children," edith sheffer writes about han asperger current pediatrician and advocate for children with disabilities for him after person driving is named, but he was also complicit in racial policies and the murder of children. she talks about this at the world war ii museum in new orleans. this is an hour. [inaudible conversations] >> good evening, everybody. that's really loud. make me sound kind of cool. very, very glad to see so many of your pet exceptionally pleased to see a lot of new faces i don't get seen before appeared please come back if we do this on a regular basis. very, very pleased to be with you tonight and welcome to louisiana memorial to louisiana memorial pavilion. i'd also like to welcome my life strain in audience on c-span because we are that cool.

[laughter] my name is dr. martin loicano. we are sort of the researcher the academic department, the higher education center at the museum. we are a lot of things. not the only source of education, but one of the new sources of education program of education programming here at this wonderful museum. we're hurt herself as a community of scholars in payment a number from the area in the audience tonight. we also do other things in the two. we are the research services department and if you have an interest talk to myself, jeremy, keith, jason kaman for other people appeared where research prior for those of you interested in the world war ii and her family. we also offer public or grams. not just this, the symposium from a full conference has symposium in on a topic and we offer several days of conferencing conference each

year. we hope you'll join us for that as well. we'll talk more about that after this wonderful program by tonight's guests. first i want to take a moment to recognize that we have any world war ii veterans with us in the history of this great museum. well, we recognize that nonetheless. any veterans of our armed forces and other area for conflict? please rise. be recognized. [applause] and also just specifically in reference to tonight, i hope that those who work in the field of study and understanding autism is medical professionals and others might also take a moment to be recognized. anybody here? [applause] thank you very much. in a particular person that they need to single out is my dear friend and our dear friend of the museum, dr. guntur bischoff.

we have him to thank for recommending dr. sheffer for tonight's presentation. soa can we thank you for your wonderful suggestions. is melanie here? we welcome his wife melanie as well as a wonderful friend an important part of this museum as well. edith sheffer is a prize-winning historian. she focuses on germany and central europe. she has a bachelor's from her bed in history and literature summa cum laude. ii have a basher trim the louisiana state university, not summa cum laude. she better not to get get her doctorate at the university of california berkeley and is now back as a senior fellow in the jute of european studies. her previous book, vertebrates, how east and west german is added wonderful book. but we are here about her latest

book, "asperger's children," which she will discuss with us. this is about getting very exciting national attention in very high praise for its excellent all-around. she has broken ground on the life of dr. asked berger and his name has certainly lived on and perhaps been better known in his life and work. we are here tonight to hear what is a very difficult, very challenging story that she tells in a compassionate and sensitive manner. i think our recent review in "the new york times" -- i'm sorry, then yearbook of the tensor view said edith sheffer has written about that describes her easy categorization in advert in response to a fascinating and terrible subject matter. on that note, please come to the stairs which are not dangerous. edith sheffer on "asperger's children: the origins of autism in nazi vienna."

[applause] >> thank you. i made it. thank you so much for that kind introduction and the invitation to speak here today. can anyone hear me all right? and thank you. it is certainly an honor. i'm going to be presenting an overview of my book, "asperger's children," which focuses on the creation -- getting some reverberation. which focuses on the creation of the autism diagnosis and train to vienna. i would like to be sensitive to the subject. i know many people in this room probably know at least one person, a friend, relative, loved one who has been diagnosed with autism or after first

disorder and the material and presenting is quite disturbing. i do think it is important that this information be known. one in 59 children are now diagnosed on the autism spectrum in the united states. this is up from one in 5000 in 1875. this is an exponential rise. so what is going on? the reason for the rise are much debated, medical, genetic, environmental. one of the many factors is that han asperger's ideas of an autism spectrum took hold in the 1990s. for decades, we in the united states went by the him a generous idea of autism. but the children who are relatively similar to one another. they have more severe cognitive impairment in more than minute speech.

