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Old value systems


"On the towpath we met & had to pass a long line of imbeciles.  The first was a very tall young man, just queer enough to look at twice, but no more; the second shuffled & looked aside; and then one realised that every one in that long line was a miserable ineffective shuffling idiotic creature, with no forehead, or no chin, & and imbecile grin, or a wild suspicious stare.  It was perfectly horrible. They should certainly be killed."

Virginia Woolf, Saturday 9th January 1915.

Article on Laura Stephen - Virginia Woolf's 'idiot' half sister.

(Laura Stephen at Earlswood Asylum)


(Schönbrunn Psychiatric Hospital, 1934. Photo by SS photographer Friedrich Franz Bauer.)

Aktion 4 in Nazi Germany was the euthanasia programme which led to the extermination of 270,000 asylum patients.

Hitler's Blacklist:
After WWII ended, a black book containing a list of over 2,300 prominent British citizens was discovered among the papers of Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler. The book, titled Sonderfahndungsliste G.B. (meaning Special Search List) was dated 1940 and contained a list of politicians, writers and journalists who were to be immediately arrested if Germany successfully invaded Britain. This list included Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard