The founder of German racial science, Alfred Ploetz, said that America was the “bold leader in the realm of eugenics.” The philosophical underpinning for the murderous Nazi policies that culminated in the Holocaust – was a racist crusade masquerading as the science of Eugenics, Rassenhygiene (“racial hygiene”). Eugenicists deemed specific…
Sept. 16, 1933: The Journal of the American Medical Association reports that the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, Germany, headed by Professor Ernst Rudin, MD, had “received a bequest of $1,000,000 (from an American donor) . . . as a culmination of many previous gifts.” December 21, 1933: A front-page report in…
“The medical crimes of the Third Reich were the result of a dynamic triad involving the state, the medical profession, and an academic enterprise comprising the universities and the research institutes.” (Seidelman, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 2000) Germany was the birthplace of modern medicine in the early 20th century. The…
Before the Third Reich, German anatomists relied on unclaimed corpses from hospitals, psychiatric facilities, and prisons; but prisons were a minor source because Germany executed fewer than 20 civilians a year between 1907 and 1932. After the Nazis gained control, the government meted out death sentences for even minor infractions,…
Extracts from Deutsches Ärzteblatt (Journal of the German Medical Association) Nov. 1932: Dr. Haedenkamp, executive director of the Hartmannbund (one of the two largest German medical associations); he is editor of its journal, Deutsches Ärzteblatt (DÄ) sent a petition to the ministry of the interior: “with the request that it…
When Hitler came to power in 1933, a central goal was to identify and eliminate Germany’s 600,000 Jews – a goal that was rapidly expanded to target the entire European Jewish population. A question that had eluded historians for decades was how did the Nazis obtain lists of Jews –…
Eduard Pernkopf’s Atlas of Topographical and Applied Human Anatomy has been called “a tainted beauty.” The atlas consists of 800 exquisite watercolor paintings of human anatomy, and is considered a “masterpiece,” “a work of lasting scientific importance” that has been used by doctors and researchers around the world. But the…
In 1937, an estimated 400 mulatto children of racially mixed African-Aryan marriages — derisively referred to as “Rhineland Bastards” — were forcibly sterilized, some were subjected to medical experiments, others mysteriously “disappeared” (Pencak-Schwartz. Holocaust Forgotten . . . 2012). Prof. Eugen Fischer director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Heredity…
“Eugenic Extermination” “Children’s euthanasia” a murderous program, unique in the history of mankind, that targeted infants, children, and young adults as the means for actualizing a social Darwinist vision of society. By systematically murdering children, scientists sought to eradicate pathological phenotype — “eugenic extermination.” Not until 2000 did historians document 30…
The Steinhof hospital in Vienna was a complex of 34 pavilions. From 1940 to 1945, thirteen of the hospital’s pavilions had been emptied by the T4 “euthanasia” murders. These were used for a reformatory and a children’s psychiatric clinic, “Am Spiegelgrund” The children included those selected by T4 categories, as well…
The adult killing program, coded Aktion T4, (named for the address of the “Reich Charitable Foundation for Curative and Institutional Care” headquarters at 4 Teirgartensstrasse in Berlin) targeted handicapped German adults living in mental institutions and nursing homes. The entire German healthcare system — public health officials, public and private…
In 1942 Viktor Brack — director of T4 murder operation — wrote a letter to Heinrich Himmler stating, I am of the opinion that out of approx. 10 million European Jews at least 2–3 million men and women will be fit for work and should be kept alive. . ….
