Tracing the rise of racist and eugenic ideologies, Henry Friedlander explores how the Nazi programme of secretly exterminating the handicapped and disabled evolved into the systematic destruction of Jews and Gypsies. He describes how the so-called euthanasia of the handicapped provided a practical model for the later mass murder, thereby initiating the Holocaust. The Nazi regime pursued the extermination of Jews, Gypsies and the handicapped based on a belief in the biological, and thus absolute, inferiority of those groups. To document the connection between the assault on the handicapped and the Final Solution, Friedlander shows how the legal restrictions and exclusionary policies of the 1930s, including mass sterilization, led to mass murder during the war. He also makes clear that the killing centres where the handicapped were gassed and cremated served as the models for the extermination camps. Based on extensive archival research, the book also analyzes the involvement of the German bureaucracy and judiciary, the participation of physicians and scientists, and the nature of popular opposition.

About the Author
Henry Friedlander was professor of history in the department of Judaic studies at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and coeditor of the 26-volume Archives of the Holocaust Series.


Book Information
ISBN 9780807846759
Author Henry Friedlander
Format Paperback
Page Count 448
Imprint The University of North Carolina Press
Publisher The University of North Carolina Press
Weight(grams) 646g