Disabled Peoples' International - Europe

DPI Europe

The Holocaust of All

Battle of the Memory


The project “HABM: The Holocaust of All. Battle of the Memory”, has as its main objective to bring back among EU citizens the remembrance of the Nazi extermination of persons with disability. The construction of the individual or collective identity is based on remembrance and historical reconstruction of events. If in current society remembrance is in danger, due to the interruption of tradition, that of the Nazi holocaust of about 275.000 persons with disability was cancelled in the years following the Second World War and the Nuremberg Trials. The project will contribute to develop the european identity by bringing back to the memory the historical events that occurred and the pain suffered by thousand of persons with disabilities since only by preserving the past may we guarantee the future of Europe. A Europe in which diversity is an inalienable value, a starting point for preventing all forms of new eugenics that may be different in form.


The memory is equipped with a dynamic dimension, it preserves, recreates and reconstructs, therefore, the project converges on a unique and transversal target: awareness. The awareness of the individual and collective history of persons with disability always surrounded by discrimination and exclusion which in some historical ages, such as the Nazi one, which turned into tragic and cruel events: sterilization, infanticide, selective abortion, euthanasia, extermination. The awareness of remerging, with increasing strength of the Nazi thesis, certainly with other languages and forms but with the same meanings and purpose, that is to eliminate those who are a burden to society which has less and less resources available. And finally the awareness that the EU represents the bulwark against drifting eugenics and it is therefore necessary that all its citizens have the necessary knowledge to fully participate in the construction of a European society in which the future is guaranteed to all citizens with respect for diversity and differences.


The specific objectivesof the project are:

  • To increase the knowledge of the European civil society and of the Institutions on the issues addressed by the project, so that policies and actions may be elaborated, as sanctioned by art. 10 (Right to life) and 17 (Personal integrity) of the UNCRPD, that are able to stem future eugenic drifts;
  • To supply schools, young people, the population in general, PwDs, DPOs with the knowledge and awareness of their personal and group history so that they may become active protagonists in the construction of a non violent and non discriminating European Society;
  • To promote the protection of human rights sanctioned by the UNCRPD and ratified by the EU. 

© DPI-E 2023