said to include a children with who we might today call the tree and three and he is credited today with the idea we have of an autism spectrum. asperger developed his diagnosis during the third right and he has been her poetic reputation as not to give them any cultivated this is having risked his life in order to protect children from the train to killing program that murdered youths considered to be disabled. in this video, asperger exercise the abilities of children with autism, stressing their value to the state. supposedly he was using the autism type of service as a psychiatric schindler's list. so i set out to tell this story as an heroic tale of asperger in the third right. when i went to the archives in vienna, the very first day and in fact the very first file i

looked at was enough to show to me that transfer was complicit in the racial hygiene is at the third right -- third reich. this was actually a horror story and i thought about abandoning the project right then and there. the files i was looking out for two terrible and i did not want to be telling the story. but i do think it has far-reaching implications for how we talk today about autism and asperger's disorder. okay, so let's start at the beginning. born in 1906 in the heart the habsburg empire. this is 60 miles outside vienna. he excelled in school with special talents in languages, literature and history. he was most drawn to science however any left at age 19 for medical studies in 1925 at the university of vienna.

vienna was in great turmoil at the time. it had been the cultural capital of europe at the turn of the 20th century, the birthplace of modernism. then after defeat in world war i, the metropolis suffered severe political and economic crisis. three children flooded cnn's institution in the city's child development professionals rushed in to help. vns founded one of the most progressive social welfare systems in the world. it was renowned as the vns system and had an army of highly trained social workers and of course i meant psychoanalysts and psychiatrists who are donating their time to help these children. one waiter in its efforts was clemens won pk. you probably never heard of him but he was one of the most prominent people in vns.

he headed the children's hospital and turned it into an internationally renowned pediatric facility. he was progressive, open to experimentation and to the advancement of women and jews. when one idealistic pediatrician came to him about founding a new kind of clinic comment feed this game. so lazar wanted to do create a new discipline. got a tidy theology which i translate as -- and the idea was to integrate pedagogy and psychology to treat the whole child. this is a very progressive idea at the time and asperger would inherit this clinic. vns was committed suicide. they were found in bed laying in a close embrace after 25 years

of marriage. this was a real shock. trinity was replaced by the far right-wing on berger. they join the party early on in the lives still a terrorist organization in austria and it was the end. a conspicuous sunbeam from a photo of dr. twomey, surrounded by adoring children and nurses. on berger was known for his anti-scientific attitude and he wanted to undo pirkei's achievements. he wanted doctors to focus on primary care and eugenics over medical specialization and research. hamburger also cited jewish and hired faculty that would be on the far right. one of homeworkers first hires was the 25-year-old han asperger. asperger revered him from the

first meeting in 1931 saying he was equal to help wreck by the errors of pirkei's leadership. here is a photograph of hospital staff. you can see asperger in the lower right. so homberger placed asperger and lazar's education clinic and promoted him quick lead within two years, asperger was named head of the clinic at age 28 over the heads of longtime staffers, people who work in the clinic for decades despite asperger's inexperience. but asperger had solid right-wing credentials. he helped memberships and several anti-liberal, anti-socialist, anti-modern and anti-semitic organizations. in 1934, just 10 days after austria declared itself in single party states, joined by a single party the fatherland

front. okay, so bear with me. this library streets. this is from a digital history project i did with one of my graduate students and it maps the creation of child psychology and psychiatry in the name teens 20s, 30s and 40s that we basically assembled a database of leaders in the field and track their intellectual and social linkages. some of the dead hussein turned with him, who worked with them, who joined the faith organizations and who married to. what we found was intellectually , psychiatry and psychoanalysis could not be disaggregated out this time if people trained in web shoulders at each other since the two shins. the noble laureate tuc towards the bottom in the big letters was an import note in the system and many were wrote trading through his clinic for a

psychiatric neurological clinic including lazar. many who attended to the liberal and jewish opted to go into the trendier field of psychoanalysis and you can see those figures on the lower side of the screen you see sigmund freud hanging out. clemens from pirkei and lazar had been tied to those networks. they were in the middle. b.c. homberger and asperger isolated in the top of the far right and psychiatrists. so what the slideshows is the ideological split in psychiatry predated the annexation of vienna. he and his institution that psychiatric community were already divided in asperger and his crew were already far off from the mainstream. see, i told you the slide works. let's go inside asperger is

clinic where there's a different, more progressive men. it generated many of their therapies and published articles at the importance of compassion and play-based techniques. we would recognize many of her techniques today. following her lead, clinic staff paid attention to you two seem to have difficulty socializing and the staff collectively called these children autistic. this is as early as 1934. they were using the term autistic. they did not consider autistic and negative pathology. it is a character trait. so physician and psychologist antibias speech published articles about characteristics of the 1930s. they were both jewish and soon immigrated to the united states. for those of you who might know the history of lee o'connor, the immigrated with his help.

