 Maurice Torda is professor at Oxford Brookes University and the director of its Center for Medical Humanities. His main research interests include History of Eugenics, Scientific Racism, History of Anthropology, and the History of Medicine. He has published a number of books on the history of eugenics, including Modernism and Eugenics, Latin Eugenics in Comparative Perspectives, and the History of East-Central European Eugenics, Texts, and Commentaries. He also produced a podcast series on the current relevance of eugenics and is the curator of two exhibitions on the history of eugenics. My name is Maurice Torda. I am a professor of history at Oxford Brookes University, where I teach courses on the history of eugenics and racism. I'm also the curator of a new exhibition on the history and contemporary relevance of eugenics entitled We Are Not Alone, Legacies of Eugenics, which is on display at the Vina Holocaust Library between the 21st and the 30th of September 2021, marking a century since the influential Second International Eugenics Congress was organized at the American Museum of Racial History in New York. This centenary presents us with a critical moment to review our myriad assumptions and attitudes, rooted in eugenics, continue to affect our world in ways both obvious and hidden, engaging with and contributing to a global anti-eugenic movement of reckoning with the past. The exhibition, We Are Not Alone, the Legacies of Eugenics, reveals the shifting and fluid meanings which characterized ideas of human betterment in different national and international contexts. In a much circulated poster, Nazi propagandists claimed that their program of compulsory sterilization was in no way different from other similar legislation introducing countries such as the United States of America in Sweden and planned in Japan and in other European countries such as Britain, Hungary and Poland. We're not the only ones planning to eliminate defectives from society, they said. This message was conveyed by way of an image of a man protecting his wife and child by holding a shield with the inscription, the law for the prevention of a relatively diseased offspring, 14th of July, 1933. This is a powerful image and it is particularly powerful because it simplifies a very complex story and presents us with an uncomfortable truth. The good guys were equally bad. There is no such thing as bad eugenics and good eugenics. It is this claim that I explore in the exhibition, aiming to reveal the transnational character of eugenics across the 20th century and beyond. In the following, I would like to briefly describe the main components of the exhibition. It consists of 10 sections and several artefacts from the science collection and the Galton Archive and University College London. We begin by looking at British eugenics and the First International Congress of Eugenics convened in London in 1912. The British scientist Francis Galton coined the term eugenics in 1883 from the Greek expression world of war. He defined it as the study of agencies under social control, the main proof or impair the racial qualities of future generation, either physically or mentally. At the end of the 19th century, many people from across the political spectrum and from various scientific positions were attracted by the prospect of improving the human race through eugenics. Eugenics was also seen as a solution to social problems as diverse as crime, alcoholism and poverty. By the time the First International Congress of Eugenics convened in London in 1912, eugenics societies had been established in Germany, Britain, Sweden and the United States of America. It had become a truly global phenomenon. We then look at marriage, family and children, two important topics discussed biogenesis worldwide. Eugenicists were avid communicators. Across the world, they sought to engage with the public through lectures, fairs, writings, plays, art and design, radio talks, films and of course, exhibitions. They were keenly aware that complex scientific ideas about human eredity and its role in shaping our lives could be most easily disseminated when visualized at public fairs, for instance, or in the press. Popular culture was the most efficient way to bridge the gap between specialized knowledge about eugenics and the interests of the public around a number of issues from marriage and family to the well-being of future generation. In the next section, we look at education. Education was of paramount importance to eugenics. From its inception, the Eugenics Education Society in Britain aspired to further eugenic teaching at home in the school and elsewhere. In turn, eugenics appealed to educationalists, school reformers and feminists who advocated teaching children and the use of the nation sound morals alongside physical education and modern ideas of hygiene. They were considered essential to maintaining a healthy body and mind and in society's advancement towards the eugenic future. The general unpreparedness of teachers in matters of eugenic education was, however, one major obstacle. Hence, the involvement of the Eugenics Society in the training of teachers, social and care workers in the basic knowledge of eredity and eugenics so they could identify the intellectual and physical needs of those under their supervision and act accordingly. In the fourth section, we look at feeble mindedness and mental deficiency. Eugenics asserted the supremacy of eredity. Notions of cultural progress, intellectual achievement, racial protectionism, biological decline, social pathology and criminal behavior were all infused