Mostert Reflection – 10 points Answer each question fully. 1. What conditions were instrumental in facilitating the evolution of the German society’s acceptance of the murder of innocent people? Be specific. The first World War’s impact on economic conditions in Germany fueled attitudinal changes in German people on their perception of people with disabilities held in state institutions. The idea that people with disabilities, especially the “incurable” as they were deemed were unable to provide assistance in Germany’s economic recovery.

Another condition that facilitated the acceptance of the killing of innocent disabled people in Germany was the fact that people with disabilities were seen more in public through outpatient programs, and their physical disabilities and/or inappropriate pibluc behavior was dealt with through the legal system. This in turn amalgamated disabilities and criminal behavior in the German public’s mind.

Also the idea that euthanasia went from being voluntary to an option for caregivers, families and the community to consider became widely accepted throughout the country when considering the monetary toll taken on the country for people being cared for in asylums. 2. Who allowed this to happen? Specifically, what were the attitudes and roles of professionals (i. e. medical, law enforcement, academia, religious, families)? When the National Socialist party was elected to power in 1933 the idea that humanitarian inequality was already rooted in the professional and political minds of Germany.

Through the ideals proposed by Social Darwinism and eugenics mixed with Hitler’s push to produce the ideology of the Aryan race, German law and policy eventually turned into the slaughtering of innocent people. The attitudes of professionals to actually go along with this were spawned from the widely discussed and debated article of Binding and Hoche, which stated that people with disabilities were “unworthy of life,” were actually backed by academia and families of the disabled, reflected in a idely used survey by Ewald Meltzer that showed many families had some “positive feelings” towards killing their respective relative that was living in an asylum. Laws were made no less than 6 months after Hitler came to power including judges and physicians legally making decisions on who should be sterilized and no longer allowed to reproduce. Nazi propaganda soon took over the German peoples’ psyche as a whole, and people with disabilities were viewed as unequal, crimal, in a lower economic class, different, and even criminal who were not worthy of life. . Has anything like this taken place to any degree in the United States? Can this happen again in this country? Is there any reason for us to be concerned about the ability of our government to make life and death decisions that affect those individuals in our society who are more vulnerable or different than we may be? To a degree the way that this country was settled can draw parallels with what happened in the 1920s and 1930s in Germany.

We invaded and took over lands that were already inhabited by indigenous peoples, then forced them out, treated them as unequal human beings, and tried to kill them. It may not has leaned as heavily on the scientific and political communities to agree with the idea of genocide, but the settlers all agreed on doing just that to the Native Americans in North America. Once an established country, slavery in the 1800s and into the 1900s, and civil rights and inequalities and racial prejudice in America also has mirrored root ideas in human inequality, and slavery was legal and supported by our government.

I do not believe that anything such as slavery or genocide could happen in our country, we did not come this far to go back to something so horrific, but I do believe that social inequality still exists with diverse groups in America including but not limited to people with disabilities, , minority groups racially, ethnically, religiously, and any group of people that is seen as “different”. The government does in a way possess the ability to make life or death decisions with the death penalty in our legal system.

But I do not believe that that law is in any way similar to what happened with the killing of innocent people in Germany. 4. Has history repeated itself since the end of World War II? If so, why do you think it occurred? I believe that history in ways has repeated itself in the genocide of millions of innocent people in Rwanda in 1994. The civil strife between the two ethnic groups in the country for years had been a problem, and sadly I believe it occurred when the wrong people were brought to positions of power in a country that is drastically poor and underdeveloped.

The people that were being killed had no protection and no help from anyone for such a long time, and the history of the fighting in the country made for one of the most horrific genocides the world has ever seen. One could draw a resemblance between the National Socialists coming into power with the governing body that overtook Rwanda and began the genocide. What does this article mean to you as a teacher?

To me this article made me upset to the point that I had to stop reading it when it went into detail about the killing of children in asylums throughout the country, specifically the recollection of the tour of the children’s asylum. Working with the children that I work with on a daily basis as a IRR paraprofessional in an elementary school and seeing them learn and grow is something that I cherish as an adult, as a human being, and as a teacher. I find joy in teaching and helping children, and this article literally sickened me that it was at one time a reality and known and accepted by an entire country.