Jewish Museum, Berlin Exhibits Deadly Medicine

Over 210,000 of the mentally handicapped and mentally ill were murdered, 400,000 men and women underwent forced sterilization, and numerous psychiatric patients died as a result of medical trials between 1933 and 1945 in Germany and Austria alone.

These first organized murders were part of Nazi race politics. They were underpinned by leading genetic scientists and were implemented under the pretext of active demographic policy. Just a few years later, the staff and logistics of this mass murder were utilized for the murder of European Jews.

The context is illustrated in the overview exhibition "Deadly Medicine. Creating the Master Race," curated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., and to be shown in an extended format at the Jewish Museum Berlin.

The Berlin exhibition has been extended to include regional examples: the institutions, people, and places of execution are illustrated taking the example of the Berlin/Brandenburg region.

The life story of a "euthanasia" victim is presented in detail for the first time in an exhibition through documents, letters, and photos – a rarity, as personal reports of victims have received almost no attention so far. The focus on the perpetrators is contrasted with the individual perspectives of victims.

We warmly invite you to attend the press conference and opening of this exhibition on Thursday 12 March. -- www.juedisches-museum-berlin.de

Elizabeth from Belrin - A Film about Elisbeth Schmitz

"Elisabeth of Berlin, a 59-minute independent documentary by Rev. Steven D. Martin, a Methodist minister from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, highlights the story of a woman who died in obscurity, but lived a life now celebrated by leading Christian thinkers. Scholars of the anti-Nazi resistance are astonished by what Elisabeth Schmitz did and the risks she took—she fits, one says in the film, "the Protestant definition of a saint." But until 2004, not only were her life and work largely unknown but her most remarkable act had been mistakenly attributed to someone else."

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