HighlightsHuman experiments were more extensive than often assumed with a minimum of 15,750 documented victims.Experiments rapidly increased from 1942, reaching a high point in 1943 and sustained until the end of the war.There were more victims who survived than were killed as part of or as a result of the experiments. Many survived with severe injuries.Victims came from diverse nationalities with Poles (Jews and Roman Catholics) as the largest national cohort.Body parts, especially from euthanasia killings, were often retained for research and teaching after 1945.

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Approximately 9,000 physicians were uprooted for so-called "racial" or "political" reasons by the Nazi regime and 6,000 fled Germany. These refugees are often seen as survivors who contributed to a "brain drain" from Germany. About 432 doctors (all specialties, private and academic) were dismissed from the major German city of Hamburg. Of these, 16 were Hamburg University faculty members dismissed from their government-supported positions for "racial" reasons, and, of these, five were neuroscientists. In a critical analysis, not comprehensively done previously, we will demonstrate that the brain drain did not equal a "brain gain." The annihilation of these five neuroscientists' careers under different but similar auspices, their shameful harassment and incarceration, financial expropriation by Nazi ransom techniques, forced migration, and roadblocks once reaching destination countries stalled and set back any hopes of research and quickly continuing once-promising careers. A major continuing challenge is finding ways to repair an open wound and obvious vacuum in the German neuroscience community created by the largely collective persecution of colleagues 80 years ago.

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