he was the father of american psychiatry who created the autism diagnosis. this is speculation in my book. we don't know this, but it feeds for research. i think they may have brought the idea of autism across the atlantic because candor greatly admired his work in its first case study of autism was based on frankel's notes. meanwhile, in germany in the 1930s, child psychiatrists were also diagnosing social awkwardness in youth, but with much, much harsher about it. the children in the third reich were to possess strong bonds, be enthusiastic participant in collective activities such as the hitler youth and this is the idea of fascism at the heart of as i'm enough that i hope to achieve with my book, is showing the fascist collective blogging

at the psychiatry so pride. so paul schroeder is on the upper left was the leader of nazi child psychology and he called this readiness to serve the community to boot. it is one of germany's with a bull words and in the romantic. admit soul. i'll just stick to how nazi traffic colleges use that which was a deep sense of metaphysical connectedness to the greater organism and you have a national racial meaning. germans had allowed. the french didn't. socialists and communists didn't have gamut. signify deep into metaphysical connection. another man followed the schroeder next to who also wrote on gamut and he became one of the top three leaders in the

program. so i won't go into detail, but this is a sampling of different diagnoses that nazi child psychologists were devising. pc maker caesar's strings of percentages quantifying children ability to socialize and apparently their parents were unable to socialize. the point here is that the idea of autism pervaded child psychiatry long before asked berger named it. he was a very young man at this time and he was deeply influenced by these diagnoses the social maladjustment. when his time came he would simply follow in their footsteps. so in the morning of march 12, 1938, the germans roll across the border into austria in the jubilant crowds.

asperger and vienna me change regarded by many as the worst. they assaulted homberger in the streets, plundered homes, stores and synagogues. at the university of vienna, collects her purse on mosques. the medical school removed 78% of its faculty. 78% of asperger's colleagues including three nobel prize winners. homberger in asperger's clinics survived unscathed. the other colleagues even thrived during the third reich for so many liberals and jewish created a vacuum that expanded their opportunities. for asperger, one opportunity with naming his own diagnosis. in 1937, before the nazi

annexation, asperger has warned against creating chided diagnoses. he asserted that there are as many approaches as there are different personalities. it's impossible to establish a rigid set for diagnosis. then, months after the annexation, and homberger introduces his own diagnosis. the well-characterized group of children who we named autistic psychopath because the confinement of the cells has led to a narrowing of their relations to the environment. most striking, asperger is calling autism a psychopathy which carries connotations a german psychiatry of criminality and depravity. he was moving from a nonjudgmental tradition of the education clinic, which talked about toxic children and now he's moving into the realm of

psychiatry. also right after the annexation, asperger begins to work for the nazi government right away in april 1938. he begins to consult to the juvenile justice system in the city's remedial schools. he quickly joined several nazi organizations come in the german front, national socialist welfare organization, which is not remarkable for someone ambitious and he also played to consult for the hitler youth. asperger did not join the nazi party and this is one reason why people have seen him as a resistor and one reason why he called himself a resistor. not joining the party was not unusual for someone in his position. only three in 10 doctors joined the nazi party. beside, homberger was a prominent nazi in vouching for asperger.

