Crowds packed into the Alumni Lounge of Gerlinger Hall last night to examine past and present disability issues and watch “Liebe Perla, Disability and the Holocaust: A History Revealed,” a film about a concentration camp survivor who was subjected to inhumane scientific experiments during the Holocaust. The event was held by the Disability Studies Initiative and was sponsored by several University groups.
Dr. Simi Linton, president of Disability/Arts, a consulting firm that advises organizations on public portrayals of disabled people, introduced the film.
She said difficult conditions still exist for the disabled community today. She said although people with disabilities are no longer sought out and killed as they were during the Holocaust, society still tries to achieve a “biologically pure population” through genetic techniques such as cloning and other DNA advancements.
“There’s an anti-disabled mentality brewing,” Linton said. “The disabled have been targeted before and it persists today, and we must be aware of that.”
Linton said the goal for the evening was to address the treatment of disabled people, and the film served to help place the issue in historical context.
Liebe Perla, (which means dear Perla) is about Perla Ovitz and her search for the videotape of the scientific experiments performed on her and her family at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Germany. Today Ovitz lives in Israel and is the only living member of her family. The famous family of musical performers was chosen for the experiments because they were dwarfs, a disability in the Nazis’ eyes.
“Liebe Perla is a personal story, but it can be used as a device to speak more broadly about disabilities,” Linton said.
Kristin Carter, a junior education major, said the film was not what she expected.
“I was expecting something really upsetting,” she said. “But although it was sad, it was also hopeful.”
Carter said she was amazed that Ovitz didn’t hate the doctor who subjected her to the experiments at the concentration camp.
“She didn’t see this horrible doctor as someone who was horrible. She has such a good attitude,” she said.
The doctor responsible for performing tests on the Ovitz family and creating the videotape was Dr. Josef Mengele.
“He identified his work as eugenics,” Linton said. “I identify his work as brutality and murder.”Linton said that although thousands of people were murdered during the Holocaust, there is often little reference made to the disabled victims. She said they are still ignored in other ways. Seven percent of the disabled community is unemployed, while many face daily social challenges, Linton said. Also, disabled people are sometimes not cared for properly in nursing homes and hospitals, she said.
“Despite many improvements, children are still segregated by special education classes while college students face many obstacles of their own,” she said.Dr. Rick Friedrich, a physician at the University Health Center, said especially people around the University need to increase their awareness about disability issues. He said he agrees with Linton that people with disabilities are still not treated as well as they should be.
“I think partly all of us have certain fears about being disabled ourselves, and we try to protect ourselves,” he said.
Linton said the participation of people with disabilities is key to changing society’s view of them.
“They need to be the authoritative voice and be central to these discussions,” she said.