Friday, May 15, 2009

Eugenics in Israel: Did Jews try to improve the human race too?

Eugenics in Israel: Did Jews try to improve the human race too? - Haaretz - Israel News

In 1944, psychiatrist Kurt Levinstein gave a lecture at a Tel Aviv conference, where he advocated preventing people with various mental and neurological disorders - such as alcoholism, manic depression and epilepsy - from bringing children into the world.

The means he proposed - prohibition of marriage, contraception, abortion and sterilization - were acceptable in Europe and the United States in the first decades of the 20th century, within the framework of eugenics: the science aimed at improving the human race.

In the 1930s, the Nazis used these same methods in the early stages of their plan to strengthen the Aryan race. Levinstein was aware, of course, of the dubious political connotations implicit in his recommendations, but believed the solid and salutary principles of eugenics could be isolated from their use by the Nazis.


A very interesting article in Ha'aretz which is in no way a condemnation of the Israeli state. Rather it addresses the excesses of psychiatrists in the 1940s and after.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

what improve ?
jews before and after Moses was
unbelieved humans.
Read your bible carefully.


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