Educators must be conscious of how misinformation and ableism shape presentations of disability histories. The atrocities of the Holocaust and related instances of prejudice and persecution under the Nazi regime are vital topics within education about disability history. However, the emotive and horrific nature of the subject matter may encourage educators to make generalizations about disability history. Are sensitive histories being mis-applied or used as inappropriate metaphors?

We are two early career historians with lived experiences of disability and neurodivergency, who research disability in a historical context. We have observed how the presentation of disability throughout historical topics can often lead to unintentional meaning, despite good intentions. This blog seeks to explore some thoughts about the Holocaust and disability in order to underscore a wider point – that in museum education, disability history must be treated with nuance. This blog is structured around two case studies, spanning ancient and twentieth century histories, written by each author. The two case studies discussed in the blog draw on the authors’ fields of expertise and experiential knowledge of museum education.

Case Study 1: The T4 program (Alexandra F. Morris)
I am an Egyptologist who specialises in Ptolemaic disability history, and therefore study both ancient Egypt and Greece. An area of research which I’ve started exploring is the reception of ancient disability in modern society. What I partially have discovered is that eugenic practices have a deeply rooted history of being explained via historical anachronisms or misunderstandings. As the following case study on the Nazi T4 program demonstrates this creates the problem of reproducing misinformation about historical treatment of disabled people. It also perpetuates and reinforces these eugenicist ideas in modern society. Education about the Holocaust frequently erases the murder of disabled people, or treats it as an afterthought. This reinforces the lack of worth disabled people continue to have in society today, and also tacitly shows approval for Nazi eugenic policies.

From approximately 1939-1945, the deliberate systemic murder and involuntary euthanasia of disabled, neurodiverse, and mentally ill people by the Nazis occurred in what was later deemed the Aktion T4 program.^[1] “Patients,” were required to be registered with the state as disabled from birth, and their files sent before a panel of medical experts who ordered their deaths.^[2] Children and adults were then sent to special wards without family consent, supposedly for treatment, but were instead killed through a combination of gassing, lethal injection, starvation, and physical abuse, with their brains processed for medical research.^[3] Those already in asylums were forcibly sterilized, and later killed.^[4] Approximately 300,000 people were murdered by the Nazis under this program.^[5] Today, it is believed that the reasoning for the policy was a combination of eugenics, racial hygiene, and supposed economic savings.^[6]

This policy of murder was influenced by the misappropriation of the ancient world and disability, in particular the deliberate linking of admiration of Sparta and eugenics to official Nazi policies.^[7] The Nazis openly modeled their patriotic collectivism and educational systems on the Spartan agoge and Spartan concepts of the ideal warrior.^[8] Racism increasingly took root in scholarly discussions by German scholars (Müller, Woltmann and Schlegel) about Sparta, with Spartans seen as the superior ancient Greek race unlike the Athenians and Ionians who were too easily influenced by eastern influences.^[9] Additionally, the Spartan birth policy was used as a model for Nazi ideals of racial and physical hygiene and fitness.^[10]

