Children of God

I came across this article on eugenics in Germany, linked from the National Review, which I rarely read, unless I'm insomniac and desperate.

But in a way, the goals of the German scientists and the Nazi Reich began to make a certain natural moral sense to the population. Loath as we are to admit it, we also have a natural aversion to disability.

I grew up next to a major care centre for the mentally-handicapped, run by the St. John of God's order in Glenageary, so seeing their charges come to and from the station was an everyday sight. One thing which strikes me then and now is how much people hold them in contempt, and my own reactions are not something I'm proud of either.

When the Holocaust is such a part of everyday conversation, why is there virtually no common knowledge or discussion of the Nazi gassings of the mentally-ill and handicapped that was the pilot project for the Final Solution? I'm not sure that if something similar was happening today that anyone, apart from victim's relatives, the Catholic church and other religious, would object.

Peter 笔德