he can asperger on how to secure the education clinic when he believed.yours had to be done right saturated with national socialist principles. that's a quote. homberger also trusted asperger and the leadership of one of his programs, motorized mother advising. the drive to rural areas and dispense medical advice to people in need which sounds great. at the same time, they were acting as the eyes and ears of the regime. they were registering children who were disabled and you came from families where there might be alcoholism are hereditary illness assembling records that were later put to use for the children's deportation and extermination. in the fall of 1940, asperger began to work as they consult an for the office. this was the center of racial hygiene measures in the city, a

coordinated sterilization, deportations and concentration camps and killings of people considered to be disabled. to give you some background, this was the first program of mass extermination. it predated the holocaust. it is begun by hitler in 1939 to care for their children regarded as a drain on the state and a danger to its gene pool. i can't emphasize enough how euthanasia was a misnomer. the vast majority of children were physically healthy. they were not terminally ill and they were not physically suffering. they were simply due to a physical, mental or behavioral defects. at least 5000 children perished inside germany. vienna were almost 800 children

perished in many, many ordinary people knew what was happening. newspapers try to deny the killings, but there were public protests on the street in the fall of 1940 dispersed by the police. and so asperger certainly knew what was going on as he admitted later in life. there is no question he knew what was happening. in contrast to her mechanized images of the holocaust, the child euthanasia program was very different. it was supposed to be calm a permanent part of the health care system. so the holocaust and the killing of other groups was happening in a haphazard fashion and that was meant to be secret. this is a permanent part of health care. this was supposed to be legal. this is intimate killing at the very doctors and nurses especially women who cared for their daily needs and killings were done in the benefits that

issued over doses of barbiturates until the children grew ill and died coming usually of pneumonia. asperger was at the eye of the storm by the euthanasia program. close to its top leaders in vienna. so homberger was asperger's -- homberger also conducted numerous lethal experiments at the children's hospital while effectively work down the hall. asperger's fellow postdoctoral students were depriving babies of fact, a. terrific in babies and children with tuberculosis. all kinds of medical experiments were happening in plain sight at this hospital. in 1941, asperger and homberger cofounded with the vienna society for. of education.

asperger was the second vice president of this organization. grendel was kind of hygiene and known for accelerating the deportation of jewish to concentration camps and he was municipal direct your. he was on the administrative side of spiegel ground. another cofounder was air when mccallie us was a fellow postdoctoral student of homberger and he was also the head of the adult euthanasia facility where thousands of adults were killed. everyone in vienna knew who he was. he was widely called the mass murder, the bbc reported on the activities of the royal british air force even got leaflets calling him the lord with the syringe. engaged to her sister, paula and you can see the resemblance.

hitler greatly disapproved of the match. we don't know why. perhaps he didn't want her sister mary and a mass murderer, [laughter] that the people speculate. he had apprehended during a trip to berlin in 1840 and dispatched to the eastern seafront which is an effective way to get rid of an undesirable brother-in-law. so not only to asperger associate with the top leaders, he advocated the transfer of the most disabled children. this is a talk he gave been vienna published in the munich weekly. fraught difficult cases, only a long and continuous observation is proper like those carried out at mayo clinic or the reformatory. asperger followed his own advice. he transferred children in

numerous capacities working for the public health office in working forward the deal schools and for one example, the medical expert for the city that evaluated from one care facility ended one day they evaluated 192 files and dispatch 35 children as incapable of educational and developmental engagement. in one day they decided these children were and educable and this is a death sentence and in fact all 35 children were killed. so it is unknown and will probably remain unknown to the fragmentary base, and a children's asperger transported. her two children he transferred directly from his clinic who died.

two and a half-year-old was the youngest of nine children. she was severely disabled by meningitis and inferior. asperger concluded that her accommodation is absolutely necessary. the man reportedly told the presiding doctor that because sometimes parents brought their children to these places in order to be killed, parents had themselves as witches for their children. if the mother -- chad cannot be helped, perhaps it would be better if she could die and it has nothing in this world anyway. asperger also recommended the transfer of 5-year-old elizabeth driver. elizabeth could only speak a single word, mama, and that she has a friendly nature is very affectionate if she is treated

she will cry and hunt the nurse. elizabeth was killed four months after she was admitted to spiegelgrund in her brain harvested, kept in a collection of over 400 children in the spiegelgrund's seller. one thing i really want to show in my book is that asperger's definition of autism was happening at the same time. he was developing his definition of autism as these child killings were happening. so he had written in 1937 that it's impossible to establish a diagnosis for children. no such thing. we can't do it. children are too unique. months after the annexation he comes out with what he calls a well-characterized group of children autistic psychopath and they have a narrow relation to the environment.

