The role of doctors in Nazi atrocities

The researchers present a detailed account of the monstrosities committed by doctors during the Nazi regime and point out that studies and experiments from the era continue to be used uncritically. “It is often surprising how limited the medical community’s current knowledge of the crimes committed by doctors is. Nazi doctors, with the exception of only a vague idea of ​​Josef Mengele’s experiments in the Auschwitz concentration camp,” noted Herwig Czech of the Medical University of Vienna in Austria.

This is why Czech and his colleagues three years ago suggested to the editor-in-chief of the scientific journal The Lancet the creation of a commission with the aim of expanding this knowledge and drawing conclusions for the future.

In the commission’s comprehensive report, now available, the researchers not only compiled historical evidence about the medical atrocities committed under the Nazi regime, but also demonstrated with great clarity how these acts of cruelty did not occur in isolation and how their impact persists. today again. .

The document details how doctors and health experts contributed to the drafting of the so-called “compulsory sterilization laws” and were actively involved in the sterilization of more than 350,000 people classified as “genetically inferior” by Nazi racial laws.

Many of these people suffered serious physical and psychological injuries, as well as many others who died during the procedures. At least 230,000 patients who suffered from mental, cognitive problems or had physical limitations were murdered during World War II in so-called euthanasia programs in Germany and the occupied territories. Tens of thousands of people suffered abuse while being used as guinea pigs, for example in concentration camps.

Eugenics as pseudojustification

Nazi racial theory served as a pseudoscientific justification for these atrocities. At the basis of this “racial hygiene” was eugenics, the study of presumed good genetic characteristics, according to a theory published in the mid-19th century by the British naturalist Charles Darwin, according to which in a process of natural selection only the majority some of the strong survive, while the others disappear.

Eugenicists also applied this concept of natural selection to human societies. In this way, the reproduction of people with supposedly better genetic configurations should be promoted, just as the reproduction of people with inferior genetic configurations should be avoided.

In Germany and other countries eugenics developed as a science that was socially accepted across all parties, social classes and even in the fields of research and medicine, becoming the cause of enormous suffering.

At the beginning of the 20th century these ideas found fertile ground, especially in Germany. Mass unemployment threw millions of people into poverty, crime increased dramatically, diseases spread, and mortality was quite high. Based on eugenics, these problems were attributed to “inferior biological substances.”

“Valueless Lives”

Therefore, only drastic eugenic measures such as the forced sterilization of “worthless lives” could prevent the decline of society. There was very little money, food or space to share with these people.

For the Nazis especially, eugenics served as a convenient justification for their racial follies. On the one hand, they promoted the creation of so-called “Aryan children”, but on the other hand they wanted to radically destroy so-called “worthless lives” through sterilization, euthanasia or systematic murder, as in concentration camps. Scientists and doctors have been actively involved in this process.

The report, based on 878 sources of information, is the most comprehensive yet on the atrocities, The Lancet says.

The text recounts the development of medical research during the Nazi era and individually portrays the perpetrators, as well as the victims and the doctors imprisoned by the regime who treated their fellow prisoners in the most difficult conditions, including concentration camps.

Traces up to the present day

Despite intense investigations, many of the perpetrators and accomplices were not held accountable after the war or were only charged much later.

According to the report, knowledge gathered by the Nazis is generally used uncritically. Austrian Eduard Pernkopf’s anatomical atlas is still used today thanks to his attention to detail. In the work, the staunch Nazi anatomist used images of people executed during the Nazi regime.

Another concern of the commission is to raise awareness among medical professionals of the origin of applied knowledge. “Medical students, researchers and health workers need to know where – and from whom – the basis of medical knowledge comes. They owe it to the victims of Nazism,” said Shmuel Pinchas Reis of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, co- president of the commission.

Lessons for the future

The authors see their report as a first step as they plan extensive online documentation work. “Nazi medical atrocities are among the best-documented examples of medical involvement in human rights violations in history,” says Sabine Hildebrant of Harvard Medical School, USA, also co-chair of the commission.

“We must study the worst in human history to recognize and counter similar patterns in the present, with the aim of promoting the best,” he concluded.

Source: Terra

Rose

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