Sparta’s official state policy, as mentioned in the ancient historian Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, was to supposedly examine all infants shortly after birth and kill any deemed to be ill or disabled by throwing them in the Apothetae at the foot of Mount Taygetus.^[11] However, Plutarch wrote this character study centuries after Sparta’s downfall and designed it to showcase the harshness and brutality of Lycurgus’s personality and rule, meaning it cannot be interpreted as a straight biography.^[12] As Debby Sneed states: This passage appears frequently in discussions of infanticide in the ancient world. [Classicist Robert] Garland claims that the Spartans ‘not only tolerated but actually demanded the exposure of malformed infants. Elsewhere, he argues that the Plutarch passage anticipates the ‘interest in eugenics which nineteenth- and twentieth-century legislators have also manifested.’…Nevertheless, the story of the Spartans killing disabled infants persists…^[13]
The infanticide of disabled babies was also stated to be best practice in the theoretical utopian societies of Aristotle and Plato, two Greek philosophers cited as great Western thinkers today, but whose ideas on eugenics and misogyny are given tacit approval today through lack of scholarly criticism.^[14] However Plutarch remains our only official source for this narrative, with no archaeological, or other textual evidence existing to support this supposed practice.^[15] Other historical narratives also written by Plutarch have actively contrasted this narrative, including the life of Spartan King Agesilaus II (c. 445-359 BCE), who was born lame, and lived to the age of 84, ruling Sparta for close to forty years.^[16] More recent studies of ancient Greece by both Debby Sneed, and myself have additionally found more evidence for the invested active societal care of disabled infants in both ancient Greece and Egypt than for infanticide.^[17] These include measures such as feeding bottles for infants who had trouble breastfeeding or those who were too ill to eat solids, Hippocratic physicians commenting on the abilities of those who were born with “weasel arms,” and describing treatments for impairments like clubfoot and cleft conditions, and disabled infants with then fatal conditions like hydrocephalus being kept alive for extended periods of time while their physical appearance changed as caused by their disabilities.^[18] Additionally other textual evidence from ancient Athens and Macedonia attests to state pensions for disabled people in ancient Greece, which I demonstrated in my PhD continued under the Ptolemies in Egypt in the form of land grants for disabled war veterans.^[19]

Therefore, official Nazi policy was based on a fictionalized and erroneous interpretation of an ancient historical narrative about Spartans. This has been repeated unquestioningly in scholarship for centuries because of ingrained ableism present in both Classics and Egyptology. This fiction actively caused harm to the 300,000 disabled people murdered by the Nazis. More disturbingly these myths, particularly about ancient infanticide, have often filtered into and been repeated within the disability rights movement itself, creating a narrative fiction that we have progressed as a society from ancient to modern times, and a pushback within the movement against the ancient world.^[20] The perpetuation of this fiction also continues to cause harm to modern disabled people who are supposed to be grateful that society is no longer killing us, when in reality we were most likely not systemically eliminated in the ancient world. Instead we were active participants within ancient society.

Case Study 2: Dr Guttmann and Paralympic History (Samuel Brady)
Before my PhD about sport wheelchair technology and work with the National Paralympic Heritage Trust, I explored the connections between Jewish history and disability studies. I wanted to explore any intersections between these two identity groups, to understand if (or how) antisemitism and disablism had shared roots. These ideas unexpectedly overlapped with my Paralympic research due to the origins of the movement with German-Jewish neuroscientist Sir Dr Ludwig Guttmann. I felt, however, unsure in the connection between Guttmann’s experiences of antisemitism under the Nazis to his later significance to rehabilitation and disability sport. As I begin a new role at the National Paralympic Heritage Trust, I wish to urge other museum educators to not conflate distinct types of discrimination for the sake of narrative ease.

The origins of the modern Paralympic movement are associated with Sir Dr Ludwig Guttmann and Stoke Mandeville Hospital, home of the National Spinal Injuries Centre, in Buckinghamshire, UK. Guttmann, a world leader in neurosurgery and the treatment of patients with spinal cord injuries, was selected by the British government to open the Centre in 1944, to treat paraplegic and tetraplegic patients during the Second World War.^[21] Through innovative medical treatments and employment-focus rehabilitation, a revolutionary programme was created which dramatically increased the life expectancy and quality of life of spinal cord injured patients.^[22] Moreover, one of Guttmann’s key contributions was sport as a means of rehabilitation, leading to annual competitions – now known as the Paralympics.^[23]

Non-academic narratives about Guttmann are quick to link his sympathy for disabled people to his Jewish Identity. Born in Tost, Upper Silesia in 1899, Guttmann witnessed the rise of the Nazi party in Germany.^[24] Like other Jewish medical professionals, Guttmann faced antisemitism under the Nazis’ rise to power, and was forced to step down from  his medical post in 1933.^[25] Guttmann remained in Germany as Nazi antisemitism proliferated, and in 1936 Guttmann became the director of Breslau Jewish Hospital. Following the violence of Kristallnacht in November 1938, the Gestapo demanded Guttmann justify the admission of 64 Jewish patients to the hospital. Guttmann was able to save 60 of the 64 patients, alongside some of his staff, from deportation to concentration camps.^[26] By 1939, Guttmann and his family had escaped Germany, and settled in the United Kingdom.

