Fwd: Medicine and Morality: Lessons from the Holocaust and COVID-19

[Tatjana Meschede]

Dear all,

this information may be of interest to you.

Be well, Tatjana

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: ikempner <ikem...@aol.com>
Date: Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 4:25 PM
Subject: Medicine and Morality: Lessons from the Holocaust and COVID-19
To: Tatjana Meschede <mesc...@brandeis.edu>, Irv Kempner <ikem...@aol.com>

Please share with your German dialog group.

Role of the German Medical Profession during WWII

From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany carried out a campaign to "cleanse" German society of individuals viewed as biological threats to the nation's "health." The Nazis enlisted the help of physicians and medically trained geneticists, psychiatrists, and anthropologists to develop racial health policies. These policies began with the mass sterilization View This Term in the Glossary of many people in hospitals and other institutions and ended with the near annihilation of European Jewry.

Unethical medical experimentation (without patient consent or any safeguards) carried out during the Third Reich may be divided into three categories.

1. Experiments dealing with the survival of military personnel

Many experiments in the camps intended to facilitate the survival of Axis military personnel in the field.  For example, at Dachau, physicians from the German air force and from the German Experimental Institution for Aviation conducted high-altitude experiments on prisoners  to determine the maximum altitude from which crews of damaged aircraft could parachute to safety. Scientists there also carried out so-called freezing experiments on prisoners to find an effective treatment for hypothermia. Prisoners were also used  to test various methods of making seawater drinkable.

2. Experiments to test drugs and treatments

Photograph documenting medical experiments on a Polish prisoner in the Ravensbrück concentration camp

Clandestine photograph of a Polish political prisoner and medical experiment victim in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. 

Prisoners in the Ravensbrück concentration camp took several clandestine photographs as evidence of the medical experiments conducted on them. The camp was the site of bone-grafting experiments and experiments to test newly developed sulfa drugs.

Pictured here, Bogumila Jasuik was chosen as one of the 74 "rabbits" for medical experimentation. German doctors experimented on her twice in November and December 1942, making four cuts on the muscles of her thigh.

The "rabbits" wanted to take photographs to document their mutilated legs. The photos were secretly taken behind the barracks and were processed after the war.

• US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Anna Hassa Jarosky

• View Archival Details

Other experiments aimed to develop and test drugs and treatment methods for injuries and illnesses which German military and occupation personnel encountered in the field.  At the German concentration camps of Sachsenhausen, Dachau, Natzweiler, Buchenwald, and Neuengamme, scientists used camp inmates to test immunization compounds and antibodies for the prevention and treatment of contagious diseases, including malaria, typhus, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, yellow fever, and infectious hepatitis. Physicians at Ravensbrück conducted experiments in bone-grafting and tested newly developed sulfa (sulfanilamide) drugs. At Natzweiler and Sachsenhausen, prisoners were exposed  to phosgene and mustard gas in order to test possible antidotes.

3. Experiments to advance Nazi racial and ideological goals

A third category of medical experimentation sought to advance the racial and ideological tenets of the Nazi worldview.  The most infamous were the experiments of Josef Mengele on twins of all ages at Auschwitz.  He also directed experiments on Roma View This Term in the Glossary (Gypsies), as did Werner Fischer at Sachsenhausen, to determine how different "races" withstood various contagious diseases. The research of August Hirt at Strasbourg University also intended to establish "Jewish racial inferiority."  Additional gruesome experiments meant to further Nazi racial goals included  a series of sterilization View This Term in the Glossary experiments, undertaken primarily at Auschwitz and Ravensbrück. Scientists tested a number of methods in an effort to develop an efficient and inexpensive procedure for the mass sterilization View This Term in the Glossary of Jews, Roma, View This Term in the Glossary and other groups Nazi leaders considered to be racially or genetically undesirable.

The March of the Living reflects on the active collaboration of scientists and  the medical profession in Germany during the Nazi era and contrasts  the courageous perseverance of righteous medical community Doctors  in occupied Europe who risked their lives  and served as rays of light during the Holocaust. Their example and testimony resulted in the adoption of The Numberg Code principles  of informed consent and required standards of of medical research used throughout the western world today.

This year, The March of the Living  also salutes the relentless commitment of the selfless professionals facing today’s Covid 19 world health crisis in this informative program developed in conjunction with Rutgers University Medical School. 

Please click on the link below to watch this informative program called Medicine and Morality and feel free to share it too;

https://youtu.be/JcVYWkI7WZM

Irv Kempner Chairman

New England friends of the March of the Living 

EIN# 84-2622534

100 Pond Street

Sharon, MA 02067

617.285.8620 cell

781.784.0917 home

To learn about supporting the MOTL Poland Israel Teen and Adult
Heritage trips visit our website: 

https://motlnewengland.org/

--

Tatjana Meschede, Ph.D. (she/her) Faculty Page
Associate Director, Institute for Economic and Racial Equity (IERE, formerly IASP)

Senior Scientist, The Center for Youth in Communities (CYC)

Senior Lecturer, The Heller School for Social Policy and Management

Brandeis University

I acknowledge that Brandeis University, where I work, occupies unceded Nipmuc and Massachusett lands.