Ethnic Cleansing in Connecticut

[arikara]

Ethnic Cleansing in Connecticut
Our state's role in the Nazi eugenics movement

by Edwin Black - September 11, 2003


Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a co-called "Master Race." But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race was not Hitler's. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in Connecticut, two to three decades before Hitler came to power, the product of the American eugenics movement. Hartford and indeed the state of Connecticut played an important albeit unknown role in this country's campaign of ethnic cleansing. What's more, Connecticut was an important player in America's eugenic nexus with Nazi Germany.

Eugenics was the racist American pseudoscience determined to wipe away all human beings except those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. The philosophy was enshrined into national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions enacted in 27 states. In 1909, Connecticut became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. In Connecticut, only some 600 were coercively sterilized, but hundreds of thousands more were slated for the surgery before the plan was abandoned.

Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for massive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They were all in league with America's most respected scientists hailing from such prestigious universities as Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. These academicians faked and twisted data to serve eugenics' racist aims. Connecticut was considered both an epicenter for eugenic propaganda and a test case for ethnic cleansing.

The Carnegie Institution literally invented the American movement by establishing a laboratory complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. This complex stockpiled millions of index cards on ordinary Americans as the movement carefully plotted the removal of families, bloodlines and whole peoples. From Cold Spring Harbor, eugenics advocates agitated in the legislatures of America, as well as the nation's social service agencies and associations. The Harriman railroad fortune paid local charities, such as the New York Bureau of Industries and Immigration, to seek out Jewish, Italian and other immigrants in New York and other crowded cities and subject them to deportation, trumped up confinement or forced sterilization. The Rockefeller Foundation helped found and fund the German eugenics program and even funded the program that ultimately sent Josef Mengele into Auschwitz.

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http://hartfordadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:32556

Edwin Black is the New York Times best-selling author of the award-winning IBM and the Holocaust and the just-released War Against the Weak (Four Walls Eight Windows) from which this article is adapted. He can be reached via www.edwinblack.com.

I read and recommend IBM and the Holocaust, this author is meticulous with his documentation.

[teryang]

1. The heart of darkness

This is the real ground zero.

[seventhson]

2. The Bush and S&B connection to eugenics

Black's article nails the Rockefellers but seems to skim over the Bush family's ties to these Nazis. You can be sure these monsters have not changed their spots.

You can read about that here:

http://tarpley.net/bush3.htm

[smallprint]

3. this is so important

what a stunning article... this deserves much MUCH more attention!

[kskiska]

4. I'm from Connecticut

and as a child, I remember a family my grandmother was acquainted with in which several children were sterilized while incarcerated at the Southbury Training School, a state institution for the "feeble-minded."

[arikara]

5. Horrible stuff like that happened here in Canada too

They sterilized retarded people and native Canadians without their knowlege or consent.

[davidinalameda]

6. eugenics program were fairly common at the turn of the

century

Virginia had a strong one--mentally and physically disabled were sterilized as well as California

there were many "good" Americans who believed in it and carried the programs out

Misguided--extremely
criminal--probably so

Did they take it to the extent of the Nazis--nope but who knows what would have happened if we didn't get involved with WW2 when we did