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Dr. Franziska Eckert is the granddaughter of devout Nazi who has confronted her family history in two ways. Together with other church members, she founded the March of Remembrance, which is now duplicated in 14 countries and many, many cities around the world. She has also prepared an exhibit about Radiologists during National Socialism to educate her fellow radiologists. Riki Roussos is a Holocaust survivor living in Houston who has embraced Franziska and her mission. They gave back-to-back lectures to medical students at Baylor College of Medicine in the fall of 2015.

Polish-born Princeton University history professor Jan Tomasz Gross was awarded the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland in 1996 for his extensive work documenting the fate of Polish Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland. His acclaimed 2001 book Neighbors examined the massacre of 1,500 Jews from Jedwabne and concluded that it was the Poles, not the Nazis, who committed the atrocity. Polish nationalists have been critical of the book as well as the excellent, recent, Polish movie Aftermath which dramatizes the responsibility of local residents for the massacres of Jews during the Holocaust. The immediate cause for efforts to strip Gross of his award is his explanation of Poland’s wariness to accept Syrian immigrants: “The Poles, for example, were indeed rightfully proud of their society’s resistance against the Nazis, but in fact did kill more Jews than Germans during the war.”

Sheldon Rubenfeld, Clinical Professor at Baylor College of Medicine and Executive Director of Medicine After the Holocaust will be giving a talk at University of Houston, Clear Lake, 2700 Bay Area Blvd. Houston, TX 77058, holocaust-flyer-twoTuesday, November 1, 7pm on medical ethics and the Holocaust entitled: Eugenics Then and Now. Please see the attached flyer for details. The event is sponsored by the HIST 4307/HUMN 4326 Holocaust class and the History Club.The speaker will be discussing medical ethics during the Holocaust and today. For anyone who has been involved with healthcare or is interested in the moral complexities of the genome project, etc. the topic would prove interesting.

The Jewish High Holidays are about to begin. One of these holidays is forgiveness. Eva Kor, survivor of Mengele’s notorious experiments on twins at Auschwitz, gave a moving presentation at the Humans Subjects Research after the Holocaust (HSRAH) workshop co-sponsored by the Houston Methodist Research Institute and CMATH. She included in her presentation her comments about her controversial decision to forgive Mengele fifty years after the liberation of Auschwitz. I recommend that you view this remarkable video. Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness tells the fascinating story of Simon Wiesenthal’s response to a Nazi soldier who wants absolution from a Jew. The latest edition of his book offers the opinions of more than 50 thinkers about the difficult decision Wiesenthal made while a prisoner in Lemberg concentration camp.

The Nazi public health policy of “Applied Biology” was meant to rid the world of groups of people deemed to have genetic defects that could be passed o to the German volkskörper. While these groups included people with disabilities, blacks, gypsies, homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses among others, the primary target was the “Jewish race.” In a remarkable speech, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the UN about Israel’s remarkable success and optimistic view of its future relationships with its Muslim neighbors. I encourage you to watch one of the best speeches ever given at the UN, a speech about a people that overcame a concerted genocidal effort aided and abetted by the medical profession. Depending upon your browser, you can watch it either on the posted site or on youtube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFOSMNpYVPA&app=desktop

Houston Methodist Research Institute (HMRI) has generously co-hosted several conferences with our Center for Medicine after the Holocaust (CMATH). They have posted selected videos from two of these conferences, HUMAN SUBJECTS RESEARCH AFTER THE HOLOCAUST and the FIRST INTERNATIONAL SCHOLARS WORKSHOP ON MEDICINE AFTER THE HOLOCAUST on their website at: http://www.houstonmethodist.org/cmath A full listing of the speakers and their lecture topics will be found on the attached pdf.

Brown Foundation Professor of Psychoanalysis, Professor, and Director, Baylor Psychiatry Clinic, Baylor College of Medicine

Remember is a film about two elderly men living in an assisted living facility: Max has physical impairments and Zev has worsening dementia. After the death of Zev’s wife, the two men combine forces to hunt down and kill the man they believe killed their families at Auschwitz. Max makes the plans and Zev executes them, so to speak. The film stars Academy Award winners Christopher Plummer and Martin Landau, acclaimed German actors, and Dean Norris (“Hank” from Breaking Bad, another excellent morality play in five seasons). It reminded me of a statement about aging: “Of all the things I miss, I miss my memory the most.” Very good film that raises many issues about remembrance.

