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DEADLY MEDICINE: CREATING THE MASTER RACE

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PRESS RELEASE

UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM EXHIBITION DEADLY MEDICINE: CREATING THE MASTER RACE TO OPEN AT THE UNITED NATIONS

Traveling Exhibition to Premiere at United Nations—Commences Weeklong Schedule of UN Holocaust Remembrance Activities

January 16, 2009


“Nazism is applied biology.”
— Rudolf Hess, Deputy to Adolf Hitler

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s traveling exhibition, Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race, examines how the Nazi leadership, in collaboration with individuals in professions traditionally charged with healing and the public good, used science to help legitimize persecution, murder and, ultimately, genocide. It will premiere on Monday, January 26, at the United Nations Headquarters in the Visitor’s Lobby and mark the beginning of a weeklong schedule of programming at the UN in recognition of the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust. The annual observance is held around the world on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi killing center Auschwitz-Birkenau.

“Deadly Medicine explores the Holocaust’s roots in then-contemporary scientific and pseudo-scientific thought,” explains exhibition curator Susan Bachrach. “At the same time, it touches on complex ethical issues we face today, such as how societies acquire and use scientific knowledge and how they balance the rights of the individual with the needs of the larger community. We are pleased to be bringing this important exhibition to the United Nations and an international audience.”

This version of Deadly Medicine is based on the acclaimed exhibition of the same name that originally opened at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., in April 2004. Two other successful traveling versions of the exhibition have been on display in Canada and Germany. An online version of the exhibition is available at www.ushmm.org/deadlymedicine.

A press preview with exhibition curator Susan Bachrach will be held on January 26 from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. Deadly Medicine will be open through March 22. Media interested in attending the press preview or speaking to Susan Bachrach should contact Jackie Berkowitz at (202) 488-2637.

Eugenics theory sprang from turn-of-the-century scientific beliefs asserting that Charles Darwin’s theories of “survival of the fittest” could be applied to humans. Supporters, spanning the globe and political spectrum, believed that through careful controls on marriage and reproduction, a nation’s genetic health could be improved.

The Nazi regime was founded upon the conviction that “inferior” races and individuals had to be eliminated from German society so that the fittest “Aryans” could thrive. The Nazi state fully committed itself to implementing a uniquely racist and antisemitic variation of eugenics to “scientifically” build what it considered to be a “superior race.” By the end of World War II, six million Jews had been murdered. Millions of others also became victims of persecution and murder through Nazi “racial hygiene” programs designed to cleanse Germany of “biological threats” to the nation’s “health,” including “foreign-blooded” Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), persons diagnosed as “hereditarily ill,” and homosexuals. In German-occupied territories, Poles and others belonging to ethnic groups deemed “inferior” were also murdered.

In response to the medical community’s interest in Deadly Medicine, the Museum established its Science and Medicine Initiative to augment medical ethics education in the healthcare professions. The Initiative is creating collaborative opportunities to explore the implications for contemporary bioethics by presenting the history in Deadly Medicine to prompt exploration of such 21st-century ethical issues as the rapid advances in genetics and medicine, and the value of individual lives, especially those of people considered to be disabled. Following its presentation at the United Nations, the exhibition will travel to medical schools and universities around the country. Exhibition brochures in French, German and Spanish will be available on site.

Holocaust remembrance activities at the United Nations are led by the Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme of the Department of Public Information. The programme, as established by General Assembly resolution 60/7, aims to mobilize civil society for Holocaust remembrance and education, in order to help to prevent future acts of genocide. In partnership with its international network of civil society groups and Holocaust institutions, the programme organizes a film series, briefings and training seminars, and publishes discussion papers on Holocaust-related topics and innovative online information products. For more information, please contact Kimberly Mann at mann@un.org and visit www.un.org/holocaustremembrance.

For media accreditation, please visit: www.un.org/media/accreditation or contact Gary Fowlie, Chief, Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit, United Nations Department of Public Information, Tel (212) 963-6937; Fax (212) 963 4642. All visitors to the United Nations are required to pass through Security at the entrance on First Avenue and 46 Street, and should possess valid photo identification.

This exhibition is made possible through the support the following donors from the greater New York area: The David Berg Foundation, The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, The Lester Robbins and Sheila Johnson Robbins Traveling and Temporary Exhibitions Fund, and The Dorot Foundation.

A living memorial to the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum inspires citizens and leaders to confront hatred, promote human dignity and prevent genocide. Its far-reaching educational programs and global impact are made possible by the generosity of donors nationwide through legacy and annual giving. For more information, visit www.ushmm.org.