in 1840, he changes his definition somewhat. he calls a group of ave. number of children who he referred to as the slender children falling out of every community. they live their own life without an emotional relationship with the environment and therefore also react abnormally to the needs of the environment. asperger's language is more pejorative. it's more critical. these are outnumber children behaving abnormally and is more concerned the social connectedness. they are loners and they have it effect of emotion. then, in 1944, asperger rigged his postdoctoral for promotion and a ratchet it up another notch. in it he writes he's only himself but not an active member of the greater organism which is influenced by in which he influences constantly. now this is fascist language.

we have children's membership in the greater organism. this is the fascism of the greater organism. see also in his thesis adopts nazi psychiatry and cause autism a disharmony of gamut. his language is also quite harsh. increasingly has the cruelty and sadistic traits of autistic acts of malice. year by year, asperger is changing his definition to become more and more pejorative and more concerned with children's aptitude for community. so asperger did pride what he saw as the special ability of some autistic children in other technical subjects and he said they were on the favorable end of a nod to some range. but this is a highly gendered

view. he declared that the autistic personality is an extreme variant of male intelligence of the male character. he is echoing stereotypes of the time. hussein boys have a gift for logical ability, precise thinking in formulating were as girls are more gifted for the concrete and practical. autism said the male pattern is exaggerated to the extreme. for asperger believes many of the boys could be remediated due to their unique male intelligence committee gave these boys intensive therapies. he was far more dismissive of girls who showed the same traits. the girls were not to be remediated for educated, but recommended them for treatment, hormone treatment or sterilization or worse. let's start with the boys. in one of his two most prominent

case studies of autistic psychopath he, he fell out of the community and it was impossible to get him to play in a group. if i gave was on it mostly went into space. the second major case study, asperger said karl rove would never a game with others in his case is often far away. he said the boys should be treated with genuine care and kindness in true understanding and affection. this is the image of asperger we have today. he treats the voice of love and kindness and i used their special abilities and indicate them specialized tutoring. well, in the archives, this is an unpublished case file i found of christine burka and he describes her in similar terms. she was difficult to influence from the outside. she was closed, inhibited, hard

to reach. she never cared for the other children. indistinguishable. we can't know what christina really looks like, but he seen her in the same way. asperger's clinic concluded she simply had no gamut. you can see the note there. asperger's official diagnosis of christine was not a psychiatric diagnosis but a moral diagnosis. she had a character variant. should he was born latina but had to learn to write with his right hand. but to me that this handwriting at the bottom. because she posed a significant criminal threat, asperger ordered her transfer to a correctional institution. she was egocentric, oppositional and underhanded. in other unpublished case files i saw that of frida grubman and margarita shaffer but even worse

fate. margarita, quote, did not participate at all in the community of children. her facial expression was remarkably empty and she would stare impossibly before her but the lack of contact. she was supposedly oblivious to her entire behavior on others. we can't know what these girls actually look like, but they were described in similar terms. asperger's clinic transferred those girls to spiegelgrund. suggesting she may have been preselect good and indeed she was transferred to spiegelgrund the same day. asperger's clinic here that he should be sent to dr. elaine's department. i was the killing department come in charge of that at that time. already with a sense of foreboding for her transfer, she wrote to her mother, quote, i do

not know if we will see each other again because i can't know if i won't die on the street. thankfully there's no record of the gross death despite being handed over directly. but the fact remained that asperger was issuing diverse faith to within the similar traits. the genesis view of gender that the view of autistic psychopath the general. some laud effusive language about the highly original genius on children that the most favorable end of his autistic range and did say they make excel in science or other technical professions. this benevolent rhetoric was in keeping with nazi psychiatry. many said a lot of nice things about children that they thought could be of value. we only see the extermination side of nazi psychiatry, but

they valued children they thought could be broadened, the children who were deemed unworthy of life made this harsh distinction and asperger was no exception. the autism spectrum ranged down to the most automaton mentally individuals. they would grow up to roam the streets as grotesque and dilapidated. these children could not and would not be helped. best buy 1944, seeking promotion under homberger, he was deeply shaped by institutions in ideology. after the war, asperger claimed he had resisted and defended children from the euthanasia killings. he also does in stem cell from his nazi era work. here are the upper wrote about autistic psychopathy again.

