Author and Historian Edith Sheffer will visit the National WW II Museum Thursday evening to discuss her new book that uncovers the links between autism and Nazism.
The book, “Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna,” was released May 1 and explores how a diagnosis common today – autism affects over 2 million people in the U.S. and tens of millions worldwide – emerged from the heartrending atrocities of Hitler’s Third Reich.
Hans Asperger, the pioneering autism researcher after whom Asperger syndrome is named, actively participated in the Nazi regime’s child “euthanasia” program that killed disabled children, according Sheffer’s new book.