Anatomy in the Third Reich: An outline, part 2. Bodies for anatomy and related medical disciplines

Abstract

All anatomical departments of German universities used bodies of the executed and other victims of the National Socialist (NS) regime for their work. Many of these victims had been executed in prisons and were members of the German political opposition; others had perished in camps for prisoners of war or forced laborers and concentration camps, and were of various European and other descent. Anatomists generally welcomed the increased influx of "fresh material" for purposes of research and education of the growing numbers of medical students. No anatomist is known to have refused work with the bodies of NS victims. Other medical disciplines also made use of these bodies, among them were racial hygienists and neuropathologists. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the fields of anatomy, physical anthropology, and racial hygiene (eugenics) were closely related in their subject matter. Anatomists were involved in the biological foundation of racial hygiene, most prominently among them Eugen Fischer. The discipline was established as part of the medical curriculum after 1920. Racial hygiene became the scientific justification for NS policies that led to racial discrimination, involuntary sterilization and ultimately mass murder. Anatomists taught racial hygiene throughout the Third Reich and did research in this area. Some were actively involved in NS policies through propaganda and evaluations for the so-called Genetic Health Courts, whereas others became victims of their own science in that they were dismissed for racial reasons.

The reliance on unclaimed cadavers for anatomical teaching by medical schools in Africa

“…They played a passive role during the days of grave robbing, have accepted cadavers of criminals, and during the Nazi era, some German universities used the victims of state oppression (Hildebrandt, 2009). Anatomists successfully requested ''fresh material'' from Nazi concentration camps (Bussche, 1989;Hildebrandt, 2006;Seidler and Leven, 2007), as they were of younger and healthier persons.…”

The Clara cell: a “Third Reich eponym”?

“…German and Austrian anatomists benefited from these changes through an unprecedented cadaver supply mainly used for teaching purposes, but also for research [52,[54][55][56]. By making use of the cadavers, they, willingly or not, colluded with a political strategy that sought to eliminate not just dissidence, but also eliminated the very memory of the dissidence, in so far as the executed were denied proper burial [35].…”

Human Anatomy: A Review of the Science, Ethics and Culture of a Discipline in Transition

“…This lack of ethical relection legitimized the unclaimed paradigm as the normal source of bodies for anatomical investigation. This, in turn, opened the doors to widespread use of the bodies of the mentally ill, of African-Americans, and of those executed in concentration camps during the Nazi era [13][14][15].…”