Ze vzpomínek jedné neslyšící

Abstract

The article is based on a unique cache of private papers belonging to my mother Gertrud Hauner, née Jacob (1904–1996). I have tried to integrate their contents with an account of the evolution of the racial legislation of Nazi Germany, whose victim she became.The inspiration to make this story public came from a German teacher of deaf- mute children, Horst Biesold, who heard about my mother’s unusual escape from the clutches of Nazi authorities, gained her permission to interview her, and pub- lished a substantial part of her story in his book, Klagende Hände (1988), which dealt with the fate of deaf people in the Third Reich in general. While my mother was still alive, many psychological and practical obstacles existed which prevented me from publishing the story. The main theme of the article is my mother’s struggle against the inhuman legisla- tion of Nazi Germany, introduced very soon after Hitler’s seizure of power, start- ing with the infamous Sterilization Law of July 1933, and followed by a host of other laws, known as the Nuremberg racial laws. In spite of the fact that she was born with normal healthy hearing, my mother’s deafness, caused by an accident at the age of three-and-half, was considered by the Nazi health authorities to be hereditary and consequently falling under the Sterilization Law. The article covers the story of my mother’s legal struggle against this judgment, which in contrast to thousands of similar cases that ended tragically in state-supervised sterilization, my had a personal happy ending – thanks to the intervention of a Czechoslovak citizen, my future father.