User:Tbarrios25

 “Why did the Regede decided to start the sterilizations back before World War 1?” 

The Germans began the sterilizations because they believed that by doing this the race would be “pure”. According to them, we would have “normal human beings”. The youngest child that was sterilized was 9 years old and the oldest was 50 years old. This started back in 1918. The first year this law was in force, 32,268 men and women were sterilized against their will.

Horst Beisold’s Crying Hands treats a neglected aspect of the Holocaust: the fate of the deaf in Nazi Germany. His book covers a story that has remained almost unknown to what deaf people went through and how sterilization was established to eliminate all future generations to be deaf. They believed that by sterilizing deaf they would be “normal human beings”! Heredity was used to determine the fate of groups and individuals. At first, eugenicists attempted to archive their goals through “positive” eugenicists that is, an increase of the birth rate of “Superior” populations, but as this approach did not yield results, that's when they decided to turn the movement to “negative” eugenics, that is sterilization and exclusion of “inferior” populations.

The law would define a person's “suffering from a hereditary disease”, and thus a candidate for sterilization, as anyone afflicted with one of the following disabilities: Congenital Febble-mindedness, Schizophrenia, folie circulaire (manic-depressive psychosis), Hereditary Epilepsy, Hereditary St. Vitus’dance, Severe Hereditary Physical Deformity, and Severe Alcoholism, on a discretionary basis.

By 1934, the people they considered feebleminded made up the largest group sterilized at 17,070 or 52.9% followed by the next largest group, 8,194 or 25.4% consisted of persons diagnosed as schizophrenic, followed by 4,520 or 14%, of persons suffering from epilepsy. The group of the blind - 201 or 0.6% and that of the deaf 337 or 1% which was much smaller.

The sterilization law was considered a “serious bodily intrusion”. By 1930 more than one hundred female sterilization procedures were unknown, one procedure was by the way of the vagina. The older methods, simple removal or ligature of the tubes, were seldom practiced because of the high failure rate. This method was employed infrequently before 1939. The women that were sent to be sterilized and opposed were sent to concentration camps. This was their way of getting rid of all the people they believed that weren’t good enough for their plans. The regede really impacted so many lives of people with their negative methods that in today’s world we still see discrimination going on, probably not as intense as far as methods to use on people to just have a “pure” race but we still rejectment inferior treatment with people with disabilities, deaf, and race.

''' What effects were caused by sterilization at young age? '''

The sterilization was a hard and traumatic process that some people suffered during the Nazi Period. Especially, this process were so harmful for all the people who were forcibly sterilized at young age. Those people were hurt not only in a physical way, they also were hurt emotional, social and psychological manner. According to the book, Crying Hands states that the first race hygienists created a self-perception of worthlessness among congenitally deaf people. And it led the people to be shame and agonized in isolation because the law of sterilization forced them to not speak about the procedure. A study that conducted based on 1396 questionnaires a 10 percent were estimated 15,000 young deaf, (Biesold, pg. 150). According to the author articulates in the book, “Deaf persons and their families were warned not to speak of their sterilization” (Biesold, pg.37). This shows how deaf people including young children were forced to not speak with their families about their sterilization. And in order to be silent they distress isolation, they were hurt socially because they can talk with no one regarding their surgery. Other effect that children suffered psychologically during the Nazi period was how they were informed that they are going to be sterilized. Some of them there were even not informed, they were just take to the hospital or to the surgery place. As noted, many of those sterilized between the ages thrirteen and eighteen report that they had being brought to the hospital under the pretext of other treatment and that they were completely surprise by the operations, (Biesold, pg. 151). Then, they just notify to parents regarding the sterilization that the operation would be performed, “with forced if required” (Biesold, pg.52). Convening to the book, if the parents were protested and resistance were forcibly surpressed and no explanation were giving for the operation. The consequences of the operation were physical pain, Biesold articulates that, “at age of puberty was a particular source of anxiety, since such pain affected intimate and taboo-related areas of the body” (p. 151).

 How Sterilization Procedures Occurred 

Sterilization of men was a much simpler and easier process than sterilizing women. Sterilizing men was typically an outpatient surgery. Women’s sterilizations usually resulted in women being hospitalized for a period of time.To sterilize the men they used the method of, “ severing the sperm duct (vasectomy). As the operation was performed in the transitional area between the groin and the scrotum” (Biesold 140). This procedure was done outside of the abdominal cavity. Doctors were able to do this procedure with local anesthetics.Sterilizing women was more difficult than sterilizing men. One of the ways women were sterilized was through the vagina. By sterilizing women this way they could recover quicker because there was no incision, but this method was rarely used because it was “unreliable”, in terms of the success of the procedure. The most common way of sterilization of women was through incision of the abdomen. This operation usually involved general anesthesia. Once through the abdominal cavity doctors would either crush, sever, or remove the fallopian tubes. “Some surgeons opted for the “surest” procedure, however, which was the removal of the uterus” (Biesold 141).