Terri Schiavo is a brain-damaged wife whose husband, Michael Schiavo, wants to starve her to death, inherit her estate, and then marry the other woman with whom he is now living (and by whom he fathered two out-of-wedlock children after Terri's mysterious collapse).
Terri should not be starved to death for several reasons, each sufficient in itself:
First, there is NOT clear and convincing evidence that Terri wanted to be starved to death and Judge Greer's finding to the contrary was clearly erroneous and an abuse of his judicial discretion.
Second, even if Terri said that she did not want to be kept alive by artificial means, there was no evidence that Terri considered providing food and water through a feeding tube to be such artificial means.
Third, starving a person to death is cruel and unusual punishment.
Fourth, euthanizing a competent person who wants to be euthanized is gravely sinful.
Fifth, euthanasia undermines respect for life and corrupts society.
Judge Greer is the judge determined to provide judicial approval for Michael Schiavo's mind-boggling plan to withhold food and water from Terri until she dies a horrible death.
Adolf Hitler was the kind of man who would have approved.
Henry Friedlander is a distinguished professor who is an expert on the connection between euthanasia and the Holocaust that should give pause even to Judge Greer.
Born in Berlin in 1930, Professor Friedlander was fortunate to be deported instead of executed in 1941.
He came to the United States in 1947.
He received his B.A. (1953) in history from Temple University and his M.A. (1954) and Ph.D. (1968) in modern German history from the University of Pennsylvania.
He served on the project of the Committee for the Study of War Documents microfilming the captured German documents.
After 1970 his research focused on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.
From 1975 until 2001 he was professor of history in the department of Judaic studies at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.
He co-edited The Holocaust: Ideology, Bureaucracy, and Genocide (1980), the Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual (1984-1990), and the 26 volume documentary series Archives of the Holocaust (1988-93).
He was also a contributor to Genocide: Critical Issues of the Holocaust (1983).
Among his many published articles: "Euthanasia and the Final Solution," in The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation, ed. David Cesarani (1994); "Step by Step, The Expansion of Murder, 1939-1941," German Studies Review (1994); "Registering the Handicapped in Nazi Germany: A Case Study," Jewish History (1997); "Die Entwicklung der Mordtechnik: Von der 'Euthanasie' zu den Vernichtungslagern der 'Endlösung,'" in Die nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager: Entwicklung und Struktur, ed. Ulrich Herbert, Karin Orth, and Christoph Dieckmann (1998); "The Destruction of the Disabled, the Jews, and the Sinti and Roma," Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Pro Memoria 10 (1999); "Motive, Formen und Konsequenzen der NS-Euthanasie," in NS-Euthanasie in Wien, ed. Eberhard Gabriel and Wolfgang Neugebauer (2000); and "The Exclusion and Murder of the Disabled," in Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany, ed. Robert Gellately and Nathan Stoltzfus (2001).
Professor Friedlander's major study, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1995.
Those who regard euthanasia as benign instead of malignant should read it and reflect.
Like the German people led by Hitler, they did not really know what they should expect
That study won the Bruno Brand Tolerance Book Award of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, 1996, and the DAAD Book Prize of the German Studies Association, 1997.
It examined the rise of racist and eugenic ideologies and explored in frightening detail how the Nazi program of secretly exterminating the handicapped and disabled evolved into the systematic destruction of Jews and Gypsies.
Professor Friedlander described how the so-called euthanasia of the handicapped initiated the Holocaust by providing a practical model for the subsequent mass murder.
Hitler pursued the extermination of Jews, Gypsies, and the handicapped based on a belief in the biological, and thus absolute, inferiority of those groups.
Friedlander documented the connection between the assault on the handicapped and the Final Solution, showing how the legal restrictions and exclusionary policies of the 1930s, including mass sterilization, led to mass murder during the 1940's.
He noted that the killing centers where the handicapped were gassed and cremated served as the models for the extermination camps.
Based on extensive archival research, his study is an astute analysis of the involvement of the German bureaucracy and judiciary, the participation of physicians and scientists, and the nature of popular opposition.
Yes, there WAS some popular opposition.
But, not enough.
