In the period of National Socialism, tens of thousands of people became victims of gruesome medical attempts. An online database now offers access to the names and life data of victims of these human tests for the first time, but also reveals where many medical samples collected during the Nazi era come from-some were still used for research after 1945. The new database should remind the victims, but also promote the historical processing of this dark side of German medical history.
During the Nazi era, many doctors and scientists also became perpetrators in the medical area: they sometimes carried out cruel human trials on prisoners of war, occupants of concentration camps and prisons or psychiatric institutions. While the medical experiments of perpetrators such as the concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele are known and outlawed worldwide today, other human trials and the profiteers of National Socialist deportations and mass killings remain undetected for a long time. Many tissue samples of victims of such tests or killings were brought to scientific institutes and served medical research there – even long after 1945.
Data from more than 25,000 victims of the Nazi people attempts
“History shows us what people can be capable of when an autocratic state negates a valid humanitarian value system in favor of racial ideology and fanaticism,” says Patrick Cramer, President of the Max Planck Society (MPG). “Science must also remember this and reflect on the ethical guidelines; today’s highly specialized science must not lose sight of people.” That is why the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Max Planck Society have created and published a database that focuses on the victims of such human trials.
The new database comprises around 16,000 profiles of people who became victims of forced medical research in National Socialism. It also contains data on more than 13,000 victims of such experiments, the fates of which have not yet been finally researched. The basis for this database is research by the medical historian Paul Weindling and his team at Oxford Brookes University in England. “So far, the number of research victims has often been speculative and its identity has not been clarified,” said Weindling. “We have tried to capture all victims to reconstruct their biographies – and now there are several tens of thousands of people from various victim groups to be found in the database.” Data from those responsible and institutions of compulsory research are also recorded.
Insight also in Nazi brain research
“For the first time there is an empirical basis and a systematic representation of Nazi compulsory research and the suffering caused,” says Weindling. In addition to victims of human trials in the concentration camps or in psychiatry, the killed, whose brains and brain tissue were collected, examined and kept by today’s Max Planck Society by scientists from Kaiser-Wilhelm Society (KWI). “Brain research was an integral part of forced research in National Socialism, but many victims have so far been overlooked,” explains Weindling. “The victims of euthanasia have been seen, but not the military victims or those of the German occupation, because they only became research victims after their death.”
Only the systematic research of the autopsy, origin of the samples and victims has uncovered the relationships. “There was a network of willing supporters. Military pathologists who chose brains after the autopsy of a body and sent to the Medical Military Academy in Berlin,” reports Weindling. “This has forwarded the brains to the KWI for brain research.” Psychiatry, prisons, warehouse and other facilities also provided the brain researchers material. On the one hand, this came from murdered people, on the other hand by people on whom medical attempted medical attempts had been carried out. “For example, there were TBC vaccine research in Kaufbeuren. They were children from South Tyrol who were abused for vaccine research,” reports Weindling. After the death of these children, brain preparations and other body parts were sent to research institutes.
What the database contains
“We can only deal responsibly with our historical heritage if it has been researched and is further researched. We owe this above all to the scientists who have extensively researched the history of tissue samples, their extraction, preservation and scientific use,” says Bettina Rockenbach, President of the National Academy of Sciences in Leopoldina. The now published online database has a multi-stage access concept: names and life data of the victims are publicly visible, with which the database fulfills its important function as a memorial platform. Selected biographies shed light on the fate of individual affected people. Also provided information about individual experiments and the institutions involved. An interactive card provides information about the extent and geographical distribution of the crimes.
However, further sensitive data on the victim’s health and persecution history are not accessible to the public. If you want to receive comprehensive insight into all data stored for research or research purposes, you can apply for access using a contact form on the website. On request, relatives can receive the entire data set of their family member. The database is published in English and available here: https://ns-medical-victims.org/
Source: National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
