Using a think-pair-share discussion, students reflect on the following two questions:

• How are individuals with disabilities viewed and treated by society?
• How does a society’s treatment of people with disabilities reflect the society’s culture, values, and ideology?

Share the following information with students:

Franz Karl Bühler, who was a well-known German artist at the turn of the twentieth century was diagnosed with schizophrenia and institutionalized by the 1920s. He continued to produce art, which was criticized by the Nazis and included in the degenerate art exhibition, as the Nazis tried to show supposed links between modern art and mental illness.

The Nazi T4 program was the systematic murder of institutionalized patients with disabilities in Germany. It started in 1939. The program was one of many radical eugenic measures that aimed to restore the racial “integrity” of the German nation. It aimed to eliminate what eugenicists and their supporters considered “life unworthy of life”: those individuals who—they believed—because of severe psychiatric, neurological, or physical disabilities represented both a genetic and a financial burden on German society and the state. Among those murdered under the T4 Program was Franz Karl Bühler.

Display Self-Portrait by Franz Karl Bühler (pronounced Bueller) from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Display the art piece while your students read through the text individually or in small groups. Encourage students to click through the hyperlinked text to learn more about the “Degenerate Art” exhibition and the T4 program.

As students look through the articles, have them respond to the following questions:

1. What was the Degenerate Art exhibition? What purpose did it serve?
2. What was the T4 Program? How did it feed into Nazi ideology?
3. What happened to Franz Karl Bühler? What is the significance of having his self portrait for review?

In a whole class discussion, students discuss the relationship between culture and ideology, returning to the opening questions:

1. How did Nazi ideology influence policies and practices around the idea of dis/ability in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s?
2. How are individuals with disabilities viewed and treated by society?
3. How does a society’s treatment of people with disabilities reflect the society’s culture, values, and ideology?

The lesson focuses on Eugenics in America, since the primary source materials are all in English already. However, it is important to set the stage for a tie back to Germany as well.
Begin the lesson by reading these two quotes and asking your students to summarize their meaning and how they are affected by them. In short, what is being said and how do they feel about the statements?
Note at the end that these are quotes from Adolf Hitler.

Divide the class into four and distribute one image to each group:

Fair Exhibit
Eugenics Tree
Promotion for Native Sterilization
Popular Science

Use the See, Think, Wonder strategy for analyzing these images in each group (see below)

1. Ask the group to elect a recorder who will write notes from the group’s discussion.
2. Then, ask the group to collectively note what they SEE in the image. What details stand out? What are the most predominant features in the image. Have the recorder write down these comments so they can be shared.
3. Next, ask the group to THINK about what the image means. What do they believe the image is about and why do they think that? What is most important about this image that everyone should note? Again, the recorder should be taking notes.
4. Then, ask the group to WONDER about the image. What is left unknown about this image? What kind of ideas are provoked but unaddressed? What broader questions are left unanswered for the group. Once more, the recorder should be sure to take notes.

Bring all the groups together and ask each to present their image to the larger group. As they share what they see, think and wonder, encourage broader discussion from the whole group. Also, fill in context as you feel comfortable so as to keep stretching the conversation toward greater clarification.

Finally, ask the group to Wonder again about what remains unknown about the Eugenics movement in America or the relationship between this and Hitler’s Germany. These could prompt additional opportunities for exploration with some of the resources below or through the video or reading in this topic.

Review the concepts of euthanasia and propaganda and allude to the fact that mercy killings had to be sold to the public in order for there not to be widespread resistance. Before initiating conversation about the video, be sure to clarify relevant terms. Other concepts that are important here include Darwinism and heredity.

Watch the first 13 minutes of the video, The Killing Films of the Third Reich. Prepare to stop at various sections to discuss and contemplate the content.

1. Begin by watching the section from 2:15-5:15 which gives a background to the role of propaganda in promoting the need for euthanasia. Pause for a reflection–written or verbal discussion–on the following questions:
   1. Ask your students to consider the phrase ‘life unworthy of life.’ What does this mean? How could this be possible? Do they see anyone portrayed this way in today’s world?
   2. The first two films called ‘What You Inherit’ and ‘Hereditarily Ill’ set the stage for the conversation. What does it mean to be ‘hereditarily ill’? Can one recover from such illness?
   3. Notice that the ‘hereditary diseases’ are also held against people who have fallen on hard times. What does this say about the science that backs up the discrimination?
2. Continue from 5:15 – 8:50
   1. Why were these films ‘required’ to be seen by audiences across Germany?
   2. What do you think about the idea that human life should be dictated by nature exclusively?
   3. What is a ‘genetic threat’? What is ‘sterilization’?
3. Continue again from 8:50 – 13:05
   1. Why do they use the image of a professor or doctor in their propaganda videos?
   2. Hitler ordered the killing of individuals after the war started. Why?
   3. Have you ever heard of any other victims of the Holocaust who were gassed?
   4. Why was evidence destroyed and fictional death reports created?

Now, ask students to generate their own responses to the video. Ask them to write about:

1. What was the most astonishing fact about the video?
2. What section would they like to go back and watch again?
3. What questions do they still have about this era of Nazism?

Then, bring the discussion back to a large group and use student answers to have a large discussion/review sections of the video.

Ask students if they have ever heard of the term euthanasia. If so, ask them to explain their understanding.
Define it for them by providing them with the text–on screen, a chalkboard or other shared space: ‘the act or practice of killing or permitting the death of hopelessly sick or injured individuals (as persons or domestic animals) in a relatively painless way for reasons of mercy.’
Then ask them what ‘mercy’ means and under what conditions must mercy be shown?

Have students read the whole document Unworthy to Live by Facing History and Ourselves. Give 10-15 minutes for this task, prompting students to take note of questions they have about the text.

Then, divide the class into five groups, assigning each group to one of the discussion questions. As they split into groups, give the following instructions:

1. Go through all members’ questions about the text and help one another figure out the message of this document.
2. Then, address your assigned discussion question. Be sure to take notes so that you can share your thoughts with the whole group.
3. Finally, ask an additional question that comes out of your reflections. This question should attempt to generate conversation between you and your classmates.

Lastly, bring it back to the basics. Return to the defnition of Euthanasia. How could the murder of millions of people be couched as ‘merciful’ by the Nazi regime? What does this say about how they feel about what they’re doing?