FILM STATEMENT
Measure of Light documents the story of 3,000 Conscientious Objectors during World War II who challenged America’s practice of Eugenics, the pseudo-science responsible for Hitler’s campaign to create the master race.
BACKGROUND
Contrary to common belief, the philosophies of racial
cleansing associated with the Holocaust did not originate in
Nazi Germany but were born from an American scientific
movement called “Eugenics”.
While initially defined as a “movement advocating the improvement of the human race through various forms of intervention”, Eugenics in both America and Nazi Germany quickly devolved into a quest to build a master race. In an attempt to remove those deemed “unfit” from the American genetic pool, America’s mental hospitals mirrored the horrific conditions thought only to exist inside the Nazi concentration camps.
One such institution was the Philadelphia State Hospital in Byberry Pennsylvania, what would eventually be
labeled “Horror Camp of America”.
The atrocious conditions of the mental hospitals were not made public until a group of conscientious objectors were sent there to work off their mandatory military service. Moved by the cruel and inhumane conditions, the conscientious objectors revealed to the world this shocking reality in articles published by Life magazine as well as dozens of newspapers
across the nation.
Although criticized for their absence in the armed forces, the
conscientious objectors played a protagonizing role in an
otherwise dark moment in American history.