a handful of articles which makes me wonder if he ever believed in it or if he was just up for promotion. rather he turned to religious themes and social commentary on child rearing. asperger probably would have been a foot note in the history of autism research had not been for this woman, warner brings. a leading british psychiatrist who publicized asperger's diagnosis almost 40 years later in 1981. switching fields to child psychiatry with her daughter, suzy, was diagnosed with autism and she herself had conducted extensive research, more expensive than asperger ever had to did not fit into the definition. when she published her work however she called it asperger syndrome as a professional courtesy. what she was describing was for her own diagnosis than asperger's work. she wanted to present a mutual

condition session into this syndrome. she did not call it a psychopathy and she got rid of him saying the children was sadistic and grotesque. she wrote what we would consider a neutral diagnosis. as lorna wing's idea of a broader autism gain traction in the 1980s and 90s, psychiatric association added the disorder to the american manual of mental disorders in 1994 and they did not research asperger's nazi era. you are supposed to research the person your name in a diagnosis after in the apa did not. so that is why we are in the situation we are in today. this rainbow is a simplistic language of the autism spectrum that took hold in the public mind and you can see it is basically a chart on the far

left is the idea of classic autism, children with greater impairment, with the disorder in the far right. it is increasingly seen as indistinguishable from high functioning autism. i hate the term high functioning about functioning but these are terms in common usage. asperger disorder was reclassified in 2013 as autism spectrum disorder. so at a longer exists as a medical diagnosis. although it does internationally in this country it no longer does. socially, asperger's name remains in wide usage is an identity for millions of people a term applied to loved ones in the personality stereotype in popular cultures. most of us never think about the man behind the name. the question that this work now

brings up is does demand matter? in medicine, naming a disorder after someone is meant to credit the individual for describing a commission and to honor them for their work. in my opinion, asperger merits neither here at first he did not discover autism. his portrayal of autistic psychopath is at odds with understanding of autism today. we don't see autistic journalist m. in depravity. despite coming asperger's fascist idea was not even his own. he was following in the foot depth of his senior colleagues in nazi child psychology. second, i don't think asperger merits the honor. he sent dozens of children to their dad is a conscious and willing participant in systematic killing. i propose we discontinue this in an op-ed for "the new york times" and the idea has got picked up.

the book was just reviewed in nature by leaving autism researcher at some of you may know him. simon baron cohen. there are other conditions named after nazi era doctors that have been renamed as a result of finding a better discrimination of programs. medicine in general is moving away from eponymous diagnoses to more descriptive labels. the problem is we just don't have an adequate vocabulary to talk about autism. children diagnosed can bear very little resemblance to one another. researchers suggest autism is kind of a catchall term right now that likely encompasses many different physiological conditions and hopefully one day we will deal to split it up into different subtypes are different diagnoses and right al autism is an expansive umbrella label.

the analogy that comes to mind for me as similar to the diagnosis of female hysteria in the turn of the 20th century, which was basically a label for women who cannot control their emotions but they might be suffering from different conditions for, schizophrenia, bipolar, anxiety. does not get out of point to disaggregate the separate conditions. i think that is where we are with autism rate now, too. we just don't have the vocabulary. it's an interesting question what we do in the absence of science and to what extent are these diagnoses shaped by cultural influence. hysteria happened at a time when women were asserting physical roles in public life and the image of the hysterical woman capture the public mind. and now the idea of an autism

spectrum draws on anxieties about her children sitting into a fast paced world in fast-changing, fast-paced world. on one end autism might face a lifetime of disability and isolation or in the other hand might be perceived to have superior abilities and be a coating was in silicon valley where i live. so hysteria was the diagnosis of overly emotional women. now if you think about it, autism is the diagnosis of under emotional boys, the ratio of the diagnosis is five to one boys to girls in the main image is white urban middle-class affliction. so this is not to deny the very real challenges of course of children diagnosed with these conditions. that is not my purpose here today. my only purpose is to show how diagnoses can be fluid things and they emerge from the interactions of patients, doctors, social forces and

representations in the feedback loop over time. i hope with my book by pointing out the changeability i want to underscore the ethics of treating every child's mind with care because we know so little in showing and warning how easily an issue labels, meditation and interventions. and how we describe and portray others from where we go from here and autism. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much, it is. we've got the microphone in the back center aisle. gladly bring it to the front row for your first question.

>> thank you for the presentation. very informative. i am curious after all of your research, how do you feel that the stock is rationalized their behavior whether it's for the greater good or just following orders, why do they do what they did? >> you would start off with the question. just a brief and to, i took my daughter to see the diary of anne frank and we had a backstage talk with the cast afterwards and people are asking questions about lighting in costume and my daughter raised her hand, why did they do it? i think they thought it was a scientific object. they believed it was the advancement of science and the eugenics was an extremely popular respect science across

the world at that time and the united states leaders were in the forefront of realization law. in 30 states at the time in nazi germany would soften it tired of pleading the forefront of their location and the child euthanasia program was really an extension, a logical extension to kill children between zero and three years of age in the beginning and date carefully cover observed in track these children's daily needs. they got their reports back. to kill a child was not easy. it was not like other programs of nazi extermination. it was incredibly scientific and deliberative. >> next row back. in walter isakson's biography of albert einstein, he noted that einstein did not talk until he

was four years old. [inaudible] for 3-year-old albert einstein had been brought in to the group and speculate on how he would've been diagnosed to. >> yeah, i see exactly where you're going with this. it's real not talking and not developing and hitting the prescribed milestones would be in trouble at the time. it was up to the top or to report children with disabilities and asperger claimed after the war that he did not report children who he could have reported. there is no way to prove that he might have withheld the names of some children. he may well have rescued children. i'm not here to deny that. maybe an individual, but

virender protocol that einstein would've had to of been reported. >> the next row back. >> you mentioned the reason for getting rid of the term asperger -- [inaudible] >> in medical terms right now it is autism spec from disorder and that is all we have. often people say high functioning the malfunctioning yet i hate that. i don't think it describes necessarily what child is her lecture or his sticks you are looking at when you say that. my solution for the moment is to say on the spectrum and if people have questions about who the child is coming you can describe the child or the person is who they are. so that is personally how we see

it. people do self identify their children with the inn for years off in people have lived with this for most of their lives and how do you tell someone how to identify. what i'm saying is the medical community going forward with this label by richer actively i don't. and then asked the is an interesting identity because to ask and is not a problematic label? i do think i'm not going to pretend to be an expert. the consensus was that asperger was already a problematic diagnosis and that is why it was reclassified in 2013 anyway and the world health organization is supposed to do the same to remove it. >> dr. sheffer, a question online here. okay, wow.

>> despite [inaudible] in reviews, he's been held to high regard as you've explained. have you received any blowback from supporters of his or any family members he may have had foreign resentment for your findings? >> surprisingly no and i was really brace for this. i had some negative comments on twitter and facebook before people haven't read the book, went to see the facts it's undeniable. i haven't heard directly from people who were fronted by this. i think people take it as serious history rather than attack of any sort. >> you mention the protests that occurred time.

[inaudible] >> beside that i showed with the pavilions, and help to both children and adults and thousands of adults were being killed there and deported off on trains to gas chambers. and so, that is really what the public knew about. the killings of children were whispered about in vaguely known, but what was causing the most average was the deportation of adult than the killing of adult and not what was known and those are the rumors circulating. it's really incredible. the press was denied rumors saying no such thing as gas chambers. i should say to me for those of

you who know the history of the euthanasia program, it's the only program of mass murder that the german population protested. and they were able to do it quite openly with leaflet, with servants, with protests and hitler technically shut down the program as a result of this popular protests. i don't want to give you the wrong idea continued in secret, but at least there was some effect and if you do the experiment about what might have happened if people had been protesting other forms of extermination and why was it only the killing of other germans that was seen as objectionable enough to put yourself out there on the line. >> in the back towards the center. >> i remember in the 50s and 60s

not only did she have to do with the autistic child, but then everyone was shunning her. it didn't say a cold father. a cold mother. >> and she had made this child. >> this is one of the reasons asperger prints with genetic and it was not the parents filed, which sounds great. if you look at the context, nazi doctors are concerned with hereditary illness, proving everything is hereditary in facility. and so -- right, right, right.

