The National WWII Museum Lecture Recording

Watch the recording of a lecture from Dr. Sheffer, whose book on famous child psychiatrist Hans Asperger is as illuminating as it is heartbreaking. Asperger, long depicted as a compassionate and devoted researcher who sought to define autism as a diagnostic category that could be treated, was in fact deeply influenced by Nazi psychiatry. In her discussion, Dr. Sheffer reveals that although Asperger did offer individualized care to children he deemed promising, he also prescribed harsh institutionalization and even transfer to Spiegelgrund, one of the Reich’s deadliest killing centers, for children with greater disabilities, who, he held, could not integrate into the community.