Why read The Origins of Nazi Genocide?

Book cover of The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution

Book description

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…

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European history

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Origins of Nazi Genocide as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

David Livingstone Smith

Author

Many people are unaware that the Nazi genocide of Jews and Roma was built on their earlier mass extermination of disabled people, beginning with children. The killing methods used in places like Auschwitz and Treblinka were pioneered in the murder of many thousands of people with physically and mentally disabled people, whom members of the German medical profession referred to as “life unworthy of life” and “useless eaters.” This book by a distinguished Holocaust scholar meticulously documents the journey from the first child killed on Hitler’s orders to the inferno of the Polish extermination camps.

From David's list on dehumanization and the impact of this phenomenon.