Nazi Physicians and the Problem of Collective Evil

Time: 5:30pm

Location: 101 Bluemle Life Sciences Building (233 South 10th Street)

Sixty-seven years after the liberation of Auschwitz the horror of the Shoah remains as haunting to mankind as ever, as indicated by countless books, documentaries, and monographs dedicated to the subject. More recent attention, however, has gradually shifted away from “perpetrators” and focused instead on the “rescuers” – those few courageous souls who chose to risk their lives in order to save the Jews.

Research in this regard has made quite clear that “helpers” were not only compassionate human beings willing to act on their compassion, but also people characterized by a unique set of traits. For one they were often independent-minded outsiders with a personal philosophy of life – a true party and religion of one. They also had a knack for viewing life through a rainbow of colors rather than a series of stifling black-and-whites. In fact, they had high tolerance for ambiguity. And, lastly, they often shared an amiable disregard for rules and authority.

Building on this evidence we then became interested in the role played by the medical profession during the Holocaust. Physicians are the most respected and trusted members of society, and indeed the epitome of altruism for the betterment of mankind. Hence one would expect them to have been both resisters and rescuers during the Holocaust. Yet, German doctors were the most heavily nazified profession in the Third Reich, with every second male physician becoming a party member between 1933 and 1945. In fact, many physicians were perpetrators, who not only provided “scientific” legitimization and manpower to domestic campaigns of sterilization and euthanasia, but who themselves participated in pseudo-scientific experiments on concentration camp prisoners. Ultimately these crimes led to the Nuremberg’s “Doctors' Trial” of 1947, with six physicians receiving prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life, and seven being instead condemned to death.

Ironically, while American judges were sending German physicians to the gallows for experimenting on Poles, Russians and Jews, American physicians from the Department of Public Health were doing exactly the same on fellow-Americans (the Tuskegee experiment) plus close to 3,000 Guatemalan citizens (something that surfaced only recently)

Hence, this presentation will review not only the problem of collective evil and its “banality” (i.e. what makes “normal” individuals -- with mortgages, wives and pets -- wake up one morning and decide to slaughter the grandmother next door), but also why physicians often become perpetrators.