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AUSTRIAN HISTORY

Health professionals played ‘central role’ in Nazi crimes in Austria & Germany: study

Medical professionals played a "central role" in the crimes committed by the Nazis, according to a new study published Thursday, which aims to debunk "long-held misconceptions" about the scale of their involvement.

Health professionals played 'central role' in Nazi crimes in Austria & Germany: study
A Lancet commission has found that a great deal of medical research behind recent medical advances was drawn from Nazi research - with many such origins being hidden until now. AFP PHOTO / JEAN-SEBASTIEN EVRARD (Photo by JEAN-SEBASTIEN EVRARD / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - TO ILLUSTRATE THE EVENT AS SPECIFIED IN THE CAPTION - RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - TO ILLUSTRATE THE EVENT AS SPECIFIED IN THE CAPTION

Medical atrocities during the Nazi era in Germany and Austria were not solely carried out by “a few extremist doctors” or perpetrators that acted “under coercion”, according to a report published in The Lancet journal, described by its authors as the most comprehensive of its kind to date.

By 1945, between 50 to 65 percent of non-Jewish doctors in what is today Germany and Austria had joined the Nazi party, which represents a “much higher proportion than in any other academic profession,” said the 73-page report.

The abhorrent eugenics and euphemistically termed “euthanasia” murder programmes of the Nazis during World War II resulted in “at least 230 000” deaths, including 7,000 to 10,000 children.

Over 300,000 forced sterilisations were also performed on victims, who were labelled “genetically inferior”.

Despite ample evidence to the contrary, “common misconceptions” that medicine in Nazi Germany – which included what is today Austria – merely amounted to “pseudoscience” still remain, the study shows.

In fact, Nazi scientists were “part of broader international networks exploring and promoting eugenics and developing racist medical rationales” and Nazi research was sometimes integrated into the “canon of medical knowledge”.

Today’s understanding of “aviation safety, hypothermia, and even the effects of tobacco and alcohol use on the body” is in part based on Nazi research, while “awareness of how the research was obtained is scarce”.

As “coerced contributions to medicine”, the bodies of Nazi victims were used for research and teaching, and sometimes kept in scientific collections “for decades after the war” without revealing the crimes involved.     

INTERVIEW: By becoming Austrian, I’ve reclaimed my family’s terrible story

Better equipped

Scientists such as the Austrian anatomist Eduard Pernkopf achieved lasting fame after the war even though their research derived from the “bodies of victims of the Nazi regime”.

The Pernkopf anatomy atlas was widely published and used until the 1990s without any reference to the origins of the images in the atlas that “very likely” depict murdered Nazi victims.

Long praised as the founder of juvenile psychiatry in Germany and awarded the Cross of Merit in 1979, Elisabeth Hecker’s past remained unknown to the public until a 1995 documentary revealed that she ordered transfers of
children to local killing units.

“Methods first developed” between 1939 and 1941 in an effort to kill tens of thousands of institutionalised patients by gas were later “applied to the extermination camps in Poland,” according to a press release accompanying the
report.

The authors recommend that the study of medicine under Nazism and the Holocaust should be incorporated in health care curricula, as the lack of knowledge “apart from a vague notion of Josef Mengele’s experiments in Auschwitz” today is “often surprising”.

Through studying the past, medical professionals will be better equipped to “face moral and ethical medical dilemmas and their own biases, stand up to power, and protect vulnerable populations”.

As examples, the report cites difficult decisions medical staff can be confronted with, such as performing triage or determining “the beginning and the end of life”.

The report was carried out as part of a Lancet Commission that brought together a group of 20 international experts for the first time to examine the history of medicine.

READ ALSO: Austrian pediatrician Asperger ‘actively cooperated’ with Nazis: Study

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AUSTRIAN HISTORY

Austria recognises ‘anti-socials’, ‘career criminals as Nazi victims

Austria's parliament on Wednesday decided unanimously to recognise concentration camp inmates who were persecuted by the Nazis for being considered 'anti-social' or 'career criminals' as victims of National Socialism.

Austria recognises 'anti-socials', 'career criminals as Nazi victims

During the Nazi era, people who had served a prison sentence of more than six months were persecuted as “career criminals” or “anti-social”, with many of them deported to concentration camps.

After World War II, these victims of Nazi persecution were not entitled to an official certificate or a victim’s identification card.

“With this amendment, we are righting a wrong,” said parliamentary rapporteur Eva Blimlinger of the Greens.

READ ALSO: When is dual citizenship allowed in Austria?

“Namely that in 1947, convicted people were excluded from compensation laws,” she said, adding that the amendment was “only a symbolic act” as there are no known survivors.

According to a study by DOeW resistance archive centre — which is due to be made public in early July — 885 Austrians who fell under that collective category were deported to the Mauthausen camp.

On Wednesday, MPs were reminded of the case of Alfred Gruber, a Viennese convicted of burglary in 1936.

Although Gruber had served his sentence and had not reoffended, he was deported after Austria was annexed by the German Third Reich in 1938 and “the stigma continued after the end of the war”, recalled Social Democrat MP Sabine Schatz.

Among the victims were also “homosexuals, political opponents and simple defenders of democracy”, said liberal MP Fiona Fiedler.

READ ALSO: What is Austria’s church tax and how do I avoid paying it?

In 2020, Germany adopted a similar law, estimating that “at least 70,000 people” could be affected.

Homeless people, beggars, migrant workers and alcoholics were also targeted in Nazi persecution.

Austria — the birthplace of Adolf Hitler — long cast itself as a victim of Nazism and has only in the past decades begun to seriously examine its role in the Holocaust.

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