Streaming film directed by Stephen Rosewitzki | Austria / Germany / 2013 | 96 minutes | English, German, Ukrainian | Hebrew subtitles. The film deconstructs the process of transforming average men into ideologically motivated killers and takes the viewers on a psychological and intellectual journey into the roots of evil. Purpose: Directed by Austrian Oscar-winning director, Stephen Ruzowitzky, the film deconstructs the process of transforming average men into ideologically motivated killers and takes the viewers on a psychological and intellectual journey into the roots of evil. Ruzowitzky’s film is composed of re-enactments of actors portraying the Einsatzgruppen soliders, archival footage and sounds recordings from the Holocaust era as well as interviews with psychologists, historians and academic researchers.

As unfamiliar as most people are with Nazi eugenics, they are even less familiar with American eugenics. American eugenicists provided legal, moral, and philanthropic support for Nazi eugenics. For example, Hitler wrote a fan letter that referred to Madison Grant about his book The Passage of the Great Race, saying “This book is my bible.” The 1933 Nazi involuntary sterilization law was modeled after the Virginia involuntary sterilization law that was declared constitutional in the 8-1 US Supreme Court decision, Buck v. Bell; in 1907 Indiana became the first place in the world to pass an involuntary sterilization law. In Mein Kampf, Hitler praised America’s restrictive immigration policies and defended his treatment of Jews by comparing it to the treatment of black Americans in general and black physicians in particular. You can learn more about American eugenics at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s (CSHL) Image archive on the American Eugenics Movement, which was conceived by Nobel Laureate James Watson, in part to reveal the central role of CSHL in the American eugenics movement.

First and second year Baylor College of Medicine students enrolled in Healing by Killing: Medicine during the Third Reich are required to write a paper on a topic of their choosing at the end of the nine-week course. They may write about any topic that is stimulated by the material in the course, which includes eugenics, involuntary sterilization, Nuremberg and Jim Crow laws, involuntary euthanasia, human subjects research, the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial and Code, how healers become killers, the implications of this history for contemporary medicine, and personal reflections of a distinguished physician, which was Dr. Joseph Gathe this year. The murder of disabled Germans began with the involuntary “euthanasia” or “mercy killing” of 5,000 German children, which led to the adult euthanasia or “T4” program that euthanized approximately 200,000 German adults. Jews were initially excluded from the euthanasia programs because they were not considered worthy of “mercy killing.” Euthanasia or Youth in Asia? Child Euthanasia in Nazi Germany or Female Infanticide in China By Brigette Lee It’s a Girl: The Three Deadliest Words in the World. (1) Euthanasia or Youth in Asia? “Mercy” killing It’s a good death For the betterment of the children The parents The Society (2) Euthanasia or Youth in Asia? Hearing her cries What is the best way? Exposure? Suffocation? Burying alive? Strangulation? Drowning? Cold water? Boiling water? Abandonment? (3) Euthanasia or Youth in Asia? Sons are more useful They will care for the parents Support the family Be hard workers Girls are a burden Feet must be bound They must be cared for Dowries must be paid For someone else to care for them (3) Euthanasia or Youth in Asia? Intravenous lethal injections. Overdose. A coping mechanism? (2) Euthanasia or Youth in Asia? Fu Xuan said it best - “How sad it is to be a woman, Nothing on earth is held so cheap. No one is glad when a girl is born, By her the family sets no store.” (3) Euthanasia or Youth in Asia? Brigette Lee Citations: 1. Youtube. “It’s a Girl: The Three Deadliest Words in the World.” Youtube. Last modified 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISme5-9orR0 2. Susan Benedict, Linda Shields and Alison J. O’Donnell, “Children’s ‘Euthanasia’ in Nazi Germany,” Journal of Pediatric Nursing 24, no. 6 (December 2009): 506-516. 3. Bernice J. Lee, “Female Infanticide in China,” Historical Reflections 8, no. 3 (Fall 1981): 163-177.