Why you should read this article

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To learn about the events that took place in Nazi Germany between 1940 and 1941 in which more than 70,000 people with disabilities and mental illness were murdered

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To explore the challenges in constructing the life stories of the victims to ensure proper commemoration and memorialisation

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To develop awareness of how this history can be employed by learning disability nurses to identify and respond to contemporary threats to the existence of those in their care

Finding Ivy: a life worthy of life is an international research project that has pieced together the stories of 13 British-born people murdered between 1940 and 1941 as part of Nazi Germany’s state killing programme, Aktion T4. All 13 victims either had disabilities or mental illness and had been deemed to have ‘lives unworthy of living’ according to Nazi ideology. This article provides a summary of how the research was undertaken, including the challenges of telling these life stories to ensure proper commemoration and memorialisation of the victims. We, as authors of this article, use the story of Ivy Angerer, a woman with learning disabilities, as an example of the narratives that have been uncovered before considering how these stories can help learning disability nurses identify and respond to contemporary threats to the existence of the people in their care.