Elie Wiesel once wrote, “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in the camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed... Never shall I forget the little faces of children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever… Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never” (Wiesel Forward). Elie was a Holocaust survivor who wrote a memoir, Night. In Night, Wiesel describes his experience in a concentration camps while undergoing Hitler’s nefarious tactics against him and his family. Between 1933-1945, Hitler and his regime sought to create the idyllic …show more content…
In 1933, the ‘Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring’ was passed, ordering forced sterilization of those who were considered to be Disabled. These people included those with deafness, blindness, physical deformities, epilepsy, schizophrenia, etcetera. (“Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases”). Hitler backdated his order to September 1st, 1939, the day World War II began, to make it appear as if this was a wartime measure. The individuals were taken to supposed “Eugenics Court” where doctors and lawyers loyal to Hitler reviewed the cases. The oppression began with health policies aimed towards the removal of “unfit” persons. Over time, the Nazi strategies intensified; beginning at forced sterilization, and then transitioning into mass murder. Forced sterilization was a government policy that coerced the Disabled into surgical treatments in an attempt to cure them. The most extreme method of manslaughter, known as the “Euthanasia Program”, was a trial run for the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (“Euthanasia Program”). The word “Euthanasia” is translated into “good death”, but to the Nazis, it was a term that implied the systematic mass murders of thousands. Propaganda was spread throughout Germany convincing citizens that the Disabled were “useless eaters”. In Germany and Austria, six institutions existed, and the sole purpose of the institutions were for housing patients who had an inevitable death. Small children and infants were starved or killed by an injection of a lethal chemical. Others were put into gas chambers and poisoned with carbon monoxide. After their death, bodies were sent to crematoriums and burned. Often times parents were unaware of the fate of their children. They were told that they had been cremated and they had passed away due to pneumonia or another form of disease. After Hitler called the Euthanasia Program to a halt in