Jerusalem, Saturday, June 12, 2004 "Do not have
children if they won't be healthy!" By Tamara Traubmann A SHOCKING new study reveals how
key figures in the pre-state Zionist establishment
proposed castrating the mentally ill, sterilizing
the poor and doing everything possible to ensure
reproduction only among the 'best of people.'
Castrating the mentally ill, encouraging
reproduction among families "numbered among the
intelligentsia" and limiting the size of "families
of Eastern origin" and "preventing ... lives that
are lacking in purpose" -- these proposals are not
from some program of the Third Reich but rather
were brought up by key figures in the Zionist
establishment of the Land of Israel during the
period of the British Mandate. It turns out there was a great deal of
enthusiasm here for the improvement of the
hereditary characteristics of a particular race
(eugenics). This support, which has been kept under
wraps for many years, is revealed in a study that
examines the ideological and intellectual roots at
the basis of the establishment of the health system
in Israel. In the Yishuv (pre-state Jewish
community) in the 1930s there were "consultation
stations" operating on a Viennese model of advice
centers for couples that wished to marry and become
parents. In Austria, with the Nazis' rise to power, they
served for forced treatment. Here the stations were
aimed at "giving advice on matters of sex and
marriage, especially in the matter of preventing
pregnancy in certain cases." They distributed
birth- control devices for free to the penniless
and at reduced prices to those of limited means. In
Tel Aviv the advice stations were opened in centers
of immigrant populations: Ajami in Jaffa, the
Hatikvah Quarter and Neveh Sha'anan. These are some of the findings of a doctoral
thesis written by Sachlav Stoler- Liss about
the history of the health services in the 1950s,
under the supervision of Prof. Shifra
Shvarts, head of the department of health
system management at Ben-Gurion University of the
Negev. They were presented at the annual conference
of the Israel Anthropological Association at
Ben-Gurion College. The father of the theory of eugenics was British
scholar Francis Galton. It was he who coined
the term -- which literally means "well-born" -- at
the end of the 19th century. The aim of the
eugenics movement was to better the human race.
Galton proposed a plan to encourage reproduction
among "the best people" in society and to prevent
reproduction among "the worst elements." Forced
sterilizationBetween the end of the 19th century and the
beginning of the 20th, Galton drew many followers
and his ideas spread rapidly to other countries in
Europe (among them Germany, France, Italy, Denmark,
Sweden and Belgium), to the United States and to
some countries in South America. In various
countries laws were passed that allowed for the
forced sterilization of "hereditary paupers,
criminals, the feeble-minded, tuberculous,
shiftless and ne'er-do-wells." In the United
States, up until 1935, about 20,000 people --
"insane," "feeble-minded," immigrants, members of
ethnic minorities and people with low IQs -- were
forcibly sterilized, most of them in California.
The Californian law was revoked only in 1979. According to Dr. Philip Reilly, a doctor
and executive director of the Shriver Center for
Mental Retardation, in 1985 at least 19 states in
the United States had laws that allowed the
sterilization of people with mental retardation,
(among them Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Minnesota,
Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Vermont,
Utah and Montana). "Eugenics is considered to be something that
only happened in Germany," says Stoler-Liss.
