The commanders of Auschwitz, Richard Baer and Rudolf Hoes (at the tips). In the center, Josef Mengele, a doctor of Auschwitz, known as the Angel of Death.
A new database reveals the destinations and suffering of the victims of forced medical experiences during the Nazi era, and warns of the continuity of postwar results use.
Nazi atrocities include medical experiences in humans, especially Jewish, prisoners of war, gypsies and people with disabilities, who included testing with pathogens, toxins and medications, organ removal, controlled freezing and sterilization.
Tens of thousands of people have been victims of these experiences. A new online database released in Germany includes detailed 16,000 profiles of them. It contains even over 13,000 profiles of people whose destinations remain uncertain.
This It’s the first time which becomes available systematic access to the names and biographical data of these victims, the experiences performed and the institutions involved. The database was created by the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Max Planck society. Scientists from its predecessor, Kaiser Wilhelm society, conducted investigations during the Nazi era with humans that undoubtedly resulted from the mass murders perpetrated by the Nazis.
Racism as justification
More than 200 institutions in Germany and Europe were involved in medical crimes committed during the Nazi era. The total extension of these atrocities was revealed by a report completed in 2023 by the Lancet Commission on Medicine, National Socialism and Holocaust.
This detailed report demonstrates that doctors in various functions have used a “race” as justification for the crimes committed and for the execution of forced sterilization, euthanasia programs and the selection of large -scale people. Only a few doctors and investigators had to answer for their crimes after World War II.
Data used to this day
With the end of the war, some scientists and institutions continued their work without being questioned or contested. Representatives of Nazi medicine, for example, at the Kaiser Wilhelm institutes, were able to continue working in Western Germany after 1945.
Also NASA’s Aeronautical and Spatial Medicine Programs were supported by the experience of people who had acquired their knowledge through experiences in Nazi concentration camps, according to medical historian Herwig Czech of the Vienna Medical University, one of the founders of the Lancet Commission on Medicine, National Socialism and Holocaust.
Especially postwar, some of the data obtained during the Nazi era were used without reflection, in part because the circumstances of experiences or the origin of the data were rarely discussed. Data from human experiences about cold tolerance, antibiotic treatments, or the effects of phosgenic gas – a highly toxic gas used as a chemical weapon during World War I – were published, repeatedly cited and used in medical journals after World War II.
“Even in 1988, scientists at the US Environmental Protection Agency proposed to use the results of the Otto Bickenbach experiences in prisoners at Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp as the basis for animal experiences related to phospenic exposure regulations-this idea was only abandoned after protests from a group of agency colleagues,” says Professor Sabine Hildebrandt, from Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Late Review
Areas of human genetics, psychiatry and medical anthropology also metodically used developed and applied practices during the Nazi period.
“There was a relatively high degree of continuity in the areas of anatomy and neuropathology, as large neuropathological collections were created during the Nazi period, to which researchers continued to resort long after the war,” says Czech.
The “scientific value” of these inhuman experiences is limited and, according to the medical historian, practically does not play any role in current intensive medicine. However, tissue samples, prepared from human organs or brain cuts obtained from victims of Nazism continued to be used in German -language research institutes and for pedagogical purposes even decades after 1945.
Only from the 1980s, or even in the 1990s, was there a systematic review of these procedures and the burial of remains due to political and social pressure. A well -known example is the collections of Max Planck society, whose process only began in 1997.
Most techniques and data from the Nazi era are practically no longer relevant and or used, according to Hildebrandt. “But that does not mean that the knowledge of these investigations have not been incorporated into general medical knowledge and continue to influence, for example, textbooks of specific medical disciplines.”
Even though critical reflection and ethical debate on the treatment of these discoveries are norm in medicine and research, greater awareness of the context in which the information used in some scientific publications was obtained, says Hildebrandt. “Identification and contextualization alone are not enough. They must be complemented by the names of the victims, their biographies and their suffering.”
A model for other countries?
Forced medical investigation and experiences in humans are not exclusive to Nazism – they existed before, they continued later and occurred around the world, especially in the colonial context.
However, the critical debate often does not exist or is inadequate. “And this is one of the reasons why the Lancet Commission was created: Medicine in Nazism is the best investigated and most extreme example of medical transgressions that occurred under authoritarian regimes,” says Hildebrandt.
Some countries, especially those with colonial past, are taking on this responsibility. Others, such as Japan, who committed medical atrocities and conducted human experiences in prisoners of war and the civilian population in China, Korea and other occupied territories, have not yet done so.
“Other countries and times have other stories, which often still need to be investigated exhaustively to clarify their influence on the present,” says Hildebrandt. “Here, in the United States, there is finally more research on the history of medicine and slavery, but the current government is trying to reverse it.”