with the belief that it was the quality of a person's eredity that determined their destiny. To correct the outcome of the sexist generation of unfortunate mating choices through education and environmental improvement was deemed to costly and rather ineffectual. Instead, the solutions preferred by the eugenicists such as sterilization, segregation, legislation against immigration and miscegenation were seen as more practical and imagined to have an immediate effect on society. The term feeble minded was first used in 1876. The Royal College of Physicians in London defined a feeble minded person to be one who is capable of earning his living under favorable circumstance but is incapable from mental defect existing from birth or from an early age of A, competing on equal terms with his normal fellows or B, of managing himself and his affairs with ordinary prudence. Feeble mindedness and his corollary mental deficiency was one of the major issues that brought together and also divided scientists, politicians, health reformers and educators. Eugenicists were constantly alarmed by the growing number of people they called feeble minded. In their scientific publications, political speeches, newspaper articles and public lectures, they constantly used terms that we recognize today as exceptionally offensive. Feeble mindedness was believed to be hereditary and a threat to the future of the race. We then look at American eugenics and the second International Congress of Eugenics organized in York in 1921. The organized eugenic movement in the United States sprang from many theoretical sources. This included anarchism, modern approaches to hygiene and health, political efforts to restrict immigration and prevent miscegenation and of course, Mendelian genetics. The American Breeders Association was the first national organization to promote eugenics and genetic research. Its committee on eugenics was established in 1906 and led by the botanist Luther Burbank. In the same year, nutritionist John Kellogg founded the Race Betterment Foundation in Butler Creek, Michigan. The eugenics record office at Cold Spring Harbor, New York was, however, the leading organization attracting some of the nation's major scientists. The world's first realization law was enacted in 1907 in Indiana, establishing a tradition of punitive and negative eugenic practices whose outcomes are felt to this day. Two international congresses, eugenics, were organized at the National History Museum in New York in 1921 and 1932 respectively, confirming United States leadership in global eugenics. From America, we cross back into Europe and we look at German and Nazi racial hygiene. Eugenic ideas of race improvement travel fast and wide across Germany during the 80s. Physician Wilhelm Schalmeyer was amongst the first to formulate a theory of eugenics based on the idea of Fererbums Hygiene Hereditary Hygiene. Another complementary concept, Tönn Rassenhygiene, racial hygiene, was formulated by Physician Alfred Plutz. The latter term expressed both the scope and the intentions of German eugenics, which became fixated on the protection of the hereditary qualities of the race. There was, however, a diversity of opinion on every eugenic issue of importance. For instance, some German eugenicists endorsed ideas of Aryan supremacy, Nordicism and Anti-Semitism, while others were critical of them. Many feminists and eugenicists on the left endorsed eugenics realisation, but Catholic conservatives often opposed it. Aided by several political factors, including the defeat in World War I and the rise of Nazism, racial hygiene movement in Germany became the world's most successful. Its consequences were devastating, however. After 1933, it has mixed deeply with racism and anti-Semitism, leading to the murder of thousands of people with disability through the T4 euthanasia programme and then to the extermination of millions of people in the Holocaust. We then look at how broadly, geographically, and conceptually eugenics became during the interwar period. We look at its internationalisation. Between the 80s and the 1950s, eugenic movements developed across Europe, North, Central and South America, as well as India, Japan, China and Australasia. National eugenics societies had been established before World War I. During the interwar period, they thrived and some, such as the Greek eugenics society, for instance, only developed during the early 1950s. Some of these societies collaborated within the International Federation of eugenics organisations, while others acted regionally, such as those organising the Pan-American office of eugenics and homiculture. Others still decided to establish an alternative International Federation of Latin eugenics societies. The nationalisation of eugenics and its internationalisation, when hand in hand, both in practice and in rhetoric, each national context had its own model of eugenics. But eugenics learned how to communicate efficiently across borders, to exchange views and inspire one another. With this idea in mind, we move to the next panel, which looked at the scientists, which looked at the experts. For almost a century, eugenics influenced and transformed social realities and the scientific explanations that accompanied them. It also weaponised politics and radicalised culture, promoting discrimination and inequality. As it dehumanised the human subject, eugenics killfully manoeuvred its way into a position of power and authority by associating itself with a host of concerns, from human rights, reproductive or otherwise, to environmentalism and ecology. Importantly, eugenics