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Stand up and speak out on Holocaust Memorial Day
Posted Friday 27 January 2012
Today is Holocaust Memorial Day, an annual event I had the privilege and honour of working to help establish over a decade ago. You might be thinking “well that’s very nice but what’s that got to do with me?” I’d like to think everything. It was not just an attack on Jews. It was an outright attack on humanity and on human rights.
Disabled people including people with mental health problems were targeted, along with Gypsy and Roma, gays and lesbians, black people, Jehovah’s witnesses, anyone deemed as an ‘asocial’, and the Polish and Slavic population. Nazi-led action resulted in the deaths of millions of people across Europe. The emotional impact on survivors and those who lost family during the Holocaust is still with us today.
Nazi persecution of people with mental health problems traces back to the 1930s where numerous policies and legislation was passed resulting in forced sterilisation and prevention of marriage. Persecution sky-rocketed from 1939 when the Nazis carried out their T4 programme – the killing of disabled children and adults. Some, like Robert Wagemann were lucky enough to escape. Many others were not – murdered in the experimental gas chambers tested on disabled people, before being rolled out across Europe’s death camps. By the end of the war, around 250,000 disabled people were murdered under the Nazi regime.
As a result of the Holocaust, Britain played an instrumental role in developing international legislation designed to protect people’s human rights. Those same human rights that are so often parodied by today’s media and politicians.
Holocaust Memorial Day lays down a challenge for us all to use the lessons of the past. Genocide doesn’t just happen. It’s a steady process which can begin if prejudice, discrimination and hatred are not checked and prevented.
These things still exist on our streets today. But so do people who speak out about them. Think of inspirational people like Doreen Lawrence speaking out about the murder of her son, Stephen, and the fight for justice that still continues. Or of the thousands of people who are helping to tackle mental health discrimination head on through Mind and Rethink Mental Illness’s Time to Change campaign.
It’s takes courage to tell your story, whether you’re a Holocaust survivor or you're living with a mental health problem.
We must use the memory of those whose voices were silenced to inspire us to speak out today. Your voice can be powerful, whether you stand up on your own or as part of a movement. That’s why I ask you to use your voice to “stand up and speak out” against hatred, discrimination and prejudice, and sign the pledge to show your support. Use your voice to create a safer, better future for us all.
Vicki Nash, Head of Policy and Campaigns
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5 Comments
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Thanks Vicki - this is so often overlooked. I blogged about it a few months ago, when there seemed to be a lot of negativity towards the Human Rights Act. Human rights were being portrayed as something just to let criminals through loopholes, not as something absolutely fundamental which grew out of a pan-European determination never to repeat the horrors of the Holocaust. Even today it's not difficult to find members of the public (and even some professionals) willing to consider enforced treatment for people with substance misuse problems, or sterilsation for women with serious mental health conditions - scary stuff.
http://purplepersuasion.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/why-the-human-rights-act-matters-for-people-with-mental-health-conditions/ -
Thanks for your comment Charlotte and for sign-posting to your blog which is spot on. I'd also throw into the mix controversial aspects of legislation like Community Treatment Orders too! I think some European countries with very dubious human rights records are really watching what is going on in the UK to see if we provide them with further opporunity to renege on their responsibilities.
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The Holocaust has everything to do with us here today - the same language and concepts of the 1930's -40's are being used NOW - "workshy", "work is the solution" - Arbeit Macht Frei means 'work sets you free' and was the wrought iron slogan at the entrance of Auschwitz.
People who are unemployed, sick or disabled have had many variations of these terms applied to them including insults regarding them being useless unless they are economically viable. The Nazis put out propaganda demonizing people with physical and learning disabilities and mental health problems and blamed them for being a drain on the economy. People in receipt of benefits and especially people who are sick/disabled/have mental health problems have been vilified and held responsible for the country's deficit on the basis of being feckless. Mental patients were starved and gassed before Jewish people during Nazi rule. The concentration camps used ability to work to decide who got gassed. Welfare and housing policies combined with cuts to services now could be said to be a form of autogenocide. Hate crimes against people with disabilities has increased because of the drip feed of negative media over the last 2 years. Make no mistake - the past is the present albeit in a different format, it doesn't take gas chambers to kill people and even in the more left wing press people's suicidality has been sneered at. Hatred and discrimination comes from the top and until everyone recognises this they will wait till they come for them. No wonder one disability group is called the Black Triangle - that was the symbol which people with mental health problems had to wear in Nazi Germany -
This is still happening today, right this second. If it wasn't, people like Sue Marsh and Kaliya Franklin wouldn't be campaigning until they drop, literally.
http://benefitscroungingscum.blogspot.com/2012/01/world-holocaust-memorial-day-black.html
http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.com/2012/01/so-how-am-i.html
Two individual women who've done more for us than *all* the charities put together.
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http://mindinflux.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/disability-and-propaganda/
The Black Triangle was used for sick and disabled people. The word arbeitsscheu means workshy, the very term used now.
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