Between 1940 and 1941 around 70,000 adults with mental and physical disabilities were systematically murdered in Germany and Austria under a Nazi state-led programme called Aktion T4. They were deemed to have ‘lives unworthy of life.
Our exhibition ‘Finding Ivy – A Life Worthy of Life’ tells the remarkable story of the 13 British-born victims of this Nazi-led killing programme targeted at disabled people.
Some of these victims were from mixed British-German or British-Austrian marriages. Others were from the families of German and Austrian immigrants who moved to Britain to work in the early twentieth century before fatefully returning to Germany before the Second World War.
Our accompanying event will feature presentations from Dr Helen Atherton (University of Leeds) and Dr Simon Jarrett (Open University) the curators of the exhibition and historian Professor Paul Weindling, one of the world’s leading experts on the history of psychiatry in Nazi Germany. They will discuss the T4 programme and shed light on the meticulous research that has unearthed these 13 highly unique life stories.
Helen Atherton is a lecturer in nursing in the School of Healthcare at Leeds University. She initiated the Finding Ivy project after a chance discovery 14 years ago and has been working on it, in her own time, ever since. She now leads the international team of researchers who have put the exhibition together.
Simon Jarrett is a historian and visiting Fellow at the Open University, a member of the Finding Ivy research team and co-curator with Helen of the Finding Ivy exhibition. He is the author of two books on the history of disabled people.
Paul Weindling is a professor of history at Oxford Brookes University. He is one of the world’s leading experts on the history of psychiatry in Nazi Germany. He is the author of numerous books and other publications including ‘From Clinic to Concentration Camp’ (2017)