“Life Unworthy of Living” Response

{This post was written in response to a news article on July 3, 2020, by the NY Post about a quadriplegic gentleman who was refused Covid-19 treatment simply because of his disability. https://nypost.com/2020/07/03/quadriplegic-dies-of-covid-19-after-hospital-refuses-treatment-family/ }

As a 5th grade teacher, one topic I had to teach each year towards the end of the year was about the Holocaust — in terms a 10 year old could comprehend. As a teacher, this was a difficult subject, but I took the importance of it very seriously. For most of my students, this was the first time they had ever heard of it. This subject opens a door, that once opened, can never be closed again. It marks a very specific end of innocence. I took this very seriously.

I was very careful to not show extremely graphic photos or list unfathomable atrocities. (They would see these soon enough as they grew older.) All parents had the right to opt their child out of this instruction. I never had even one parent opt out.

I always began my instruction by telling them a little story. You see, if I had been born back then, none of the surgeries I had that allowed me to walk or live a normal life would have been available. I would have ended up in one of the many “hospitals” (warehouses, actually) for people who were disabled. I never would have walked, and I would have been a burden to my family.

The Nazis, you see, didn’t actually start the Holocaust with the Jews (although their hatred of them was absolute.) They “tested the waters” with a different population. They started with the disabled, both physically and mentally disabled, and they made no distinction between babies, children, and adults. The word they used was “life unworthy of living.”

The doctors and nurses involved were complicit, as they chose which people, which babies, which children, which adults, were worthy of living, and which were not. They did not make these choices with deep caring concern for their patient’s well-being. They were not seeking to end their “misery.” They decided, very systematically, which were a burden on society, and they singled them out, and sent them to special “hospitals” for “treatment.”

They knew it was wrong, because they lied to the families of the “chosen” people. If they had thought it was the right thing to do, why not shout it from the rooftops, instead of using lies and subterfuge? They told families that these children and adults had suddenly taken ill, and needed special treatment. They put them on buses and sent them to special “hospitals.” Then they slowly, painfully, starved them to death.

In some cases, they injected drugs to cause the end more quickly, especially with vocal, mentally handicapped people. And they even used poison gas in rooms disguised as showers, because some of the medical staff’s mental health began to suffer from the slow, tedious starvation deaths. They decided to use something quicker, not to benefit these patients and end their despair, but to spare the medical staff from seeing the slow, agonizing deaths day-in and day-out.

Then they sent false letters and death certificates to the unknowing families, claiming these “chosen” people had died from natural causes like pneumonia.

These were not ignorant, uneducated people who did this. They were doctors and nurses, many of them were the top of their class and high ranking in their profession. Many convinced themselves they were doing this for the “greater good” and the benefit of mankind.

The chose themselves as the arbiter, the decider, the judge, and the executioner. They held themselves as the authority of who is worthy of life, and who is unworthy of “wasting” resources in our society. They assigned a value to human beings, and eliminated those they felt did not contribute significantly.

This series of mass murders by the best and the brightest of their medical institutions basically went unnoticed or un-confronted by society. Many who did know either felt helpless to stop it, or actually agreed with the decisions. And this was the start of it all, this thing we call the Holocaust. There was no uprising in response. There were no demonstrations. It happened quietly and without anyone choosing to stand up and say “this is wrong.”

And so, the Nazis felt empowered, the “Final Solution” began – this time it was directly aimed at the Jews, homosexuals, Poles, political dissidents, and others deemed to also be inferior and unworthy of life.

It has never been Man’s place to decide who is worthy of living, and who is not. This is a moral issue humans have struggled with for generations. I realize it is a narrow line between the rights of majority and the rights of “hopelessly” disabled. I realize that sometimes it is a choice made with the disabled person’s best interests in heart – not wanting them to physically continue suffering, but in this situation, that was not the case.

If this had been a case of one ventilator and two dying patients, and only one could be chosen to be saved, I would pity the medical professional who had to make that tragic decision and try not to second-guess it. But that wasn’t the case in this situation. The claim that there might not be enough ventilators was a “what if” decision — a “what if we use the ventilator on him, and then another more-worthy-of-life person then needs it?”

So in this case, I question the decision that was made. I’m not reminded of the kind, tormented family member who sees their family member in agonizing pain and decides to stop artificial means of respiration. Instead, I’m reminded of those fateful years back in the 1930s, when doctors and nurses, encouraged and instructed by a political machine and one man’s blithering insanity, to decide what makes a human life worthy of living.

I’m reminded of what happens when humanity turns a blind-eye to mere humans making the choices of God and the universe.

If you read history, then you know the phrase “life unworthy of life” (in German it is lebensunwertes leben.) It was a Nazi designation for the segments of the populace which, according to the Nazi regime, had no right to live, and who were targeted to be euthanized by the state, usually through the compulsion of their caretakers. They were seen as inferior and unworthy of life, and were treated accordingly.

“Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” Make no mistake, I do not compare those medical professionals who decided that life as a quadriplegic was not life worthy of life to the Nazi regime. But I do see that slippery slope of mere mortals deciding the value of life based on their preconceived notions of who is “worthy of life,” and who is not. It is a line, once crossed, that becomes blurred beyond recognition.