Table Of ContentBrain Science under the Swastika
Brain Science under the
Swastika
Ethical Violations, Resistance, and Victimization
of Neuroscientists in Nazi Europe
LAWRENCE A. ZEIDMAN, MD, FAAN
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Oxford University Press 2020
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2020
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019947823
ISBN 978– 0– 19– 872863– 4
Printed and bound in the UK by TJ International Ltd
Oxford University Press makes no representation, express or implied, that the
drug dosages in this book are correct. Readers must therefore always check
the product information and clinical procedures with the most up-t o- date
published product information and data sheets provided by the manufacturers
and the most recent codes of conduct and safety regulations. The authors and
the publishers do not accept responsibility or legal liability for any errors in the
text or for the misuse or misapplication of material in this work. Except where
otherwise stated, drug dosages and recommendations are for the non-p regnant
adult who is not breast-f eeding
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
This book is dedicated to my loving wife for being a constant source of strength to me
and supporter of my work, for having the patience during the long authoring and research
process for this book, for being my conscience at times regarding this book and other aspects
of my life and our life together, and for always having thoughtful suggestions and comments
when I was unsure about things.
It is dedicated to my parents for always inspiring an inquisitive spirit,
strong writing skills, and working hard to achieve monumental goals.
And it is dedicated to my two children, because it’s in the future generations that we may have
a way to redeem our past, as long as the pathway is appropriately lit.
Foreword
“There can be no reconciliation without remembering” invites the coda; “and
there can be no prevention without remembering”.
However, where can one honestly begin when the topic is systematic murder on an indus-
trial scale originating in the geographic and philosophic cradle of the Enlightenment? How
can one honestly do justice when the result was the elimination of a flourishing culture that
had existed in these lands for a millennium?
The reality is that one must break down into atomic parts what is at first glance simply in-
comprehensible to rational minds now two generations removed from the historical events
of the Holocaust. Our minds have difficulty grappling with the totality of events that we are
confronted with. A statistical and logistical point of view focusing on numbers and pro-
cesses and broad historical brushstrokes does not do honor to individual victims whose
interwoven narratives are the most compelling indictment of the perpetrators. Similarly, the
examination of the narratives of these perpetrators is their harshest historical indictment.
Perhaps the best approach that leads to remembrance, reconciliation, and, ultimately,
prevention is to start by focusing on the reasons “why” things happened as they did and on
a group of individuals who belong to a class and group that is both recognizable to us and
responsible for articulating and implementing the reasons “why.” A key leader in the Third
Reich, Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess, is quoted as stating that: “National Socialism is nothing
but applied biology.” Who best to formulate, articulate, and put into action this “applied
biology” than physicians? Who best among physicians to address issues of individual and
racial worth that was the precondition for extermination than those involved in the practice
and science of the brain- related disciplines of neurology and psychiatry? Thus, it is not by
accident that historical study finds physicians, and particularly neurologists and psychiat-
rists, disproportionately involved in the germination, rationalization, and action of events
such as mass sterilization, child euthanasia, and adult euthanasia (Aktion T4) that serve as a
chilling harbinger and enabler of industrial- scale mass murder. It is also by no accident, due
to the initial targeted populations, that academic neuroscientists found themselves placed
at the nexus of places and processes that could be utilized with calculation for personal
benefit.
The story of medicine in the Third Reich was first broached in the wide public view of
the postwar Nuremberg Trials. These trials meted out “justice” to a small number of per-
petrators and were the genesis of the Nuremberg Code of Medical Research Ethics. The
trials were succinctly summarized by German observers Alexander Mitscherlisch (a neuro-
psychiatrist) and Fred Mielke (a medical student) in their slim (148 pages) book Doctors of
Infamy: The Story of the Nazi Medical Crimes, published in 1949, which was partly based on
a translation of their previously published (1947) work Das Diktat der Menschenverachtung.
The field lay relatively fallow for a generation until the publication of Robert Jay Lifton’s
seminal work The Nazi Doctors in 1986, which was followed by Michael Kater’s detailed
viii Foreword
sociologically oriented book- length study entitled Doctors Under Hitler in 1989. The pub-
lication of these two serious studies, one (Lifton’s) analytic in its framing of motives and
character, the other (Kater’s) rigorous in its pursuit of demographic and professional details,
coincided with the opening of East German archives subsequent to the collapse of com-
munism in Eastern Europe and a more open discussion of the Holocaust amongst the gen-
eral public and academia (Holocaust (TV mini- series), Schindler’s List, USC Shoah Project,
Yale Fortunoff Archives, etc.). These events, plus the objective detachment for study that
time enabled, and the realization that first-h and witnesses were aging, led to a veritable
explosion of efforts and publications at the turn of the twenty-fi rst century targeting all
aspects of the Third Reich, including the record of medicine.
