Holocaust Centre North shares stories of British disabled people murdered by Nazis
Launching on 2 October, exhibit highlights Nazi state-led programme Aktion T4 which murdered those with disabilities and mental illnesses
The Holocaust educational centre in west Yorkshire is launching an exhibition telling the stories of 13 British-born victims of a Nazi-led killing programme targeted at disabled people.
Between 1940 and 1941 around 70,000 adults with mental and physical disabilities were systematically murdered in Germany and Austria under a Nazi state-led programme called Aktion T4.
Deemed to have lives unworthy of life, thirteen of these victims were British-born and for the very first time, Holocaust Centre North tells their remarkable and devastating stories in a new, temporary exhibition – ‘Finding Ivy: A Life Worth Living’ – opening on October 2nd.
Of these 13 British-born victims, some were from mixed British-German or British-Austrian marriages. Others were from the families of German and Austrian immigrants who moved to Britain to work in the early twentieth century before fatefully returning to Germany before the Second World War.
‘Finding Ivy’ has been created specifically to tell their stories as a means of restoring some dignity and humanity to all those people who had their lives so cruelly taken away from them.
The exhibition title refers to Ivy Angerer who was born in Broughty Ferry near Dundee in 1911. Her father was Austrian, and her mother was German. Ivy had learning disabilities. Her father was one of many Germans and Austrians in Britain rounded up as an enemy alien and kept in an enemy internment camp.
It’s at that time that Ivy and her mum went back to live in Germany. Her mum died in 1916 whilst her husband was still in the camps. He came back around 1919 and went back to Vienna with Ivy. But in 1930, she was admitted to a large psychiatric hospital in Vienna called Am Steinhof and there she stayed living and working in the laundry room until 1940, when she was transported to Hartheim and killed.
The Finding Ivy Exhibition will show how – like Ivy – all the other victims came from loving and supportive homes but sadly none were able to remain living with their families.
At this time, families had very little choice over their care and if psychiatrists and doctors declared that they needed to go into an institution to be “treated” then they were not able to resist that.
Moreover, families were not made aware of the T4 programme: it was carried out in deception. While the victims were being rounded up from their institutions, their relatives were simply told they were moving somewhere else. They had no idea they were going to be murdered.
As the exhibition materials will show, families were often – months afterwards – given a fake death certificate saying their loved one had died of a false cause.
To mark the exhibition opening, a special one-off launch event will take place at Holocaust Centre North on the evening of 2nd October – the exhibition’s opening day.
This free to attend event will feature presentations from exhibition curators Dr Helen Atherton (University of Leeds) and Dr Simon Jarrett (Open University) alongside historian Professor Paul Weindling, a professor of history at Oxford Brookes University and one of the world’s leading experts on the history of psychiatry in Nazi Germany.
Together they will discuss the T4 programme and shed light on the meticulous research that has unearthed these 13 heart-breaking and unique life stories.
Hannah Randall, head of learning at Holocaust Centre North said: “We are very proud to be hosting ‘Finding Ivy – A Life Worth Living’ at Holocaust Centre North.
“This will be the first time we have hosted an exhibition which tells the largely untold story of those persecuted and killed under Nazi occupied Germany for having a disability – and the focus on British-born victims fits in perfectly with our permanent exhibition uniquely telling the stories of Survivors and their families who created new lives following the Holocaust in the north of England.”
- Tickets to this exhibition launch event at Holocaust Centre North on October 2nd are free but must be booked in advance here.
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