It is clear that Guttmann experienced discrimination due to his identity and heritage under the Nazis. It is easy, therefore, to interpret Guttmann’s important role in the history of disability and rehabilitative medicine as influenced by his own experiences of discrimination. Indeed, I have observed these connections being drawn in tours and educational work carried out by the  National Paralympic Heritage Trust, as part of a wider story of the Paralympic movement. Yet, to draw simple parallels between the experiences of eugenic antisemitism under the Nazi regime, and social attitudes towards disability and impairment in postwar Britain, risk undermining historical nuances about different forms of discrimination.

Whilst Guttmann was a revolutionary medical figure, his attitude towards rehabilitation may be questioned. Chiefly, the rehabilitation programme employed at Stoke Mandeville was significantly orientated around employment. Joan Scrutton, who served as Guttmann’s secretary between 1944 and his death in 1980, commented that Guttmann’s philosophy was to turn his patients ‘into taxpayers.’^[27] In this era, rehabilitation was foremostly oriented around making recently disabled people independent so they would not be social and economic drains on postwar society.  Likewise, I found in my wider research that Guttmann’s relationship with his patients, and later disabled athletes in the Paralympic movement, can be interpreted as paternalistic and authoritative. Guttmann restricted disabled people from taking positions of authority within disability sport organizations, aiming to ensure his vision of the Games persisted.^[28] Former patients and athletes alike referenced Guttmann’s ‘iron will’ and dismissive dealings with disabled people.^[29] Indeed, in a general assembly meeting of the International Sports Organization for the Disabled in 1979, a blind delegate reportedly asked Guttmann why the meeting information was not in an accessible format, and questioned if the organization was of or for disabled people. Guttmann, then the president of the ISOD, told the delegate to “sit and listen and learn, and not make impertinent remarks.”^[30]

Guttmann’s role at Stoke Mandeville and the creation of the Paralympics surpassed the Nazi rhetoric that discriminated against both Jews and disabled people. In this light, educators may rightly present a link between antisemitism and disablism.^[31] Certainly, I believe there are potent overlaps between the two which need further exploration.^[32] However, Guttmann also represented certain ableist attitudes and ideas within the medical profession. Whilst sympathies on lines of identity and discrimination may have existed for Guttmann, these narratives cannot neatly fit into broad concepts of mutual sympathy as a result of marginalization. Certain experiences of antisemitism cannot therefore be easily equated to experiences of ableism and disablism. Museum educators must be mindful that simplifying these historical narratives alter how disability history in the context of the Holocaust is told.

Concluding thoughts
We have aimed to use  these two case studies about the Holocaust as a starting point for wider conversations about nuance, historical context, and intersectionality in museum education.  The Holocaust is an emotive example of discrimination, impacting many marginalized groups in distinct and upsetting ways. As educators, it is important that how we talk about such subjects is considered and contextualized, and unafraid to explore the historical detail present in these discussions. Ultimately, we have found that discussions about the past frame the present and shape the future.

*Special thanks to Classicist Alexandra Sills who generously shared resources and a paper on this topic with this blog’s authors.

 

^[1] Sharon L. Snyder and David T. Mitchell. Cultural Locations of Disability. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Close-up of Richard Jenne, the last child killed by the head nurse at the Kaufbeuren-Irsee euthanasia facility,” last modified June 25, 2013, https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/pa10049

^[2] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Close-up of Richard Jenne, the last child killed by the head nurse at the Kaufbeuren-Irsee euthanasia facility,” last modified June 25, 2013, https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/pa10049

^[3] Ibid.

^[4]  Ibid.

^[5]  Ibid.

^[6]  Ibid.

^[7] Henry Friedlander. The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).