"Germany was indeed the most murderous
manifestation of eugenics, but in fact it was a
movement that attracted many followers. In every
place it took on a unique, local aspect. It is
interesting to note that both in Germany and in
Israel a link was made between eugenics, health and
nationalism." Stoler-Liss first encountered the eugenics texts
of doctors from the Yishuv when looking for
instruction books for parents for a research
project for her master's degree. "I presented a
text at a thesis seminar and then the instructor of
the workshop said to me, 'But why aren't you saying
that this is a translated text?' I replied: 'No,
no, the text isn't translated.' 'In Israel,' he
said, 'there are no such things.'" She decided to look into whether there was only
anecdotal and non- representative evidence, doctors
and public figures here and there who supported
eugenics -- and she found many publications that
promoted eugenics. Supporters of the idea were key
figures in the emerging medical establishment in
Palestine; the people who managed and created the
Israeli health system. One of the most prominent eugenicists of the
Mandatory period was Dr. Joseph Meir, a
well-known doctor who acquired his education in
Vienna, served for about 30 years as the head of
the Kupat Holim Clalit health maintenance
organization, and after whom the Meir Hospital in
Kfar Sava is named. "From his position at the very
heart of the Zionist medical establishment in the
land of Israel in the mid-1930s, he brought young
mothers the gospel of eugenics, warned them about
degeneracy and transmitted the message to them
about their obligation and responsibility for
bearing only healthy children," says Stoler-
Liss. Thus, for example, in 1934 Dr. Meir published
the following text on the first page of "Mother and
Child," a guide for parents that he edited for
publication by Kupat Holim: "Who is entitled to give birth to
children? The correct answer is sought by
eugenics, the science of improving the race and
preserving it from degeneration. This science is
still young, but its positive results are
already great and important -- These cases
[referring to marriages of people with
hereditary disorders -- T.T.] are not at all
rare in all nations and in particular in the
Hebrew nation that has lived a life of exile for
1,800 years. And now our nation has returned to
be reborn, to a natural life in the land of the
Patriarchs. Is it not our obligation to see to
it that we have whole and healthy children in
body and soul? For us, eugenics as a whole, and
the prevention of the transmission of hereditary
disorders in particular, even greater value than
for all other nations! ... Doctors, people
involved in sport and the national leaders must
make broad propaganda for the idea: Do not have
children if you are not certain that they will
be healthy in body and soul!" 'Problematic
and dangerous'In its full version, the article, which was
published in the "Health Guard" section of the now
defunct labor Zionist newspaper Davar, the
doctor proposed castrating the mentally ill.
Stoler-Liss found many more examples in the "Mother
and Child" books that were published in 1934 and
1935 and in journals like Eitanim, which was
edited by Dr. Meir. "The support of Dr. Meir and other senior people
in the health system for these ideas has been kept
under wraps for many years," claims Stoler-Liss. No
one today talks about this chapter in the history
of the Yishuv. In the mid-1950s Dr. Meir's
articles were collected into a book that came out
in his memory. The article mentioned above was not
included in it. Stoler-Liss found a card file with
notes scribbled by the editors of the volume. They
defined the article as "problematic and dangerous."
"Now, after Nazi eugenics," wrote one of the
editors, "it is dangerous to publish this
article." During the latter part of the 1930s, adds
Stoler-Liss, when word came out about the horrors
that eugenics in its extreme form is likely to
cause, they stopped using this word, which was
attributed to the Nazis. Overnight eugenics
organizations and journals changed their names and
tried to shake off any signs of this theory. Dr. Meir, however, during all the years he was
active, continued to promote the ideas of eugenics.
At the beginning of the 1950s he published an
article in which he harshly criticized the
reproduction prize of 100 lirot that David
Ben-Gurion promised to every mother who gave birth
to 10 children. "We have no interest in the 10th child
or even in the seventh in poor families from the
East ... In today's reality we should pray
frequently for a second child in a family that
is a part of the intelligentsia. The poor
classes of the population must not be instructed
to have many children, but rather restricted." "I'm not making a value judgment," says
Stoler-Liss. "Zionism arose at a certain period, in
a certain ideological atmosphere -- there were all
kinds of ideas in the air and there were also
eugenicist Zionists. Some of the doctors were
educated in Europe, and at that time the medical
schools taught not only medicine but also the
theory of eugenics." Judaism of
muscleDr. Meir was not the first Zionist leader who
supported eugenics. According to studies by Dr.
