Genetic Discrimination: Exploring the Echoes between Nazi and American Eugenic Histories

Kupferberg Holocaust Center Presentation Co-Sponsored by HHREC

When Adolf Hitler established the involuntary euthanasia program in 1939 codenamed Aktion T4, he empowered medical personnel throughout the Third Reich to sterilize and kill those deemed “unworthy of life.” Join Tiarra Cooper, Ph.D. Candidate and Teaching Associate at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, for a brief overview of the Nazi sterilization and euthanasia programs, and how these histories have functioned in/from American medical and political discourses. This event is part of the 2023-24 Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Colloquium, “Weaponizing the Past: Art, History and the Rhetoric of National Greatness.” The event is organized by the KHC and is co-sponsored by the Holocaust, Genocide and Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan College; and the Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at Western Washington University; the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies at the US Military Academy at West Point; the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center in Cincinnati; the Holocaust & Human Rights Center in White Plains; and the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University.