^[8] Helen Roche. “‘Wanderer, kommst du nach Pforta … ’: the tension between Classical tradition and the demands of a Nazi elite-school education at Schulpforta and Ilfeld, 1934 –45. Revue europe´enne d’histoire vol.20.4 (2013): 113: “Spartanische Pimpfe: The importance of Sparta in the educational ideology of the Adolf Hitler Schools.” In. Stephen Hodkinson, and Ian MacGregor Morris. (eds.) Sparta in Modern Thought: Politics, History and Culture. P.315-341. (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2012): Helen Roche. Sparta’s German Children: The ideal of ancient Sparta in the Royal Prussian Cadet Corps, 1818–1920, and in National Socialist elite schools (the Napolas), 1933–1945. (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales,  2013):  Stefan Rebenich. “Reception of Sparta in Germany and German‐Speaking Europe.” In Anton Powell, (ed.) A Companion to Sparta Volume II. p.685-703. (Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2018), 691.

^[9] Elizabeth Rawson. The Spartan Tradition in European Thought. (New York: Oxford  University Press, 1969), 335.

^[10] Volker Losemann. “The Spartan tradition in Germany, 1870–1945.” In Stephen Hodkinson and Ian MacGregor Morris. (eds.) Sparta in Modern Thought: Politics, History and Culture. p. 253-314. (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2012), 259-260.

^[11] Plutarch. Life of Lycurgus. 16.1-16.3.

^[12] Alexandra F. Morris. “Patterns of Force: Receptions of Agesilaus II, Disability, and Greek
Sexuality,” In Kenneth Moore (editor). The Routledge Companion to the Reception of Ancient Greek and Roman Gender and Sexuality. Taylor & Francis, 2022.

^[13]  Debby Sneed. “Disability and Infanticide in Ancient Greece,” Hesperia 90.4 (2021): 749-750.

^[14] Aristotle. Politics. 1335a 5-7, and 1335a 11-19: Plato. Republic. 5.459a-461e: Justin L. Biggi, “Judging the Body: Disability, Class and Citizen Identity—A Case Study from an Ancient Greek Lawcourt,” The Journal of Gender, Ethnic, and Cross-Cultural Studies 2.1(2023): 2.

^[15] Alexandra F. Morris. Plato’s Stepchildren: Disability in Ptolemaic Egypt and the Hellenistic World 332-30 BCE. (PhD Thesis, Teesside University, 2022), 27-29.

^[16] Alexandra F. Morris. “Patterns of Force,”: Plutarch. The Parallel Lives: Agesilaus:  Xenophon. Hellenica.

^[17] Debby Sneed. “Disability and Infanticide in Ancient Greece,” 756-766.

^[18] Debby Sneed. “Disability and Infanticide in Ancient Greece,” 756-766:  Alexandra F. Morris. “Plato’s Stepchildren,” 29, 98, 149, 153-154.

^[19] Alexandra F. Morris. “ Plato’s Stepchildren,”60: Debby Sneed. “The Architecture of Access: Ramps at Ancient Greek Healing Sanctuaries,” Antiquity (2020): 7.

^[20] For some examples of this see: Colin Barnes. “A Legacy of Oppression: A History of Disability in Western Culture,” in Len Barton and Mike Oliver (eds.) Disability Studies: Past Present and Future (Leeds: The Disability Press, 1995), 11-13: Mark Quinn. Alison Lapper Pregnant Statue. Exhibited on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square London, 2005-2007.  Classicist Martha L. Rose also has a fantastic quote about this in The Staff of Oedipus: Transforming Disability in Ancient Greece (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 8: “First, our assumptions about the place of people with disabilities in the present day have colored, often falsely, our interpretations about people with disabilities in the ancient world. Second, these skewed interpretations of the ancient world bolster modern discriminatory attitudes toward people with disability, giving the attitudes an apparent historical precedent.”

^[21] John R. Silver, ‘A History of Stoke Mandeville Hospital and the National Spinal Injuries Centre’, The Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh 49, no. 4 (December 2019): p 328

^[22] Julie Anderson, War, Disability and Rehabilitation in Britain: ‘Soul of a Nation.’ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), pp 132-140

^[23] Martin Polley, ‘Stoke Mandeville Games’, in The British Olympics: Britain’s Olympic Heritage, 1612-2012 (Swindon: English Hertitage, 2011), p 170.