Raphael Falk, a geneticist and historian of
science and medicine at Hebrew University, other
major Zionist thinkers -- among them Dr. Max
Nordau, Theodor Herzl's colleague, a
doctor and a publicist, and Dr. Arthur
Ruppin, the head of the World Zionist
Organization office in the Land of Israel --
presented the ideas of eugenics as one of the aims
of the Jewish movement for national renewal and the
settlement of the land. Prof. Meira Weiss, an anthropologist of
medicine at Hebrew University, describes in her
book "The Chosen Body" how the settlement of the
land and work on the land were perceived by these
Zionist thinkers as the "cure" that would restore
the health of the Jewish body that had degenerated
in the Diaspora. In Nordau's terms, a "Judaism of
muscle" would replace "the Jew of the coffee house:
the pale, skinny, Diaspora Jew. "At a time when
many Europeans are calling for a policy of
eugenics, the Jews have never taken part in the
'cleansing' of their race but rather allowed every
child, be it the sickest, to grow up and marry and
have children like himself. Even the mentally
retarded, the blind and the deaf were allowed to
marry," wrote Ruppin in his book "The Sociology
of the Jews." "In order to preserve the purity
of our race, such Jews [with signs of
degeneracy -- T.T.] must refrain from having
children." "Many people dealt with eugenics as a
theoretical issue," says Stoler- Liss. "They even
set up a Nordau Club with the aim of researching
the racial aspects of the Jewish people and ways of
improving it. What was special about Dr. Meir and
the group that joined him was that for them
eugenics was a very practical matter." They wanted
to pursue applied eugenics. The main institution was the advice station. The
first station was opened in 1931 in Beit Strauss on
Balfour Street in Tel Aviv. The aim was to work in
"pleasant ways," through persuasion and choice. As
Stoler-Liss explains: "Why should people work against their
personal interests? It is here that the
connection to the national interest comes in. If
I understand that by having a baby I will harm
the national interest, the building of the land,
the 'new Jew,' I will refrain from giving birth.
But just to make certain, Meir told the doctors,
in the event that a woman comes to you who is 'a
risk' for giving birth to a sick baby, it is
your obligation to make certain that she has an
abortion." "Gynecologist Miriam Aharonova also wrote
extensively on the subject of eugenics," adds
Stoler-Liss. "In articles for parents under
headings such as 'The Hygiene of Marriage' she
gives a list of eugenic instructions for parents --
from the recommended age for giving birth (between
20 and 25), to the recommended difference in age
between the father and the mother (the reason for
which is the betterment of the race) to a list of
diseases that could infect the spouse or "be
transmitted through heredity to their descendents
after them." In the diseases, she mentions "syphilis,
gonorrhea, tuberculosis, alcoholism, narcotics
addiction (fondness for morphine, cocaine, etc.)
and diseases of the mind and the nerves." In the
volume of "Mother and Child" published in 1935,
says Stoler-Liss, the publication and discussions
by doctors who supported eugenics was greatly
expanded. Why, in fact, did they not use force? The
establishment had a great deal of power over
immigrants and refugees. "The medical establishment's power was limited
at that time. This was an establishment that
developed hand in hand with the system it was
supposed to strengthen and suffered from constant
shortages: a shortage of doctors, a shortage of
nurses and a shortage of equipment. It had to
examine, treat, inoculate and so on. We are talking
about the period of the British Mandate. When at
long last there was a state, eugenics theory
declined. My explanation is the change of
generations: that generation had come to an end
professionally, and a new generation with more
national motivation came along that was not
educated at the European universities during that
period. They had already seen what the Nazis had
done with it and the ideological identification was
lower. The ideas themselves seeped in but they're
not using the same rhetoric." Have
eugenics really vanished?The eugenic chapter in the history of Western
culture has been closed, but have eugenics really
disappeared? "Eugenic thinking is alive and well
today," asserts Stoler-Liss. "It is expressed
mainly in the very high rate of pre-natal tests
and genetic filtering [of genetically
deviant fetuses]. Mothers are very highly
motivated to give birth only to healthy children
and the attitude toward the exceptional, the
different and the handicapped in Israeli society
is problematic." At hospitals today future parents are offered a
plethora of genetic tests that diagnose the fetus
before birth. Some of them are aimed at identifying
serious disorders, like Tay-Sachs disease, a
degenerative disease that causes a painful death in
infancy. Others, however, are aimed at screening
fetuses with conditions like deafness and
sterility, the bearers of which can lead full and
satisfying lives. |
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