PULLMAN, Wash. Some of the individual lives extinguished under a Nazi “euthanasia” program, a precursor to the Holocaust of Jews, will be examined by guest lecturer Patricia Heberer at 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 5, in Todd Hall 116 at Washington State University. The free, public talk is part of the WSU Common Reading Lecture Series.
Heberer is a historian at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, D.C. She is a specialist on medical crimes and eugenics policies in Nazi Germany.
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Upcoming Common Reading events
 * “What’s Your Body Worth? The Ethics of Commodifying Human Tissues” will be presented at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 13, in Todd 116, by Bill Kabasenche, WSU assistant professor of politics, philosophy and public affairs.
* David Lacks, son of Henrietta Lacks, will present an evening lecture in Beasley Coliseum on Jan. 5. Details will be forthcoming.
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“Dr. Heberer’s lecture will relate well with the topics of research ethics and the effacement of those used as research subjects, as raised in this year’s Common Reading book, ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,’” said Karen Weathermon, co-director of the WSU Common Reading Program. “In the book, which is being used in first-year classes by thousands of WSU freshman, Ms. Lacks’ daughter Elsie died at the Crownsville Hospital for the Negro Insane, likely after having been subjected to gruesome experimentation.”
In “Giving a Face to Faceless Victims: Profiles of Disabled Victims of the Nazi ‘Euthanasia’ Program,” Heberer will explore the victims of Aktion T4, the name used for a program during which physicians killed 70,000-275,000 Germans judged to be incurably sick from 1939 to 1941, extended unofficially through 1945. These included physically or mentally handicapped people killed by medication, starvation or in gas chambers. T4 is said by some to be the precursor practice that evolved to the Holocaust of Jews in Europe.
In an abstract describing her presentation, Heberer asks:
“Who were the victims of Nazi ‘euthanasia’ policy? Until recently, relatively little research has attempted to reconstruct the lives and fates of T4 victims.
“Scholarly preoccupation with the over-arching killing apparatus has helped to overshadow the individual identities of these individuals. Lack of adequate documentation has heretofore presented a major obstacle: many patient files have been lost or destroyed, while German privacy laws have ensured that the bulk of these records remained inaccessible to researchers.
“From what economic, educational and social backgrounds did these persons stem? Which kind of illnesses and conditions most often warranted inclusion in the killing operation? Did a patient’s age, gender or behavior determine whether that individual lived or died?
“Why did the ‘end phase’ of the ‘euthanasia’ program witness an increase in instances in mortality of victims who had little or no pathology, a phenomenon documented in anecdotal evidence at a number of T4 institutions?”
Heberer has written and edited articles and presented numerous lectures and keynote addresses around the world. She authored the book, “Children During the Holocaust,” in 2010.
She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Southern Illinois University and her Ph.D. in German and Central European history at the University of Maryland-College Park. She held an exchange doctoral fellowship at the Free University of Berlin.
Heberer’s visit is sponsored by the WSU University College, Common Reading Program and Department of History and by the Campus Outreach Lecture Program of the USHMM’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies supported by the generosity of Alan Solomon, M.D. Heberer’s visit to WSU was arranged by C. Richard King, professor of comparative ethnic studies, who conducted research at the USHMM in summer 2012.
For more information on WSU’s Common Reading Program, visit http://CommonReading.wsu.edu.