With the publication of this edited collection and the launch of the Lancet Commission on Medicine and the Holocaust: Historical Evidence, Implications for Today, Teaching for Tomorrow in early 2021, it would appear that we are witnessing an area of scholarly inquiry—“medicine and the Holocaust”—coalescing and gaining unprecedented traction. But what is “medicine and the Holocaust”?
In their introduction to this volume of eighteen fascinating studies, the editors frame the topic as the study of how “medicine was one of the integrated and essential factors” catalyzing and facilitating the Nazis’ attempted annihilation of European Jewry and the examination of how Jewish doctors “work[ed] to save Jewish life and Jewish spirit” (3). Prior to this publication, neither topic received sufficient scholarly attention. Robert Jay Lifton, Robert Proctor, and Henry Friedlander, for example, have addressed connections between medicine and the Holocaust, but it is only recently that Holocaust scholar Dan Michman explicitly identified medicine as an essential ingredient in the theoretical preparation for and physical execution of the genocide. Other than the attention given to Josef Mengele and other Nazi doctors engaged in experimentation and “selections” for death, Holocaust historians have devoted relatively little attention to the role of German medical science and practitioners in their narratives; and, with the chief exception of Paul Weindling, historians of medicine tend to set the Holocaust on the margins of their studies of the German medical profession during the Third Reich. A comprehensive scholarly treatment of the roles that medicine played in the perpetration of Nazi genocide has yet to be written, but this volume presents a few examples of scholarship that offer glimpses into the much-larger narrative. The best among them is Kamila Uzarczyk's chapter, which investigates the targeting of Jewish patients for separation and eventual murder in a previously unexplored context: psychiatric hospitals in occupied Poland.
Despite identifying a second aspect of medicine and the Holocaust, namely the conduct of Jewish doctors in the face of Nazi persecution and violence, the volume does not include a single chapter devoted to this understudied subject. The topic is, however, addressed to varying degrees in several chapters. For example, Annette Finley-Croswhite's contribution, a thought-provoking exploration of the concept of the “Jewish womb” as a “kind of killing field where the murderous Final Solution was deployed” (103), discusses the activities of Jewish doctors in ghettos and concentration camps. Jewish prisoner-physicians also appear in Paul J. Weindling's chapter as witnesses to and coerced participants in Mengele's human-subject experiments in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
While the volume does not fulfill its promise as a collection of studies on medicine and the Holocaust, per the editors’ own definitions, the publication is a compilation of strong new scholarship on the broader subject of “medicine under National Socialism,” as well as its antecedents and legacies. Anthropologist Margit Berner's contribution on the racial studies of anthropologists in POW camps, for instance, introduces a new venue, victim population, and perpetrator group into the conversation about medical abuses during the Third Reich; and historian Matthis Krischel's study places dentists into a conversation typically limited to physicians and medical scientists. Moreover, the inclusion of art historian Andrew Weinstein's chapter “Baneful Medicine and a Radical Bioethics in Contemporary Art” demonstrates that the field itself embraces analyses of an entirely different nature, such as one that hypothesizes that art recalling medicine under National Socialism has the rhetorical power to push the public to keep scientists and medical practitioners in line. This volume also manifests several significant shifts in the topic's historiography in recent years, including greater attention to matters of gender and trauma, as well as increased integration of Jewish voices. Furthermore, contributions from Mathias Schütz, Felicitas Söhner, and Alexander von Lünen investigating Kurt Gerstein, the T4 “euthanasia” program, and the high altitude and freezing experiments at Dachau, respectively, employ a combination of new theoretical approaches and previously untapped source materials in their studies of subjects that have already received extensive scholarly attention.