This effort to examine medicine was engaged in by professional historians and, not sur-
prisingly, also by physicians. These physicians were primarily those whose practice was
grounded in the clinical neurosciences, who also not surprisingly focused in their study
on neurologists and psychiatrists in the Third Reich. Over the past generation a number of
publications have highlighted the actions and narratives of neurologists and psychiatrists
during the epoch that was the Third Reich. The details of the choices and actions of perpet-
rators, victims, and bystanders have been documented in multiple disparate publications to
the great effect of increasing our “remembering” of these times, especially in our practice
and community as health professionals.
One leader in this effort over the past decade has been the neurologist Lawrence
Zeidman. Through a prodigious number of collaborative efforts he has published exten-
sively on the varied threads of the medical tale in the Third Reich. This book represents the
natural culmination of his extensive and exhaustive efforts to date. By assembling varied
narratives into one textual source, the reader can attempt to grasp the harsh reality of the
Third Reich by not only considering the historical context, but also the individual narratives
that render things so “real” to us. It is only by considering both of these themes that we can
partially understand what happened, truly remember the details, and, hopefully, make the
enormous leap to reconciliation and prevention.
As noted by Primo Levi: “Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dan-
gerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act
without asking questions.” It is among the stories of these common men and functionaries,
who are at first superficial glance not much different than us, that if we examine carefully do
we hear the clarion call for understanding, memory, and prevention.
Michael Shevell MDCM FRCP FCAHS
Chair,
Department of Pediatrics;
Professor, Departments of Pediatrics and Neurology/N eurosurgery,
McGill University,
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank my editor Martin Baum at Oxford University Press (OUP) for believing in
this project from the beginning and making the acceptance and contracting process easy.
I also want to thank Charlotte Holloway, my assistant editor at OUP, for assistance along the
way with permissions, questions about editing and references, and helping push the manu-
script submission process forward at the end.
Prior to submitting the manuscript I have to thank historian and author Michael Kater
of Toronto for advice about where to submit. I have to thank Professor Kater, along with
several other individuals for advising and mentoring me in the field of medicine in Nazi
Europe. These include Herwig Czech, Hans-W alter Schmuhl, Paul Weindling, William
Seidelman, Michael Shevell, and Sheldon Rubenfeld. For general mentoring in the history
of neurology and history of medicine I have James L. Stone to thank, along with Sandy
Sufian, Peter Koehler, and Stan Finger. In recent years Frank Stahnisch has also been a
staunch mentor and advisor as well, and I thank him greatly for his help in my work and
career. And for being my colleagues and authors on multiple papers or presentations I have
to warmly thank Daniel Kondziella, Matthias Ziller, Hendrik van den Bussche, Anna von
Villiez, Jan- Patrick Stellmann, and Jaap Cohen. In particular, Kondziella, with whom I have
authored four papers and one book chapter, deserves quite a bit of thanks, especially since
he also helped to review the first three chapters of this book and offered helpful suggestions.
For documents and translations other colleagues in Europe have greatly facilitated my re-
search for this book and my other papers, including Hartmut Collmann, Mathias Schuetz,
Gerald Kreft, Klaus- Jürgen Neumärker, Sascha Topp, Sabine Hildebrandt, Volker Roelcke,
Matthias Weber, Florian Braun, Frank Schneider, Kamila Uzarczyk, Lutz Kaelber, Carola
Rudnick, Marc Burlon, Heinz Wässle, Irene Levin, and Alexander von Schwerin.
My graduate student Christina Schultz translated the bulk of materials from German
used in this book, and I owe her a great deal of thanks. I wouldn’t have been able to finish the
book at this time without her invaluable assistance. She put in many hours on this project
before and after defending her doctoral dissertation in German language at the University
of Illinois-C hicago (UIC). I must also thank my former department head, Jeffrey Loeb, for
his support of this project, which included research funding. Also, I have to thank David
Faulk, former UIC graduate student, for some translation help before this book project
even began, and David Heywood- Jones from GoFetch translation services for some trans-
lations of archival documents along the way. I have to thank Kari Boe and her son Kristian
Groenseth, relatives of Haakon Sæthre, the neuroscientist resistor featured in Chapter 12,
for their friendship, their translations, and their sharing of documents. Also, Mona and
Sidsel Levin, whose father was saved by Sæthre, provided much valuable information and
served as contacts in Norway, as did Henrik Thaulow, Sæthre’s grand-n ephew, who pro-
vided photos used in this book.