^[24] Susan Goodman, Spirit of Stoke Mandeville: The Story of Sir Ludwig Guttmann (London: Collins, 1986), p. 13.

^[25] Ibid, pp 58-59.

^[26] Ibid, pp 75-76.

^[27] Joan Scruton, Stoke Mandeville: Road to the Paralympics (Aylesbury: St. Edmundsbury Press, 1998), p 19.; Julie Anderson, ‘`Turned into Taxpayers’: Paraplegia, Rehabilitation and Sport at Stoke Mandeville, 1944-56’, Journal of Contemporary History 38, no. 3 (1 July 2003), p 462.

^[28] This is unlike movements within American sport, where medical professionals like Dr Timothy Nugent specifically step aside so disabled players could take positions of authority within sport organizations. Steve Bailey, Athlete First: A History of the Paralympic Movement (Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2008), p 19.

^[29] Tony Sainsbury’, The Last ‘Olympics for the Disabled’ 1980 : Not Moscow, USSR but Arhem, the Netherlands / by Tony Sainsbury, Journal of Olympic history, 26 (2018), p 53.

^[30] Ian Brittain, ‘South Africa, Apartheid and the Paralympic Games’, Sport in Society 14, no. 9 (1 November 2011), p 1174.

^[31] Links between antisemitism and disabled certainly exist. For instance, Ryan and Schuchman’s Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe is a useful example of intersectional disabled Jewish histories in the context of the Holocaust – particularly the third chapter, focused on d/Deaf Hungarian Jews.

^[32] Literature about the intersections between disability history and Jewish or Holocaust studies is small but growing. My article  Review essay: Moving towards Disability-Jewish histories aims to map out these intersections – in particular as they relate to antisemitism.

 

Bibliography

Case Study 1
Primary Sources

• Politics. 1335a 5-7, and 1335a 11-19.
• Republic. 5.459a-461e.
• Life of Lycurgus. 16.1-16.3.
• The Parallel Lives: Agesilaus.
• Hellenica.

Secondary Sources

• Barnes, Colin. “A Legacy of Oppression: A History of Disability in Western Culture,” in Len Barton and Mike Oliver (eds.) Disability Studies: Past Present and Future. Leeds: The Disability Press, 1995.
• Biggi, Justin L. “Judging the Body: Disability, Class and Citizen Identity—A Case Study from an Ancient Greek Lawcourt,” The Journal of Gender, Ethnic, and Cross-Cultural Studies1 (2023): 2-16.
• Friedlander, Henry. The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
• Losemann, Volker. “The Spartan tradition in Germany, 1870–1945.” In. Stephen Hodkinson and Ian MacGregor Morris. (eds.) Sparta in Modern Thought: Politics, History and Culture. p. 253-314 Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2012.
• Morris, Alexandra F. “Patterns of Force: Receptions of Agesilaus II, Disability, and Greek Sexuality,” In Kenneth Moore (editor). The Routledge Companion to the Reception of Ancient Greek and Roman Gender and Sexuality. Taylor & Francis, 2022.
• Morris, Alexandra F. Plato’s Stepchildren: Disability in Ptolemaic Egypt and the   Hellenistic World 332-30 BCE. PhD Thesis, Teesside University, 2022.
• Rawson, Elizabeth. The Spartan Tradition in European Thought. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.
• Rebenich, Stefan.“Reception of Sparta in Germany and German‐Speaking Europe.” In Anton Powell, (ed.) A Companion to Sparta Volume II.685-703. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2018.
• Roche, Helen. “Spartanische Pimpfe: The importance of Sparta in the educational ideology of the Adolf Hitler Schools.” In. Stephen Hodkinson, and Ian MacGregor Morris. (eds.) Sparta in Modern Thought: Politics, History and Culture. p.315-341 Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2012.
• Roche, Helen. “‘Wanderer, kommst du nach Pforta … ’: the tension between Classical tradition and the demands of a Nazi elite-school education at Schulpforta and Ilfeld, 1934 –45. Revue europe´enne d’histoire20.4 (2013):581-609.
• Roche, Helen. Sparta’s German Children: The ideal of ancient Sparta in the Royal Prussian Cadet Corps, 1818–1920, and in National Socialist elite schools (the Napolas), 1933–1945. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales,
• Rose, Martha L. The Staff of Oedipus: Transforming Disability in Ancient Greece. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003.
• Sneed, Debby. “The Architecture of Access: Ramps at Ancient Greek Healing Sanctuaries,” Antiquity (2020): 1-15.
• Sneed, Debby. “Disability and Infanticide in Ancient Greece,” Hesperia4 (2021): 747-772.
• Snyder, Sharon L. and David T. Mitchell. Cultural Locations of Disability. Chicago University of Chicago Press, 2006.
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Close-up of Richard Jenne, the last child killed by the head nurse at the Kaufbeuren-Irsee euthanasia facility,” last modified June 25, 2013, https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/pa10049