The collection excels at illustrating continuities between past and present. Perhaps it is no surprise that the volume is concerned with the long reach of medicine under National Socialism, as two of its editors, Sabine Hildebrandt and the late Michael A. Grodin, were deeply engaged in conceiving and drafting the Vienna Protocol – guidelines for the handling of newly discovered human remains from the Nazi period. Authored by them, as well as collaborators Rabbi Joseph Polak and William E. Seidelman, the collection's final chapter details how their efforts grew out of the historically negligent and religiously insensitive cremation of remains discovered in July 2014 close to the former Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, to which Mengele had sent anatomical specimens, many from Jewish victims of his experiments in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The product of their efforts is evidence of the material connection between the medical past of the Third Reich and our present, and even the future, when additional remains will undoubtedly come to light.
Also focused on human remains from the Nazi period, and thus a physical legacy that spans across time, is Götz Aly's chapter, in which he narrates his experiences as a historian who has spent decades probing the origins of anatomical specimens held by the Max Planck Society. His contribution to the volume is especially valuable, as it offers the ultimate insider's view of an investigator determined to overcome the obfuscation of individuals attempting to cover up institutional and personal linkages to a criminal past. Although the content does not strictly fit the description of a new study, having been published previously in German in 2015, the chapter is an important component of this edited volume as an undoubtedly effective illustration of the links the book is designed to highlight.
Importantly, this volume is concerned not only with continuities extending forward from the National Socialist era but also with those that range from the interwar years into the Nazi period. Two contributors address this period: Amit Varshizky and Miriam Offer, the collection's third editor. The former analyzes the writings of two German racial theorists and argues that the politicization of science in conversations on race predated the rise of the Nazis. The latter turns her attention to the writings of Mordechai Lensky, whom she presents as an exemplar of Polish-Jewish medical professionals whose medical knowledge and prowess, community-mindedness, and attention to preventive medicine were the basis for the provision of effective medical care in ghettos.
Beyond featuring continuities of figures, institutions, and ideas, the volume also communicates a sense of ties across time through spotlighting the enduring qualities and potential pitfalls of the medical profession. The most powerful statement to that effect is the concluding sentence of Stephanie Kaiser and Mathias Schmidt's case study of Ludwig Stumpfegger, a doctor who conducted human-subject experiments and later served as Adolf Hitler's escort physician. It warns, “Medical care must never be subjugated to ideological dogmas that attribute [to] people different values or rights to live, and any expansion of doctors’ societal power must be weighed carefully” (165).
Given that one of this volume's main strengths is the emphasis on continuities between past and present, the division of chapters into two parts, entitled “The Past” and “The Present: Postwar Continuities, Legacies, and Reflections,” is artificial and unfortunate. The book's greatest weakness is, therefore, not a matter of content but of structure. As already noted, most chapters, at the very least, draw attention to connections over time, while several engage substantially with linkages. Consequently, the book's organization undermines the studies’ content. In addition, the assignment of certain chapters to one part over another seems arbitrary or even mistaken. Particularly problematic is the placement of Weindling's chapter in “The Past,” as his subject matter—“The Mengele Link”—is the epitome of “Postwar Continuities.” Any further criticisms, however, fall into the categories of factual errors and missed opportunities, which may have been ameliorated through stronger editing by the publisher. While these shortcomings do not weaken the overall product, it is nevertheless disconcerting to read, for example, that “Hitler had been elected chancellor” (196).
The collection's lack of studies on “medicine and the Holocaust,” as the editors define it, is not, in and of itself, a flaw. It functions, instead, as an appeal for further scholarship at the intersection of the history of medicine and the history of the extermination of European Jewry. The editors’ framing of the subject matter and the glimpses the volume's content offers reveal the theme's promise and point to the need for its growth as a specific subset within “medicine under National Socialism.” The volume clearly communicates that this larger field continues to grow and yield new insights that expand our understanding of the past and its connection to the present. As a result, this compilation is strongly recommended reading for scholars of modern Germany, the Holocaust, the history of science and medicine, as well as for medical professionals and educators who will find echoes of the past in their contemporary practice. The overall emphasis on linkages, be they faint resonances or concrete continuities, extends the volume's appeal to scholars of memory and trauma studies, and certain contributions would make the volume a valuable resource for specialists in Jewish studies, women's and gender studies, law, and art theory.
