Social History

Łotysz, S. (2026). Care for children with intellectual disability and the persistence of eugenic ideas in Poland in the late 1950s. Social History, 51(1), 39–58. Taylor & Francis (February 24, 2026) 

This study looks into a previously unnoticed rise of eugenic concepts in Polish legal and medical discourses in the late 1950s. It took the form of a newspaper debate about policies pertaining to children with intellectual disabilities. By examining the viewpoints of civic leaders, attorneys, physicians and social workers, I show that eugenic solutions were frequently sought to remedy the flaws of the care system for such children. I examine the issue in light of the political, socio-economic and ideological constraints that the social welfare system and the medical sciences were subject to at the time. While eugenic concepts were suppressed during the Stalinist era, its proponents pushed actively to bring them back into the mainstream after it ended. This, I argue, disproves the generally held idea that when Nazi crimes committed in the name of racial hygiene were revealed, eugenics was generally rejected.