Case Study 2
Secondary Sources

• Anderson, Julie. War, Disability and Rehabilitation in Britain: ‘Soul of a Nation.’ Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011.
• Bailey, Steve. Athlete First: A History of the Paralympic Movement. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2008.
• Brady, Samuel. ‘Moving towards Disability-Jewish Histories’. Jewish Historical Studies 54 (2022): 101–28.
• Brittain, Ian. ‘South Africa, Apartheid and the Paralympic Games’. Sport in Society 14, no. 9 (1 November 2011): 1165–81.
• Goodman, Susan. Spirit of Stoke Mandeville: The Story of Sir Ludwig Guttmann. London: Collins, 1986.
• Polley, Martin. ‘Stoke Mandeville Games’. In The British Olympics: Britain’s Olympic Heritage, 1612-2012. Swindon: English Hertitage, 2011.
• Ryan, Donna F., and John S. Schuchman, eds. Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe. Washington D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 2002.
• Sainsbury, Tony. ‘The Last “Olympics for the Disabled” 1980 : Not Moscow, USSR but Arhem, the Neatherlands / by Tony Sainsbury’. The Last ‘Olympics for the Disabled’ 1980 : Not Moscow, USSR but Arhem, the Neatherlands / by Tony Sainsbury, Journal of Olympic history, 26 (2018).
• Scruton, Joan. Stoke Mandeville: Road to the Paralympics. Aylesbury: St. Edmundsbury Press, 1998.
• Silver, John R. ‘A History of Stoke Mandeville Hospital and the National Spinal Injuries Centre’. The Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh 49, no. 4 (December 2019): 328–35.

Author Biographies

Dr Samuel Brady
Sam Brady is the Interim Collections Officer for the National Paralympic Heritage Trust, and  recently completed an AHRC funded CDP studentship with the University of Glasgow. This research explored the social, political, and technical history of manual sport wheelchair devices. Sam also has wider research interests concerning disability and intersectionality with other minority and marginalized groups. Currently, this takes the form of research concerning disability, ableism and disablism with Jewish history and studies. Sam is a co-founder and current team member of the UK Disability History and Heritage Hub, and team member of the Jewish Historical Society of England’s postgraduate group, the New Generation Group.

Dr. Alexandra F. Morris
Alexandra F. Morris is an Egyptologist and disability activist. She is currently an Associate Lecturer in Heritage and the Humanities at the University of Lincoln (UK), an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham (UK), Access Guide with Diversity and Ability, and Tutor with the Egypt Exploration Society, and the Brilliant Club. Her research is on disability in ancient Egypt and creating inclusive museums. Alexandra is also a co-founder and current team member of the UK Disability History and Heritage Hub, Co-Chair of CripAntiquity, Co-Chair of Communications for the Board of Directors of the Museum Education Roundtable, serves on the Editorial Board for Asterion Hub, and is Chair of the Lewisboro, NY Advisory Committee for the Disabled. She has cerebral palsy and dyspraxia.