Precious in God's Sight

Eugenics: 1. the science of improving the human race by a careful selection of parents in order to develop healthier, more intelligent, and better children. 2. the science of improving offspring.

Today my husband, son, and I went to The National Archives at Kansas City (located next to Union Station) to view the exhibit Deadly Medicine - Creating the Master Race. It is a traveling exhibition from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum presented by The Midwest Center for Holocaust Education. It is recommended that those attending be high school age or older because of the subject matter. I felt it would be important for my son to see it so he would be aware that this isn't something that was done only by the Nazis, but that it is still an issue in our world.

Before we really got started viewing the exhibit, we watched part of a video about experimentation by German doctors on children. The video gave us a taste of the things we were yet to see.

Germany was not the only country where eugenics was used. The United States had a law at one time that certain people were to be sterilized. People were encouraged to be "fit families." There was a good-sized book displayed that urged sterilization. Other countries were also involved in eugenics.

All of the exhibit was good, but the part where it really started to hit me was when I saw a picture of a mother and her daughter. The daughter, who looked very healthy, had been killed at the age of 6 after the Nazis decided to expand their use of euthanasia to older children. The policy had been previously only for children 3 and under. There were other pictures of children who had been euthanised as well.

Toward the end of the exhibit, it dealt with the use of gas to exterminate people. I read that the Nazis began gassing because mowing down people with gunfire proved to be too stressful for those doing the shooting.

Of all the doctors involved in the sterilization, euthanasia, and whatever else they perpetrated, very few seemed to have been convicted of any crimes. It seemed like most of them didn't even get a slap on the wrist. Thankfully, I didn't read of any of them coming to the United States like other scientists did.

I cannot describe to you the impact of this exhibit. I am not a writer, but I just wanted to share my impressions and encourage others to see for themselves. If you are like me, you will come away wondering where your thinking may be wrong and try to see others as precious in the sight of God.