Disabled people under the Nazis- and discrimination today
JVL Introduction
Penny Pepper , an award winning author, poet and disability activist. She writes movingly here of learning about the Holocaust at her special school from a Jewish teacher who had lost all of her large family in the Holocaust. She told Ms Pepper that bad people had killed disabled children – disabled children like her.
Here Penny writes about her childhood awakening to the ghastly reality that some people killed other people – and for things that they could not help, such as being Jewish or disabled. That she would have been labelled a “useless eater”.
In her writing and even more in the interview embedded below, she also talks about ongoing discrimination and disadvantage and also that far right hatred towards disabled people is still present today. In the video Ms Pepper talks about what and how she learned about the Holocaust and many key issues that cross generations noting that “Bridging Generations” is the theme for Holocaust Memorial Day 2026. The conversation looks also at current threats to disabled people, including the limited advances made in relation to integrated education, the relatively recent support for eugenics and much more. As the interviewer says, “if people are not aware of what happened to disabled people in the Holocaust, perhaps they are not concerned about them being segregated” .
We will always remember all the victims of the Nazis then and all who are oppressed or discriminated against.
LL
This article was originally published by Together! 2012 on Sat 24 Jan 2026. Read the original here.
The Dark Door Opening
Author and poet Penny Pepper has written a new piece of creative non-fiction (below) for Holocaust Memorial Day 2026, which has the theme of ‘Bridging Generations’. In the video Penny talks to Together! 2012 CIC’s Artistic Director Dr Ju Gosling about the work, her life, the issues that cross generations today, and the contemporary threats to Disabled people.
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I am sorry to disagree with Penny about the assisted dying bill. I’d like us to have an arena where we could discuss these things with respect and sharing of experiences. Would JVL’s education group maybe consider setting up a future webinar with breakout groups where we could do this?
Forgive me, Penny, but I wish Ms J had not felt it necessary to describe such things to you when you were ‘barely seven’. Your precious childhood was scarred. I’m sorry if I am speaking out of turn. I found out about the Holocaust only when I was 12. That was bad enough.