Slamdance Film Festival unveils “Disposable Humanity,” a film detailing one of the least portrayed genocide crimes in history.
Between 1939 and 1945, at the initiative of the Aktion T4 program, the physically and mentally disabled population housed within institutions was systematically exterminated. Akis T4 euthanasia program also included the execution of young disabled children described today in America as having learning disabilities or special needs. The program was christened Aktion T4 after the Berlin 4 Tiergartenstrasse address where its head office was located.
Gas chambers replaced the previously used lethal injections, and those who were not gassed to death were eventually left to die from starvation. During this time, these acts were sugarcoated as ‘mercy killings’ though in reality, these killings were far from merciful. The ideological basis of the Third Reich’s war on disability was firmly rooted in the writings of German professors Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche from the 1920s, who referred to disabled persons as “life unworthy of life” and “human ballast.”
Cameron Mitchell undertook the documentary in 2017 and has since directed PBS American Masters, The Co-Op, and Kryptonite. Disposable Humanity: A Documentary tells the story of Mitchell and his family who are traveling through Germany and Poland while looking for the lesser-known narratives of the Aktion T4 genocide told by memorial directors, disabled individuals, and relatives of its victims. This story is one that is often glossed over, and so, by combining the voices of her parents who are disability studies scholars, the documentary seeks to give it some much-deserved attention.
The layering of themes creates a much bigger picture of the events in question. In exhibiting such a wide array of history, the production lowers the barriers in interpreting the traumatic events of history, showcasing the theme of empathy while offering a very different, and purposeful, perspective on chronology.
For sure, one memorable fact of interest is how far advanced the Euthanasia Program which at its peak in 1940 operated out of six extermination centers employing gas chambers was for the Final Solution the plan that exterminated 6 million Jews. Victims from psychiatric hospitals and other care facilities were triaged via remote paper examinations conducted by panels of physicians who had never encountered the patient before. Upon arrival at the extermination centers, disabled individuals were killed by suffocation in prototype gas chambers filled with carbon monoxide. Professor David T. Mitchell, the father of director Cameron Mitchell, who produced and wrote the film and is an internationally recognized scholar in Disability Studies at George Washington University, says it was the Euthanasia Program that the Nazis used as a national ‘trial run’ for mass murder.
“Hitler’s initial scheme pertaining to the Jews was to deport all of them to Poland, Siberia, or Madagascar. The thought was simply to eject them out into places where the space was deemed uninhabited,” explains Professor Mitchell.
But as they got more and more familiar with the T4 people, the T4 people were like, Hey, we have a better idea. We’ve been slaughtering our psychiatric patients, and it poses far fewer logistical problems than mass deportation that’s when the Nazis switched over to the Final Solution. They hadn’t planned on killing Jews from the beginning. They planned on doing it when they figured out a reliable way to do it.
Disposable Humanity explores the evolution of the death factories. The book illustrates how the very same ovens meant to cremate the remains of the physically disabled were later transported to distant concentration camps to be used in the Holocaust.
As the credits provide a discreet reminder Akion T4 catalyzed the holocaust. The Holocaust is a part of disability history. Do not look away, share what you’ve learned.
Another way to look at the socio-legal ramifications of the action T4 period, and its before and after is not only legal but social too. For people encountering the topic for the first time, it may come as a surprise that eugenics and the involuntary sterilization of mentally disabled people were not exclusive to Nazi Germany in the 1930s. It was also happening in the United States, as director Cameron Mitchell explains.
Americans inspired the Nazi law of sterilization. California had 20,000 sterilizations when all is said and done and that is referenced in the passing of the law for the sterilization of the hereditary ill, which is the second of two laws that the Nazis passed in July 1933 after the law against interracial marriage. It was right up front and they cited California. Sterilization was rampant in the United States and the Nazis looked at that and wanted it. So, we enable the Nazis on their path to the Holocaust so to speak.
From this angle, the audience gets the left-undone narrative where handicapped victims of the Nazis are not shown true justice. Most of the physicians who were responsible for their executions were left free and unaccounted for, and many kept on practicing medicine later on.
Since the predominant population of victims consisted of German nationals, their killings were outside the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. Even where successful prosecutions occurred, it was mostly possible only after showing that disabled people were not the only ones being executed, as those lives seemed to have a greater value placed on them.
In the end, however, Disposable Humanity is a film about memorialization. In what ways should the victims of genocide be honored, and who is responsible for ensuring their memory endures?
Here, people with disabilities appear to lose out too. In Berlin, 2014 marked the unveiling of the T4 memorial. This was dedicated to the disabled victims of Nazi industrial-scale killing and was the last memorial built for them as it opened many years after commemorations had been established for the other victim groups like the Jews, LGBT, and Romanies. One fact that does not help is the collective silence among numerous German families after the war when it came to discussing the T4 Aktion killings. There is no question that some of this emerged from a lingering sense of shame in admitting they had relatives with some form of mental illness or inherited diseases. But, at the beginning of the documentary, we hear from Susanne Knittel, a public memory scholar at Utrecht University, who suggests some of this may be other psychological factors at play.
“Memories come to the surface in a surprising and unexpected manner. They make us uncomfortable or make the familiar narrative that we have told ourselves about the past strange,” she explains.
“Contours of memory on Nazi euthanasia within the Holocaust ‘automatically’ have imposing intersections with all the other elements Holocaust memory draws upon. Every single one of us has some form of understanding regarding the Holocaust and that it has to be commemorated. However, all of those preconceptions are in a way challenged when we bring Nazi euthanasia into scope. The Holocaust is characterized by a memorialization devoid of commemoration. Memorialization we define, is putting something down in record, writing a monument is one of them, but as an act, there is no deed associated with it so the deed is devoid of the act,”
So, reflecting on it further, is it that Disposable Humanity is simply a harrowing chapter of history that thankfully is not likely to repeat itself? The film’s Executive Producer is Steve Way. A muscular dystrophy sufferer, Way is also a stand-up comedian in the NJ/NY area, a disability rights advocate, and appeared in the Hulu show, Ramy. He sees in Disposable Humanity far more than a grotesque history lesson
For some reason, people question how the Third Reich could ever happen. But what people fail to understand is, this is what is happening to disabled people right now. We have President Trump scapegoating disabled people for a plane crash and then we have Elon Musk wanting to cut Medicaid. People will die, says Way.
He continues, “People say what happened in Nazi Germany will never happen here, but you don’t have to have gas chambers and death camps for it to happen. This film can be part of the resistance and how we fight back, but it’s also a model for how mass murder and fascism happen. Just because it’s not done in a gas chamber or by a firing squad doesn’t mean that it can’t be done with computers, AI, and insurance claim refusals.
This essay seeks to argue that, for those cruelly silenced, the untold stories of the Aktion T4 victims are the ones that have been meticulously constructed within the realm of history for far too long.
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