I searched diligently through the newspaper today looking for some acknowledgement of this day's somber anniversary but could find no specific mention. What I did find was an article about the upcoming election in France and it carried a headline that was pertinent to my topic for this post.
The 702373 Project is a worldwide collaborative art project commemorating the lives of the 70,273 physically and mentally disabled people (men, women, children) who were murdered by the German Nazis in the period spanning January 1940 to August 1941. Conceived by quiltmaker Jeanne Hewell-Chambers http://thebarefootheart.com/introducing-the-70273-project/ the fiber art project is intended to symbolize the horrific loss of life that occurred and the scant consideration given to the value of those lives.
Each person had a medical form with brief details. The forms were read by a team of three Nazi doctors. If the person was deemed "unfit" or an "economic burden" the doctor placed a red checkmark (or X) on the form. Once a form had two red checkmarks that was sufficient notice that they were to be eliminated and most were murdered within the next one or two hours time. The doctors never saw or spoke with the persons whose fate they were deciding.
I am grateful to Denniele of Louanna Mary Quilt Design for bringing this to the attention of many quilters. Denniele has been mentioning this frequently on her facebook page and tomorrow is hosting a fullday event in Harrisonville Missouri to invite others to make blocks and then the blocks will be assembled into quilts.
Today I completed my first block and cut backgrounds and red for the crosses such that I can make more.
Won't you please consider joining in this ambitious effort to commemorate the lives so casually taken? Thanks for reading.
To clarify: this red mark, that I refer to above as a checkmark, might be what you call an "x" or a "cross".
3 comments:
Thank you for pointing out this wonderful project! I've shared info about it in a few places. I knew the Nazis killed disabled people but didn't know much more than that. Appreciate the history lesson.
My only quibble: "checkmarks". Seems the Nazi docs did use either checkmarks or Xes (cross-marks) to indicate those they didn't deem worthy, but describing the quilting project as requesting red "checkmarks" on white might mean people would send in just that: a bunch of red marks like this:
/
/
\ /
\/
on a white background.
Thank you so much for pointing this out. I call that mark a checkmark but others will know it by a different name, may an X, maybe a cross or maybe something else again. Hopefully I have clarified this with an edit to the original post.
Yes, that clarifies nicely what you're looking for. Thank you!
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