Helga Gross was among 400,000 Germans forcibly sterilized under a Nazi law targeting people with disabilities. Born to a hearing family in 1923 in Hamburg, Germany, Helga was sterilized at age 16. "They explained to the deaf children that they didn’t want deaf children—that they had to be sterilized because they didn’t want deaf children to have children who would grow up and be deaf as well," Helga recalled. Helga didn't realize the significance of being sterilized until almost 20 years later w

Helga Gross was among 400,000 Germans sterilized under a Nazi law targeting people with disabilities. She and other deaf students learned they would have a surgery so they couldn't "have children who would grow up and be deaf." Many years later, the trauma reemerged for Helga when she met her sister's baby. On this day in 1933, the German government passed the “Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases.” The law allowed authorities to forcibly sterilize people with certain men