenic ideology
and openly displayed a thorough knowledge of American
eugenics. "There is
today one state," wrote Hitler, "in which at least
weak beginnings toward a
better conception (of immigration) are noticeable. Of
course, it is not our
model German Republic, but the United States."
Hitler proudly told his comrades just how closely he
followed the progress
of the American eugenics movement. "I have studied
with great interest," he
told a fellow Nazi, "the laws of several American
states concerning
prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny
would, in all
probability, be of no value or be injurious to the
racial stock."
Hitler even wrote a fan letter to American eugenics
leader Madison Grant,
calling his race-based eugenics book, "The Passing of
the Great Race," his
"bible."
Now, the American term "Nordic" was freely exchanged
with "Germanic" or
"Aryan." Race science, racial purity and racial
dominance became the driving
force behind Hitler's Nazism. Nazi eugenics would
ultimately dictate who
would be persecuted in a Reich-dominated Europe, how
people would live, and
how they would die. Nazi doctors would become the
unseen generals in
Hitler's war against the Jews and other Europeans
deemed inferior. Doctors
would create the science, devise the eugenic formulas,
and hand-select the
victims for sterilization, euthanasia and mass
extermination.
During the Reich's early years, eugenicists across
America welcomed Hitler's
plans as the logical fulfillment of their own decades
of research and
effort. California eugenicists republished Nazi
propaganda for American
consumption. They also arranged for Nazi scientific
exhibits, such as an
August 1934 display at the L.A. County Museum, for the
annual meeting of the
American Public Health Association.
In 1934, as Germany's sterilizations were accelerating
beyond 5,000 per
month, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe,
upon returning from
Germany, ebulliently bragged to a colleague, "You will
be interested to know
that your work has played a powerful part in shaping
the opinions of the
group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this
epoch-making program.
Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been
tremendously stimulated by
American thought . . . I want you, my dear friend, to
carry this thought
with you for the rest of your life, that you have
really jolted into action
a great government of 60 million people."
That same year, 10 years after Virginia passed its
sterilization act, Joseph
DeJarnette, superintendent of Virginia's Western State
Hospital, observed in
the Richmond Times-Dispatch, "The Germans are beating
us at our own game."
More than just providing the scientific roadmap,
America funded Germany's
eugenic institutions.
By 1926, Rockefeller had donated some $410,000 --
almost $4 million in
today's money -- to hundreds of German researchers. In
May 1926, Rockefeller
awarded $250,000 toward creation of the Kaiser Wilhelm
Institute for
Psychiatry. Among the leading psychiatrists at the
German Psychiatric
Institute was Ernst Rüdin, who became director and
eventually an architect
of Hitler's systematic medical repression.
Another in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute's complex of
eugenics institutions
was the Institute for Brain Research. Since 1915, it
had operated out of a
single room. Everything changed when Rockefeller money
arrived in 1929. A
grant of $317,000 allowed the institute to construct a
major building and
take center stage in German race biology. The
institute received additional
grants from the Rockefeller Foundation during the next
several years.
Leading the institute, once again, was Hitler's
medical henchman Ernst
Rüdin. Rüdin's organization became a prime director
and recipient of the
murderous experimentation and research conducted on
Jews, Gypsies and
others.
Beginning in 1940, thousands of Germans taken from old
age homes, mental
institutions and other custodial facilities were
systematically gassed.
Between 50,000 and 100,000 were eventually killed.
Leon Whitney, executive secretary of the American
Eugenics Society, declared
of Nazism, "While we were pussy-footing around ... the
Germans were calling
a spade a spade."
A special recipient of Rockefeller funding was the
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in
Berlin. For decades,
American eugenicists had craved twins to advance their
research into
heredity.
The Institute was now prepared to undertake such
research on an
unprecedented level. On May 13, 1932, the Rockefeller
Foundation in New York
dispatched a radiogram to its Paris office: JUNE
MEETING EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
NINE THOUSAND
DOLLARS OVER THREE YEAR PERIOD TO KWG INSTITUTE
ANTHROPOLOGY FOR RESEARCH ON
TWINS AND EFFECTS ON LATER GENERATIONS OF SUBSTANCES
TOXIC FOR GERM PLASM.
At the time of Rockefeller's endowment, Otmar Freiherr
von Verschuer, a hero
in American eugenics circles, functioned as a head of
the Institute for
Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. Rockefeller
funding of that
institute continued both directly and through other
research conduits during
Verschuer's early tenure. In 1935, Verschuer left the
institute to form a
rival eugenics facility in Frankfurt that was much
heralded in the American
eugenics press. Research on twins in the Third Reich
exploded, backed by
government decrees. Verschuer wrote in Der Erbarzt, a
eugenics doctor's
journal he edited, that Germany's war would yield a
"total solution to the
Jewish problem."
Verschuer had a longtime assistant. His name was Josef
Mengele.
On May 30, 1943, Mengele arrived at Auschwitz.
Verschuer notified the German
Research Society, "My assistant, Dr. Josef Mengele
(M.D., Ph.D.) joined me
in this branch of research. He is presently employed
as Hauptsturmführer
(captain) and camp physician in the Auschwitz
concentration camp.
