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Following decades of silence about the involvement of doctors, medical researchers and other health professionals in the Holocaust and other National Socialist (Nazi) crimes, scholars in recent years have produced a growing body of research that reveals the pervasive extent of that complicity. This interdisciplinary collection of studies presents documentation of the critical role medicine played in realizing the policies of Hitler's regime. It traces the history of Nazi medicine from its roots in the racial theories of the 1920s, through its manifestations during the Nazi period, on to legacies and continuities from the postwar years to the present.
List of contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Foreword William E. Seidelman Introduction to the Volume: Recognizing the Past in the Present
Sabine Hildebrandt, Miriam Offer, and Michael A. Grodin Part I: The Past Chapter 1. Non-Mechanistic Explanatory Styles in Interwar German Racial Theory: A Comparison of Hans F. K. Günther and Ludwig Ferdinand Clauß
Amit Varshizky Chapter 2. From "Racial Surveys" to Medical Experiments in Prisoner of War Camps
Margit Berner Chapter 3. "Der Doktor": The Writings of Mordechai Lensky During the Interwar Period
Miriam Offer Chapter 4. Rabbinic Responsa During the Holocaust: The Life-for-Life Problem
Johnathan I. Kelly, Erin L. Miller, Rabbi Joseph Polak, Robert Kirschner, and Michael A. Grodin Chapter 5. Un(B)earable: Pregnant Bodies and Obstetrical Genocide¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿
Annette Finley-Croswhite Chapter 6. "Complete Mastery of the Subject": The Connection between Forced Sterilization and Gynecological Fertility Research in National Socialism
Gabriele Czarnowski Chapter 7. Deference, Pragmatism, Ideology: The Medical Student Kurt Gerstein and the Predicament of Ethical Conduct under National Socialism
Mathias Schütz Chapter 8. Ludwig Stumpfegger (1910-1945): A Career at the Interface of Hitler, Himmler and Ravensbrück Concentration Camp
Stephanie Kaiser and Mathias Schmidt Chapter 9. Between Participation in National Socialist Medicine and Everyday Administrative Action: On the Economic Argument of the Psychiatric Planning Commission (1941-1945)
Felicitas Söhner Chapter 10. Dentists in National Socialist (Nazi) Germany: A Fragmented Profession
Matthis Krischel Chapter 11. Only Following Orders? Aviation Medicine in Nazi Germany
Alexander von Lünen Chapter 12. Blood and Bones from Auschwitz: The Mengele Link
Paul J. Weindling Part II: The Present: Postwar Continuities, Legacies, and Reflections Chapter 13. Renewed Trauma: Abraham De La Penha's Testimony against Dr Franz Lucas in the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial
Andrew Wisely Chapter 14. "
Schluss mit der Rassenschande!" From Separation to Extermination: The Fate of Jewish Mentally Ill Patients in Germany and Occupied Poland 1939-42
Kamila Uzarczyk Chapter 15. "Since she was in Auschwitz the patient feels that she is being persecuted": Holocaust Survivors and Austrian Psychiatry after World War II
Herwig Czech Chapter 16. "To Prevent Further Unfounded Aly Constructions"
Götz Aly Chapter 17. Baneful Medicine and a Radical Bioethics in Contemporary Art
Andrew Weinstein Chapter 18. The History of the Vienna Protocol
Sabine Hildebrandt, Joseph A. Polak, Michael A. Grodin, and William E. Seidelman Conclusion: The Past in the Present and the Future
Index
About the author
Sabine Hildebrandt is Associate Professor of Pediatrics in the Department of Pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital and serves as an anatomy educator at Harvard Medical School. She is the author of The Anatomy of Murder: Ethical Transgressions and Anatomical Science during the Third Reich (Berghahn, 2016).
Miriam Offer is Senior Lecturer in the Holocaust Studies Program, Western Galilee College and teaches Medicine and the Holocaust at Tel Aviv University. She is the author of White Coats Inside the Ghetto: Jewish Medicine in Poland During the Holocaust (Hebrew, Yad Vashem, 2015).
Michael A. Grodin (1951-2023) was Professor of Health Law, Ethics & Human Rights at the Boston University School of Public Health and was also Professor and Director of the Project on Medicine and the Holocaust at the Eli Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences at Boston University. His books include the edited volume Jewish Medical Resistance in the Holocaust (Berghahn, 2014).
Summary
This interdisciplinary collection assembles a chain of documentation on the critical role of medicine in realizing the policies of Hitler's regime.
