Evans, Suzanne E. Forgotten Crimes: The Holocaust and People with Disabilities. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004. ISBN 1-56663-565-9, $26.

Reviewed by Lisa Ossian, Des Moines Area Community College

"The volkish state must see to it that only the healthy beget children."

I couldn't read this book at night. As the mother of a disabled child, I could not bring myself to begin especially the first chapter, "The Children's Killing Program." In less than twenty pages, Suzanne Evans details this first Nazi euthanasia program, arguing that these murders were not random or "informal" but a systematic and largely successful attempt beginning in 1938 to exterminate any child with physical or mental differences–those termed "useless eaters." The author also quotes extensively the condolence letters (always ending with an effective "Heil Hitler!") which were sent to the parents from the institutions' medical staff. These "mercy killings" of "malformed children" continued within these "hunger houses" or "starving pavilions." Other phrases appear, such as "conspiracy of silence" surrounding these "burdens on a nation," or as the Nazi's more contemptuously termed them–the "garbage children" or Ausschusskinderer. The number of children killed has been estimated between 5,000 and 25,000. Doctors also profited from the murders through medical experimentation and organ donations to research hospitals. The chapter also includes a list of these children's killing wards along with a poignant photograph of a tiny disabled boy sitting precariously in a wicker chair outside Auschwitz.

Because of the earlier "success" with the children's killing program, Adolf Hitler ordered in 1939 an adult euthanasia program to exterminate all institutionalized German adults with disabilities, those deemed "worthless lives." This second chapter, titled "The T4 Adult Euthanasia," describes this far more developed and systematic process of killing disabled adults. At the center of operations was the villa at Tiergartenstrasse4–code name Aktion T4–as well as the four official killing centers with special SS units, although no local citizens were to know anything of this operation. Over 275,000 Germans with disabilities were systematically murdered during this initial period. This official euthanasia program ended in August 1941 after many medical and record keeping mistakes caused the secrecy to break down, but the second period called "wild euthanasia", in which disabled adults were murdered in overwhelming numbers throughout the Nazi death camp system continued until 1945. The Holocaust death toll for disabled men, women, and children–those who threatened the Nazi ideology of "the health and purity of the German race"–has been estimated in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps even a million lives.

As the author clearly notes, the dehumanization of people with disabilities did not begin nor did it end with the Holocaust. The strengths of this book are that it is quite readable, despite its horrific topic, and compelling as it moves throughout the War years. The book is also quite succinct at 169 pages. The eleven photographs–from a frail disabled child to children's unmarked graves to Nazi doctors and institutions to a concentration camp's collection of prosthetic pieces–illuminate the era's terror.

However (and this is the difficult part because this work is an excellent beginning to an extremely difficult topic), this book demands more polish. The text should be more than collected evidence; it lacks the strong thread tying the pieces together in either an effective story or argument. The book also appears unevenly balanced despite its brevity. The first chapter about the children's killing program is under twenty pages, but the second chapter is well over fifty pages. And the sixth chapter--really a prologue--is only two pages. Other than the long second chapter, the other topics need more depth and development. Evans continuously includes rather long lists not always as tables but within the text as well as extended direct quotations. Although the long lists and quotations can sometimes speak for themselves, the overall quality of the book would have been improved with a stronger author's voice. The chapter concerning perpetrators is half devoted to short biographies of Holocaust offenders, but little is done to link these perpetrators together into a type of Nazi pattern. The author does not quote many sources as most of the footnotes are drawn from select secondary works rather than primary source exploration. No archival research is cited nor is an extensive bibliography included.

Still, and this is certainly the most important point, Suzanne Evans has created an absolutely compelling piece about a topic--the forgotten crimes of disabled deaths--which has been omitted in much of the Holocaust research.