Germany passed the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases on July 14, 1933. It was amended and extended on June 26, 1935 and Section 10a was added, which authorized forced abortions in women who were otherwise subject to sterilization. It was used as a method to prevent the expansion of hereditary disease. Adolf Hitler believed in an Aryan nation, and that the German race could reign supreme through eugenics. Anyone that was deemed “unfit to live” was to be sterilized or eliminated. In the case of the Jewish Deaf, many were eliminated.
Section 1 of the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases stated “a person who is hereditarily diseased may be sterilized by a surgical operation, when the experience of medical science indicates a strong likelihood that the offspring will suffer from severe hereditary physical or mental defects.” Deafness was believed to be hereditary, but there was a lack of proper modern medicine or research to prove otherwise.
German eugenicists believed that only legally regulated compulsory sterilization would solve the issue of racial hygiene and looked to the United States for a model. Between 1934 and 1939, estimates on the number of people sterilized range from 200,000 to 400,000, as much as 0.5% of the German population. The Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases not only affected deaf individuals, but also those with other disabilities including mental deficiency, schizophrenia, hereditary epilepsy, blindness, physical deformities, congenital feeblemindedness, and even severe alcoholism.
The deaf were reported to the authorities by their families, peers, teachers, and doctors. Children in deaf schools were often taken by authorities, and even some of their teachers, to be sterilized unknowingly and without consent. Some were forced to undergo sterilization even if there was proof that they could give birth to “healthy” children. After Section 10a was added, women were not only forced to undergo sterilization, but to terminate their pregnancies without consent or knowledge. Some were terminated as late as nine months.
The usual method of sterilizing men was to sever the sperm duct, known as a vasectomy. By the 1930s, there were more than one hundred different female sterilization procedures. In almost all cases a laparotomy was practiced, and either the fallopian tubes were crushed, severed, or removed, or the entire uterus was removed. This was called the “Hitler cut,” and in many cases it would take weeks, sometimes even months, to heal. Some died due to surgical complications such as infections. X-rays were also used as a form of sterilization and became legally permissible in 1936. These procedures allowed surgeons and gynecologists the chance to experiment on human subjects in order to test for new operational procedures.
Legislators, supported by other institutions, agreed to remain silent on the subject of persecution under the sterilization law, and deaf persons and their families were warned not to speak of their sterilizations. Leaflets and other propaganda were used to suggest that the operations were harmless, comparing them to appendectomies. Even some educators of deaf students characterized the “experience of sterilization” as positive.
These sterilizations not only had many physical impacts, but mental and emotional impacts as well. Some forcibly sterilized deaf were admitted to neurological clinics and clinical sanatoriums because of depression. Sterilizations negatively impacted many relationships, engagements, and marriages, and often left those affected feeling lonely and isolated.
A questionnaire was sent out by Horst Biesold, author of Crying Hands: Eugenics and Deaf People in Nazi Germany. It was revealed that of those who responded, 1,215 people admitted to being sterilized between 1933 and 1945. Their ages ranged from nine to fifty years old, with 18% of them being between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-five. More than half of them were female. Nearly all of them were born between 1901 and 1926. Most sterilization took place in Berlin, but also occurred in cities such as Munich, Düsseldorf, Dortmund, Duisburg, and Essen.