What Happened Here in the Summer of 1940?
In a series of six interrelated short videos, Kenny Fries reads excerpts from his forthcoming book Stumbling over History: Disability and the Holocaust. The readings are supplemented by personal and historical photographs from his visits to the six Aktion T4 killing sites, where disabled people were mass murdered during the Third Reich.
"Unlike the Holocaust, there are no T4 survivors. We know about T4 and its aftermath mainly through medical records and from the perpetrators. Aktion T4 does not have its Elie Wiesel or Primo Levi. That is the main reason I write about what happened to disabled people during the Third Reich. I want to be what Susanne C. Knittel and other scholars call a 'vicarious witness.' . . . This is my way of bridging the silence, of keeping alive something that is too often forgotten."
— Kenny Fries
1. Brandenburg an der Havel: The Behavior of the Delinquents
Kenny visits Brandenburg an der Havel, the site of the first “test killing” of disabled people in early 1940.
2. Bernburg: Family Trees
Kenny visits Bernburg, which opened when the killing center at Brandenburg was closed. He meets Ute Hoffmann, director of the memorial site, and discovers why there was a tile floor leading from the gas chamber to the crematorium.
3. Grafeneck: Traces of Memory
Kenny visits Grafeneck, the most isolated T4 site, where current psychiatric residents co-exist with the memorial site.
4. Hadamar: What Treatment Are You Here For?
Kenny visits Hadamar, where, on the way down to the gas chamber, he gets stuck in the elevator.
5. Pirna-Sonnenstein: The Past is Present
Kenny visits Sonnenstein, the fort above the town of Pirna, where little evidence remains. In Haus C16, he encounters objects that once belonged to the disabled people who were killed there.
6. Hartheim: Not All the Story
Kenny visits Hartheim Castle, the only T4 site outside of present day Germany. At the castle, he learns about what was found there after the war.
Research for and work on What Happened Here in the Summer of 1940? received support from:
