Holocaust Memorial Day, www.hmd.org.uk, which in 2006 falls on 26 January, commemorates those who suffered as a result of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution, including its disabled victims, and aims to demonstrate that the Holocaust is relevant to all sections of UK society today.

The Day provides a focus - through the national event, plus local events and activities - for people to think about the continuing repercussions of the Holocaust on society.

But why is this important to the NUS SWD Campaign? Well the reason why is because an estimated 200,000 disabled people were killed by the Nazis. The NUS SWD Campaign wants people to remember what happened this day and join together with different faith groups and liberation campaigns to state that this should never happen again. We have a responsibility to ensure that this never happens again and we must work together to fight all discrimination and fascism. That is also why the NUS SWD committee have submitted a motion of multi identities, discrimination & fascism to the NUS SWD conference 2006. If you would like to see the motion go to the motions document for NUS SWD conference.

You see the Nazis took Darwin's ideas of natural selection, in particular the idea of survival of the fittest in the animal kingdom, and applied them to the human world and society. It was argued that allowing disabled people to live and have children, led to the "unfit" reproducing more quickly than "the fit". It was said that this weakened society's ability to function efficiently, placing an unnecessary toll on non-disabled people. Hitler believed by eradicating every disabled person, he could wipe out disability. Babies born deaf, blind or with even the slightest imperfection were immediately disposed of. Hitler ordered the making of propaganda films to persuade the public of the necessity of eliminating people with genetic defects. Nazi propaganda in the form of posters, news-reels and cinema films portrayed disabled people as "useless eaters" and people who had "lives unworthy of living". The propaganda stressed the high cost of supporting disabled people, and suggested that there was something unhealthy or even unnatural about society paying for this.

The film "Victims of the Past" was made on Hitler's explicit orders and he made sure the film was shown in Germany's 5,300 cinemas. Special lighting effects distorted features so disabled people were portrayed as grotesque and could only survive at the expense of healthy people. Doctors, not soldiers, were put in charge of killing older people and disabled people, since they had first-hand knowledge of where they lived, and if their medical condition was temporary or not. Those deemed "curable" were transferred to special hospitals for slave labour and experiments.

After the propaganda came action. On the grounds that disabled people were less worthwhile and an unfair burden on society, a widespread and compulsory sterilization program took place. This began in 1933, as soon as the Nazis came to power. Under a secret plan called the 'T4 Program' (T4 was a reference to the address of the program's Berlin HQ - Tiergartenstrasse 4), disabled people in Germany were killed by lethal injection or poison gas. The T4 Program saw a string of six death camps - called "euthanasia centres" - set up across Germany and Austria. These centres contained gassing installations designed to look like shower stalls. It total an estimated 275,000 disabled people are believed to have been killed by the Nazis.

These figures in the 21st century seem unbelievable. But it was not even 100 years ago that this happened. Therefore as students we have a duty to educate our peers and ourselves about what happened. So this Thursday do spend some time thinking about the holocaust and the impact it had of so many people, from so many different groups. The only way that we can ensure things like this do not happen is by education, by joining together, by fighting for Liberation and stating Never Again.

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