In addition to Jews, Roma (Gypsies), homosexuals and transsexuals, the Nazis also persecuted people with disabilities. In 1933, Adolf Hitler enacted the Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases, which was intended to eliminate “the unfit” from the German race. This law called for the sterilization of all persons with possibly hereditary conditions including mental illness, learning disabilities, physical deformity, epilepsy, blindness, deafness, and severe alcoholism. Within a few years, the Third Reich decided that forced sterilization was not enough to get rid of their “biological enemies”. Hence, the T-4 Euthanasia Program was enacted, in which people with disabilities and mental illness were systematically murdered.

Helene Melanie Lebel was one of those people.

Helene was born on September 15, 1911, in Vienna, Austria, to a Catholic mother and a Jewish father, who later died in World War I. At 19 years old, Helene began showing signs of schizophrenia. By 1935, her symptoms worsened and she was admitted to Steinhof Psychiatric Hospital in Vienna.

In 1938, the Germans annexed Austria to Germany. Two years later, Helene was still being held at Steinhof even though her condition had improved. Although her family was led to believe she would soon be released, the Nazis had lied:

In fact, Helene was transferred to a converted prison in Brandenburg, Germany, where she was undressed, subjected to a physical examination, and then led into a shower room.

Helene was one of 9,772 persons gassed that year in the Brandenburg “Euthanasia” center. She was officially listed as dying in her room of “acute schizophrenic excitement.

It is estimated that 270,000 people with disabilities died during the 1930s and 1940s at the hands of the Nazi regime. (1)

Read more about Helene Melanie Lebel’s life and death or click on the links above.

Additional Works Cited (But Not Linked To Above)
Barnes, C. and Mercer, G. 2003: Disability. Cambridge: Polity Press. 32-33

Photo credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

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