The reviews of Professor Friedlander's study were superb:
"Well researched, remarkably balanced in its judgments, and full of fresh insights. It deserves the widest possible readership."--Journal of Modern History
"Friedlander has written an excellent piece of historical research which establishes the similarities of the fates of three victim groups."--Jewish History
"Is it possible to present novel views and materials on the origins of the German mass murder of the Jews? Henry Friedlander, a historian . . . and a survivor of Auschwitz . . . succeeds in doing so. . . . The book should be read by . . . medical students and doctors. It is a must for psychiatrists."--Benno MÅller-Hill, Journal of the American Medical Association
"Indispensable for undergraduate and graduate students of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany."--History: Reviews of New Books
"Well-researched and wide-ranging. . . . The most detailed scholarly inquiry into the management and mechanics of the euthanasia operation yet published. Ten or fifteen years ago, it was rare to see a historian drawing links between the Final Solution and the murder of Germany's handicapped. . . . Friedlander's elucidation of the important continuities of technique and personnel gives us valuable new insights into the inner workings of Nazi genocide."--Robert N. Proctor, American Historical Review
"Admirably researched. . . . One of the distinguishing features of this study is the meticulous description of the administration of the euthanasia program."--Gordon A. Craig, New York Review of Books
"A most valuable contribution to the history of Nazism and of the Holocaust."--Kirkus Reviews
"Friedlander has written a book of great importance for understanding the Final Solution. . . . [He] breaks new ground in his examination of how the machinery of the euthanasia program was duplicated in death camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka."--Choice
"A book that is so fundamentally important that it forces us to reconsider our understanding of the origins of the Final Solution."--Congress Monthly
"Friedlander's book is soberly written. But it is meticulous in its documentation. Never is a speculation presented without masses of material to back it up. It is a substantial book, in keeping with the importance of the topic and the material amassed here for the first time."--Holocaust and Genocide Studies
"This book should encourage a general rethinking of the issues involved and force a broadening of perspectives. On the basis of extraordinarily wide and successful digging in a vast array of archives . . . Friedlander has built both a case and an account which will be of enormous significance for decades to come. . . . This book will remain essential for an understanding of the internal structure and functioning of National Socialist Germany."--Gerhard L. Weinberg, German Studies Review
"Important and valuable. . . . [Friedlander] conveys both new information and stimulating insights based on years of intensive research and deep reflection. He makes an eloquent argument for understanding both Nazi 'euthanasia' and the Final Solution within the wider context of a clearly defined notion of 'Nazi genocide'. . . . A work of major importance. If one has time to read only one book among the recent works on Nazi euthanasia, this is it."--Christopher R. Browning, Times Literary Supplement
"A major and significant work."--Dimensions
"A masterful work by a superb scholar."--Tikkun
"Friedlander has written an excellent piece of historical research."--Jewish History
"[This book] fills a very important gap and should go far to adjust our perspective on the Nazi genocide. . . . Will be much discussed and used by those who want a total picture of Nazi exclusion and extermination policies."--George L. Mosse, University of Wisconsin
"Henry Friedlander's brilliant study of the origins of the Final Solution in the policy of Nazi euthanasia is the most detailed and most intelligent study of its kind to appear in the past decade. Documented with great care, it shows the path of the euthanasia policies of the Third Reich, which included among their victims those Jews in asylums and hospitals. No study of the reach and magnitude of this work has yet appeared that as intelligently understands the complexity of the German murder of those labeled as different."--Sander L. Gilman, University of Chicago.
The story told by Professor Friendlander, very briefly, is as follows:
After Hitler gained power in 1933, he took a series of measures in the name of "racial purity," including forced sterilization of persons with physical and/or mental handicaps and the murder of infants with similar handicaps.
Incidentally, Hitler's initial primary targets were not Jews, but "Aryans," that is, non-Jewish Germans.
In 1939, under the cover of the war he started, Hitler expanded the program to include murdering handicapped adults.
Forced "euthanasia" was not lawful in Germany and physicians would hesitate or refuse to take part in the killing without written protection from prosecution.
In October 1939 Hitler signed a document on his personal stationery instructing his assistants Philipp Bouhler and Dr. Karl Brandt to initiate a euthanasia program.
Which Hitler euphemistically referred to as "mercy killing."
The document was backdated to September 1, the date of the beginning of World War II.
An English translation follows:
"Berlin, 1 September 1939
Reichsleiter Bouhler and
Dr. med. Brandt
are instructed to broaden the powers of physicians designated by name, who will decide whether those who have — as far as can be humanly determined — incurable illnesses can, after the most careful evaluation, be granted a mercy death.
/signed/ Adolf Hitler"
Unsurprisingly, Hitler legalized abortion.
That was one of his first acts after taking power.
Yes, Hitler encouraged Aryan women to produce many children.
But, he left the matter of abortion and all its facets in the hands of a Germany's then decidedly pro-abortion medical establishment.
Even in the midst of Nazi propaganda aimed at increasing the Aryan population, scores of Aryan women still chose to abort their unborn children.
The medical publication Deutsches Aerzleblatt reported the abortions in Germany each year reached a half-million.
A Nazi decree of October 19, 1941 established abortion on demand as the official policy of Poland.
Hitler was dissatisfied with this policy.
He believed that abortion should NOT be limited to Poland and ordered that abortion be expanded to all populations under the control of the "Ministry of the Occupied Territories of the East."
On July 22, 1942, Hitler described abortion as an indispensable method of dealing with the non-German populations in countries under Nazi control.
Hitler declared: "In view of the large families of the native populations, it could only suit us if girls and women there had as many abortions as possible."
Hitler personally announced that he "would personally shoot" any "such idiot" who "tried to put into practice such an order (forbidding abortion) in the occupied Eastern territories.”
Hitler had no regard for human life he perceived as inferior, born or preborn.
Terri Schiavo is entitled to live.
But, her husband Michael wants to starve her to death.
And to misuse the judiciary for his own purposes.
Hitler would be pleased.
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Email: GaynorMike@aol.com
