Helga Gross was born deaf to hearing parents on January 15, 1923, in Hamburg, Germany. Helga had four siblings, including one brother, Raymond, who was also born deaf. She described her childhood as very happy until Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933.
Helga’s mother taught her to speak German and to play the piano. She used sign language, spoken language, and lipreading to communicate with others. Helga went to a deaf school until she was 14 years old. The instructors at the school did not allow the children to use sign language and instead required them to lipread, which the teachers believed would help the students best communicate with the hearing world. The students, however, found that they could better express themselves using sign language and preferred this modality to socialize with one another.
On July 14, 1933, the Nazis enacted the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases (also known as the “Hereditary Health Law”). Individuals who were subject to the law were those who had any of nine conditions described in the law: ”hereditary feeblemindedness,” schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, genetic epilepsy, Huntington’s chorea (a rare degenerative disease), genetic blindness, genetic deafness, severe physical “deformity,” and chronic alcoholism. It was never known what caused Helga and Raymond’s deafness, but regardless, Helga was among the 400,000 Germans forcibly sterilized under this law.
When Helga was 10 or 11 years old, a teacher at her school informed the students that they would have an operation so that they could not “have children who would grow up and be deaf.” There was no further explanation. Helga’s uncle, who was a judge, tried to halt the process, but as he had not joined the Nazi Party, his influence was limited. Helga was sterilized in 1939, when she was 16 years old. She woke up from the operation in immense pain and when her friends from school visited her in the hospital, they cried together.
Approximately 320,000 of the 400,000 sterilizations of people with disabilities occurred between the years 1934-1939. After this, the process slowed due to the war effort. Helga’s brother, Raymond, also received sterilization orders. By the time his appointment time came, World War II was in full force and the hospital was full of wounded soldiers. They had no vacancy for Raymond and the doctor told him to come back when there was an available bed. Raymond chose not to return to the hospital and therefore he was never sterilized.
After finishing school, Helga’s mother taught her household chores like cooking, sewing, and cleaning. Shortly after her sterilization, Helga began apprenticing as a weaver. She lived with her supervisor, a skilled weaver, in Westerland, located on the island of Sylt in the North Sea.
Because Hamburg was home to manufacturing plants and shipyards essential to the war effort, Allied forces began bombing the city in July 1943, dropping thousands of bombs and destroying most of the infrastructure of central Hamburg and beyond. Many more air raids followed. Helga did not know if her parents survived the initial bombings and subsequent firestorms for a full month, until they sent her word from Bavaria, where they had fled. She reunited with them there.
After the war, Helga married Joachim Peters, who she met at a swimming tournament in Leipzig, Germany. Joach was also deaf and had been sterilized. He had initially resisted going to the hospital for his operation, ignoring his sterilization orders. The police eventually forced him to go to the hospital where doctors tied him to the operating table and sterilized him without any anesthesia or medication for pain. Joachim had been an Olympic swimmer prior to the operation but afterwards, his skills suffered as a result.
Following Germany’s surrender after World War II, Germany was divided into four zones: American, British, French, and Soviet. Hamburg was in the British zone. Joachim lived in East Germany, the former Soviet zone, and Helga joined him there after they married. They soon tired of life under communism and after two years, daringly escaped to West Germany
Helga and Joachim lived in Hamburg for two years while attempting to immigrate to the United States. At the time, the United States did not accept most immigrants with disabilities, and they rejected the couple’s immigration applications. Helga and Joachim met a man named Tom Rule in Hamburg who was visiting from Boston, Massachusetts. He was also deaf and when he returned to the United States, he advocated for their immigration with the United States government. After two years on the waiting list, Helga and Joachim were able to sail to the United States. Tom met them in New York and then drove them to Detroit, Michigan, where Joachim’s aunt and uncle lived.
In the United States, Helga worked as a weaver and housewife, and Joachim as a carpenter. Helga learned American Sign Language (ASL) by reading dictionaries and working with the pastor at her Lutheran church. The couple lived in Detroit for 19 years and in 1972, moved to San Diego, California, where Joachim worked at the Naval Air Station. Joachim died from cancer only two years after retiring. Helga was a widow for over a decade until she met her second husband, Bernard Gross.
Helga did not fully understand the impact of her sterilization until decades after the operation. One of her sisters had a baby in 1954, and when Helga held the infant, she fully realized for the first time that she would never have a baby of her own. She became overwhelmed with grief and fled the room. When her sister asked her what was wrong, Helga hid her emotions, telling the new mother that she was simply happy about her beautiful baby. For many years, Helga continued to struggle with the choices cruelly taken away from her.
Helga’s brother Raymond, who was not sterilized, eventually had twin daughters.
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