Anthropological testing of the most diverse racial
groups in this
concentration camp is being carried out with
permission of the SS
Reichsführer (Himmler)."
Mengele began searching the boxcar arrivals for twins.
When he found them,
he performed beastly experiments, scrupulously wrote
up the reports and sent
the paperwork back to Verschuer's institute for
evaluation. Often, cadavers,
eyes and other body parts were also dispatched to
Berlin's eugenic
institutes.
Rockefeller executives never knew of Mengele. With few
exceptions, the
foundation had ceased all eugenics studies in
Nazi-occupied Europe before
the war erupted in 1939. But by that time the die had
been cast. The
talented men Rockefeller and Carnegie financed, the
great institutions they
helped found, and the science they helped create took
on a scientific
momentum of their own.
After the war, eugenics was declared a crime against
humanity -- an act of
genocide. Germans were tried and they cited the
California statutes in their
defense -- to no avail. They were found guilty.
However, Mengele's boss Verschuer escaped prosecution.
Verschuer re-
established his connections with California
eugenicists who had gone
underground and renamed their crusade "human
genetics." Typical was an
exchange July 25, 1946, when Popenoe wrote Verschuer,
"It was indeed a
pleasure to hear from you again. I have been very
anxious about my
colleagues in Germany . . . I suppose sterilization
has been discontinued in
Germany?" Popenoe offered tidbits about various
American eugenics luminaries
and then sent various eugenics publications. In a
separate package, Popenoe
sent some cocoa, coffee and other goodies.
Verschuer wrote back, "Your very friendly letter of
7/25 gave me a great
deal of pleasure and you have my heartfelt thanks for
it. The letter builds
another bridge between your and my scientific work; I
hope that this bridge
will never again collapse but rather make possible
valuable mutual
enrichment and stimulation."
Soon, Verschuer again became a respected scientist in
Germany and around the
world. In 1949, he became a corresponding member of
the newly formed
American Society of Human Genetics, organized by
American eugenicists and
geneticists.
In the fall of 1950, the University of Münster offered
Verschuer a position
at its new Institute of Human Genetics, where he later
became a dean. In the
early and mid-1950s, Verschuer became an honorary
member of numerous
prestigious societies, including the Italian Society
of Genetics, the
Anthropological Society of Vienna, and the Japanese
Society for Human
Genetics.
Human genetics' genocidal roots in eugenics were
ignored by a victorious
generation that refused to link itself to the crimes
of Nazism and by
succeeding generations that never knew the truth of
the years leading up to
war. Now governors of five states, including
California, have issued public
apologies to their citizens, past and present, for
sterilization and other
abuses spawned by the eugenics movement.
Human genetics became an enlightened endeavor in the
late 20th century.
Hard-working, devoted scientists finally cracked the
human code through the
Human Genome Project. Now, every individual can be
biologically identified
and classified by trait and ancestry. Yet even now,
some leading voices in
the genetic world are calling for a cleansing of the
unwanted among us, and
even a master human species.
There is understandable wariness about more ordinary
forms of abuse, for
example, in denying insurance or employment based on
genetic tests. On Oct.
14,
the United States' first genetic anti-discrimination
legislation passed the
Senate by unanimous vote. Yet because genetics
research is global, no single
nation's law can stop the threats.
Edwin Black is author of the award-winning "IBM and
the Holocaust" and the
recently released "War Against the Weak" (published by
Four Walls Eight
Windows), from which this article is adapted.
chance martin, Project Coordinator
STREET SHEET
A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness, San
Francisco
468 Turk Street, San Francisco, CA 94102
415 / 346.3740-voice ? 415 / 775.5639-fax
streetsheet@sf-homeless-coalition.org
http://www.sf-homeless-coalition.org
As always, feel free to copy and share, as well.
"Painting is poetry which
is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which
is heard but not
seen." ~ Leonardo da Vinci "Prison is designed to
break everyone's spirit
and destroy one's resolve. To do this, the authorities
attempt to exploit
every weakness, demolish every initiative, negate all
signs of
individuality, all with the idea of stamping out that
spark that makes each
of us human and each of us who we are." ~ Nelson
Mandela
http://wwf.org http://greenpeaceusa.org
http://www.peta.org http://www.webreleaf.com
http://www.peaceforall.com
http://www.freedonation.com
http://www.PetitionPetition.com
http://www.e-thepeople.com http://www.speakout.com
http://www.petitiononline.com http://www.alphacdc.com
http://www.progressivesecretary.org
http://www.care2.com
http://www.workingforchange.com
http://www.actionize.com
http://www.halftheplanet.com
http://www.causeaneffect.org
Helpsites and places where twigs of poetree grow
http://www.clearlandmines.com
http://www.giveaminute.org/
"http://www.buildaschool.org"
http://www.nationalactionnetwork.org
Metaphorical Poet
http://pub103.ezboard.com/bthemetaphoricalpoet
Autumn Leaves
http://www.sondra.net/al/
Enjoy an autumnal eve' as you can. Ciao, for now. i
look forward.... What do
you think? Viva la evolution, viva green party.
jamesmnordlundreality