it is interesting today i was flipped on its head to say autism is seen as more progressive than blaming it on the mother. >> in the frontier right. >> i was curious about the drawing on the slides. >> yeah, it's a poignant drying. when she was first brought to asperger's clinic, she was brought to take a bath and she had a long talk with the nurse about her experiences in the nurse said she went on and on. i couldn't wait for her to shut a. i'm entered the picture. she had warm ideas of a loving home and then put yourself as the solitary figure in the corner, so lake seen herself

already in asperger's clinic is the big. >> next question. i'll ask the chairman to stand up. to your right. given how readily you uncover these really disturbing facts, why do you think it is taking so long for his reputation to go unheeded? >> it took a while to get uncovered in austria anyway and a handful of scholars to know that to have known about asperger's involvement is just by comparison with other perpetrators who is a very minor figure. he didn't work at spiegelgrund finishes transferring people there. i think in the u.s. we have

different standards for the horror fact there. and then also in austria, autism is well known of the diagnosis and so he wasn't of interest due to that connection either. so the story behind how the asperger disorder was accepted as an autonomous diagnosis in 1994, the team that was behind that wrote to arc of this, saying what you know about asperger. can you please tell us because we don't want to name this disorder after someone who might've been implicated despite his reputation. a number of the archives wrote back saying we don't know anything. we can't help you. one scholar wrote back and said we don't know enough to say no, but we know enough to say hold on and conduct my research. at that time the world health organization has 30 put asperger

syndrome into the international classification of diseases. so it was already in existence and there was a lot of pressure to get asperger disorder into the american manual. maybe there's more to this story than i know about. >> we have a number of handset that i'm going to try to get to all of. >> i realize this is not in the scope, but in doing all your research -- [inaudible] >> did you stumble across anything -- [inaudible] >> they would be buried. [inaudible] >> yeah, a terrific letter if i'm from one and seen thank you

produced those seen the body. sorry we couldn't take the burial. at this child. >> to your left. >> you mention various ideologies of which genetics is a part. uncomfortable with genetics alone been responsible for rhythmic increase. what other things do you think might be playing the role? >> i have to just speak to this because i'm not in the science of autism, that the expansion of the diagnostic criteria is one factor that everyone recognizes. they're what we think of as autism and basically the idea. beyond that i can't speculate. there are all kinds of environmental -- yeah.

>> two year. >> you mentioned experiments being done on children. have you found something in the archive, specifically jewish children [inaudible] >> they were not kept at spiegelgrund in any kind of definitive fashion. they were deported elsewhere. the children i am dealing with. for the children who perished were jewish or half jewish. so i can't speak to anything like that because spiegelgrund was not a factor. i should say on the question of what happened to the bodies that 400, there were that half the

children who perished at spiegelgrund, their brains were kept in jars in the cellar as well as some other body part. >> he who controls the microphone controls the last question. i'm fascinated by your work. can you please let the crowd know what your next project is? >> sure. it is a happier project. [laughter] and it's of interest to your museum. i'm writing about switzerland in world war ii. switzerland played a terribly important role that is yet to be recognized not only at the economic front with trade and holocaust, but in terms of the spy story with the oss as well as nazi networks. the battle plans centers with their land and i hope to uncover

a lot of the secret stuff that was happening and what you could call europe's post office. i don't know if that's my title or not. >> well, we hope to have you back then. thank you. >> thank you. [applause]

>> live coverage from the tucson festival of books continues. liza mundy who has written most recently "code girls: the untold story of the american women code breakers of world war ii" now joins us on outdoor site to take your calls. liza mundy cannot define a history like this? did you stumble on