100 Books in 2018

17/ hitler's forgotten victims by suzanne e. evans

read: 27.02.18 -28.02.18

book: Hitler's Forgotten Victims: The Holocaust and the Disabled

author: Suzanne E. Evans

blurb: Between 1939 and 1945 the Nazi regime systematically murdered hundreds of thousands of children and adults with disabilities. These programmes were designed to eliminate all persons with disabilities who threatened the health and purity of the German race. This text explores the development and workings of this process.

review: In my A Level course we learnt briefly about the systematic persecution and extermination of disabled people under the Nazi rule, and I was so interested about this topic that I decided to go away and learn more. Whenever I think about the Holocaust, my mind immediately focuses on the Jewish persecution under Hitler, so reading this book really opened my eyes to the other groups who were brutally murdered under the Nazi regime.

This book really made me realise the enormity of the persecution of disabled people, and I was sickened at times during reading this about the practices and medical experiments which were carried out by Nazi doctors on patients before killing them. Not many people know that it was the persecution of disabled people, and the 'euthanasia' programme under the Nazis, which began the use of gas as a form of mass murder.

This book was massively impactful, and one that anyone who is interested in the Holocaust should read. It gave me some really great extra knowledge about this topic, and I would recommend to anyone who wants to broaden their knowledge about this time period.

rating: 9/10