Nazi German physicians: The antithesis of humanitarian medicine

Nazi German physicians: The antithesis of humanitarian medicine Aleksander B. Skotnicki

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n his book Oskarżeni nie przyznają się do winy (The defendants plead not guilty) Karol Małcużyński wrote, It was hard to believe that in the mid‑20th century a civilised state with a grand historic past produced and condoned a political system which sentenced other nations and other human societies to a death that elsewhere could not be inflicted on animals. That in the mid‑20th century the head of that state, his government, his cabinet, the commanders of a great army and chiefs of a great police force met to systematically consult on ways and techniques of killing vast groups of people whose only crime was that they belonged to another race or another nation, or had been designated as a threat to Nazi German plans to enslave Europe and acquire Lebensraum.

About the author: Aleksander B. Skotnicki is a haematologist, internist, and transplantologist. A Jagiellonian University Professor, he is Head of the Chair of Haematology, Head of the Department and Clinic of Haematology of the University Hospital, Vice‑President of the Kraków Medical Society, and a member of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been involved in social projects such as the provision of medical care to the Holocaust survivors from pre-war Kraków.

This article was first published in a special edition of the Jagiellonian University magazine Alma Mater (2009: 118, 119–128), and on pages 11–20 of the book Medicine Behind the Barbed Wire of the German Concentration Camp, eds. Z. J. Ryn and W. Sułowicz, Wydawnictwo Przegląd Lekarski: Kraków, 2013 (First Edition), ISBN: 9788 391 817 056.