I like to think that there’s a part of history that intrigues everyone. My dad is a major Civil War buff, and it doesn’t help that he majored in history in college. For me, it’s the Holocaust. My mom thinks that it is depressing that I am so interested in it. But it’s not like I enjoy reading about the death and destruction that happened. I guess I get something from reading about the tales of survival. This interest with my combination of knowledge of the X-Men has led to this part. Eric Lensherr, aka Magneto, is Jewish. He lived in Europe and close to if not in Germany during the time Hitler was in power. As a result, he lived through the Holocaust. He was sent to Auschwitz and became a sonderkommando, which kept him alive. But in doing so, he saw the bodies of friends and family go into the ovens. This is what made him the man he is today. Eric has no faith in humans. After living through such a crime against humanity, he fears that it will happen again. Except this time it would be humans rounding up mutants and putting them into camps simply because they are different.
In 1939, the Nazis started a program of secretly killing disabled children and adults. The children were killed by injection after the doctors had lost all interest in them. But there were too many adults to kill by injection. It would not be "effective" enough. So the Nazis came up with a way to kill masses of people at once. After trying other methods, they came up with a "solution". They tricked them into stripping down and going into a room. Once they were all in, and the door was locked, they pumped in carbon dioxide and the victims would suffocate. After 30 minutes, or when they were sure all were dead, their lifeless bodies were carted away to cremation ovens. Does this sound familiar? This lead to the final solution the Nazis used on millions of other "unfit". By 1941, at least 5,000 disabled children were killed and 70,273 disabled adults were killed. All of this happened in hospitals and unknown to the public and legally.
Eugenics in Nazi Germany led to what we know as the Holocaust. Eugenicists in Germany and America kept close through the 20s and 30s. Both countries showed films that either made fun of the disabled or condoned the killing of innocent disabled people. The Nazis accomplished what they did by putting into act the theories of American and British eugenicists and legalizing it. There were many laws that defined who a German was and eventually lead to the death of many disabled people.