Opfer der Vergangenheit

This poster (from around 1938) reads: "60,000 Reichsmarks is what this person suffering from a hereditary disease costs the People's community during his lifetime. Comrade, that is your money too. Read '[A] New People', the monthly magazine of the Bureau for Race Politics of the NSDAP."

Opfer der Vergangenheit (English: Victims of the Past) was a Nazi propaganda film made in 1937. This movie was a sequel to Erbkrank (Hereditarily Ill), which showed horrific images of lunatics in German asylums in order to bolster public support for the planned T-4 Euthanasia Program for the mentally ill. The practices of providing institutions and care for the victims of hereditary diseases are described as transgressing the law of natural selection, and the expense of such care is depicted as drain on healthy workers, and preventing the use of such moneys to help healthy Germans make better lives.^[1]

It was shown in every cinema in Germany.^[1] Adolf Hitler reportedly liked it.

Like the other five movies depicting the condition of the mentally ill in Germany, the movie was produced by the NS-Rasse und Politisches Amt (National Socialist Racial and Political Office). However, this film was the only one produced with sound.

See also

• Aktion T4
• List of films made in the Third Reich
• Nazism and cinema
• Euthanasia

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Erwin Leiser, Nazi Cinema p90 ISBN 0-02-570230-0