was constantly sustained by expert knowledge and bolstered by scientific research that pour out of institutes, universities, private and state organisations and various government agencies. In turn, eugenics were considered experts and they advised and knowledge widely praised as beneficial to society. We then turn to those targeted by eugenic policies. We turn to the victims. Eugenics targeted people in society were considered to be substandard, either due to their physical or mental disabilities, or because their social and racial non-white origins positioned them in less privileged positions in society. In his 1951 Cavendish lecture to the West London Medical Chirurgical Society Ernst Barnes, Bishop of Birmingham, described his people as inferior human strains. Discriminatory eugenic arguments were used against these individuals, targeting them irrespective of age and gender. Children were murdered in Nazi Germany and black and Hispanic women were sterilised in North America. Indigenous people across the world were subjected to humiliating racial research to assume their, to evidence their assume inferiority. A practice also extended to ethnic minorities such as the Roma in Europe. Racial, social and cultural boundaries between eugenically valuable individuals and those considered otherwise have been repeatedly reinforced through racist legislation, medical institutionalisation and state sanctioned policies of segregation and annihilation. In the last panel of the exhibition, we turn to the ways we can employ to fight back. We turn to confronting eugenics. Healing the deep wounds caused by a century of eugenics requires public recognition of those wronged in the past and of those who continue to be mistreated in the present. It is a slow process, but progress is being made. Victims of sterilisation in Japan, the Czech Republic, Peru, the United States and elsewhere are finally being issued official apologies and provided with financial compensation. Human reproductive rights everywhere must be respected and know eugenic discrimination against people belonging to religious, ethnic and sexual minorities or of those living with disabilities should be allowed to happen again. Historically disenfranchised groups such as the Roma must be empowered and racism rejected and hesitating. The stories of those women and men who've been harmed by eugenics must be told in their lives, respected. The Skita Saburo, a Japanese victim of sterilisation, so poignantly put it, I just want the authorities to apologise for the injustice. If we act alone, they can break us like disposable chopsticks but if you unite, we will become a large tree and no one can break us. A tree speaks of hope, togetherness. It speaks of dedication and collective and personal healing. It also allows us to turn to one of the most familiar images associated with eugenics, that of a large tree with strong roots each representing a scientific discipline. This include biology, anthropology, genetics, medicine, psychiatry, sociology, education and politics. The accompanying note is clear. Like a tree, eugenics draws its materials from many sources and organises them into an harmonious entity. As the official logo of two international congresses on eugenics held in 1921 and 1932, this tree captured the attention of scientists and participants attending these major events. That it was represented as a synthesis of all scientific, social, religious, culture and political activities is only one of the signs explaining the longevity of eugenics. The other is the credibility of the Western scientific tradition into which eugenics was planted by Francis Gorton during the 80s, 60s and 80s, 70s. Nurtured by scientists devoted to race improvement, the tree of eugenics grew stronger and stronger, reaching maturity during the 1930s. After the Holocaust, the tree was denuded of its branches, but its roots remained very deep, embedded in our society, culture and politics. They continued to provide sustenance to various social, economic and educational policies across the world. The time has come to cut down this tree and remove its global roots. We must plant another tree, one that reflects our collective reckoning with the legacies of eugenics. Judy Dow, an Arbenati French-Canadian educator and artist created a witness tree to capture this anti-eugenic movement, which we included in the exhibition. Her message and the one which I want to share with our visitors is this, like a tree, anti-eugenics draws from many sources and transforms them into a one mind and one heart way of being. Such, in confusing brevity, are the main lines of the historically informed account of our eugenic past, present and future, which this exhibition seeks to describe balancing various elements of continuity and discontinuity of idiosyncrasy and similarity. Continuing education about and engagement with eugenics, as well as its public condemnation, are essential components of our efforts to understand a hidden and unpleasant past, while at the same time continuing work towards a fair and just society. A century later, since the second International Eugenics Congress, we invite visitors to engage with the legacies of eugenics across time and space and to reflect on what eugenics means for us today. This remains a very sensitive and emotional issue for many people, not least because for so long eugenics has reinforced discriminatory practices based on race, class, gender, disability and age. A global reckoning with the legacies of eugenics is essential for a broader social, gender and racial justice project to succeed. Thank you.