The 70273 Project

I ran across this somewhere in internet land... the 70273 Project. The originator watched a documentary, and a number jumped out at her: 70,273. It's the number of mentally and physically disabled people who were murdered by Nazis during WWII (starting in about 1940, I believe). Three doctors would look at people's papers - not even at the people themselves, just their papers - and if they were deemed "unfit" the doctor would put a Red X on the paper. If two out of three doctors gave a person a Red X, that person was doomed to die via gas chamber or other awful method chosen by the Nazis. The originator felt moved to do something, and decided to make white quilt blocks containing 2 Red Xs. 70,273 of them. She named it the 70273 Project.

I felt saddened by this, too, thinking about all the students I worked with in my years working in Special Education. Probably all of my students would have been deemed "unfit" by the Nazi standards. How heart-breaking, when I think of what wonderful people they are. The world lost out big time when those 70,273 people were killed, along with the 4 million Jews and others as well. What a travesty.

So in honor of all my wonderful students, I decided to make a few Red X blocks for this project. I asked my small group, Loose Threads, to join me. We had a fun day of sewing and hand stitching and made about 25 blocks. I think I'll make a couple more to make sure we have at least 27.. that's the number of years I worked for the school district in the Special Ed department.

You can click on the button in my sidebar, The 70273 Project, and learn more about this project, if you want.