Curriculum Materials

From 1933 to 1945, German physicians, bioscientists, and nurses – the best in the world at the time – willingly committed egregious violations of medical and professional ethics. Guided by eugenic theories of race, they sterilized 400,000 citizens against their will, “euthanized” 200,000 disabled German children and adults, and created the gas chambers and crematoria that were used for the mass murder of six million Jews, Poles, and Gypsies in the “final solution”. Without the full support of physicians,scientists, and nurses, the Holocaust as it unfolded could never have happened.

Although German violations of the most basic of medical ethics are well-documented, they are virtually unknown by today’s students in the health sciences. Likewise, the critical role that American eugenics played in the development of the German “racial hygiene” policies is frequently unrecognized. American eugenicists, physicians, philanthropists, politicians, and public health officials provided indispensable legislative models,financial aid, and moral support for Germany’s “racial hygiene” programs in the 1920s and 1930s.