International Hygiene Exhibition, 1911 promotional poster: The eugenics movement pre-dated Nazi Germany. A 1911 exhibition at the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden included a display on human heredity and ideas to improve it. The exhibition poster features the Enlightenment’s all-seeing eye of God, adapted from the ancient Egyptian “Eye of Ra,” symbolizing fitness or health.
Dr. Otmar von Verschuer examines twins at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. As the head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute’s Department for Human Heredity, Verschuer, a physician and geneticist, examined hundreds of pairs of twins to study whether criminality, feeble-mindedness, tuberculosis, and cancer were inheritable. In 1927, he recommended the forced sterilization of the “mentally and morally subnormal.” Verschuer typified those academics whose interest in Germany’s “national regeneration” provided motivation for their research.
“Adolf Hitler as the Doctor of the German Nation,” <i>National Health Guardian</i>, 1935. Rudolf Hess referred to Nazism as “applied biology”.
Head shots showing various racial types. Most western anthropologists classified people into “races” based on physical traits such as head size and eye, hair and skin color. This classification was developed by Eugen Fischer and published in the 1921 and 1923 editions of <i>Foundations of Human Genetics and Racial Hygiene</i>.
Heads of racial types, created by anthropologists from plaster molds of the faces of living subjects, were mass produced in Nazi Germany for use in exhibitions and racial hygiene classes. This head portrays the “Negro” racial type.
Heads of racial types, created by anthropologists from plaster molds of the faces of living subjects, were mass-produced in Nazi Germany for use in exhibitions and racial hygiene classes. This head portrays the “Dinaric” (Balkan) racial type.
A popular health manual, <i>German Gold</i> (1942) advised: “Mothers, you must absolutely avoid alcohol and nicotine during pregnancy and when nursing. They hinder, they harm, they disrupt the normal course of pregnancy. Drink fruit juice. Fruit juice is nutritious and restorative!” Producing healthy, “fit” mothers and children was an overriding aim of the Third Reich.
Nazi officials at the “The Miracle of Life” exhibition, German Hygiene Museum, Dresden, 1935. The new Nazi museum leadership asserted that societies resembled organisms that followed the lead of their brains. The most logical social structure was one that saw society as a collective unit, literally a body guided by a strong leader.
A clandestine photograph taken by a farmer who lived in the vicinity of Hartheim, showing smoke rising from the chimney of the crematorium. Operation T-4 targeted mostly adult patients in private, state, and church-run institutions. From January 1940 to August 1941, more than 70,000 people were killed by gassing in one of six specially staffed and equipped facilities in Germany and Austria. By the end of World War II, an estimated 200,000 adults were murdered in various “euthanasia” programs.
“Don’t Go Blindly into Marriage!” Eugenics had the support of many scientists worldwide, including the U.S. This drawing illustrated a 1924 pamphlet that urged couples to be informed about the health, including genetic health, of prospective spouses. This image was first published by Louisiana’s Department of Health.
Students at the Berlin School for the Blind examine racial head models circa 1935. Students were taught Gregor Mendel’s principles of inheritance and the purported application of those laws to human heredity and principles of race. During the Third Reich, German born deaf or blind, like those born with mental illnesses or disabilities, were urged to submit to compulsory sterilization as a civic duty.
The head of a Jewish youth was sculpted from wood by the Jewish artist M. Winiarski for German officials in the occupied Polish city of Lodz.
Dr. Eugen Fischer reading <i>Heredity Journal</i>. Dr. Eugen Fischer, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Eugenics, and Human Heredity from 1927 to 1942, authored a 1913 study of the racially mixed children of Dutch men and Hottentot women in German southwest Africa. Fischer opposed “racial mixing,” arguing that “Negro blood” was of “lesser value” and that mixing it with “white blood” would bring about the demise of European culture. After 1933, Fischer adapted his institute’s activities to serve Nazi antisemitic policies. He taught courses for SS doctors, served as a judge on Berlin’s Hereditary Health Court, and provided hundreds of opinions on the paternity and “racial purity” of individuals, including the <i>Mischlinge</i> offspring of Jewish and non-Jewish German couples.
Dr. Ernst Wentzler treats a child with rickets. Dr. Wentzler’s Berlin pediatric clinic served many wealthy families and high-ranking Nazi officials. Although Wentzler developed methods to treat premature infants or children with severe birth defects, he supported ending the lives of the “incurably ill” and served as a primary coordinator of the pediatric “euthanasia” program, evaluating patient forms and ordering the killing of several thousand children.
“You Are Sharing the Load! A Hereditarily Ill Person Costs 50,000 Reichsmarks on Average up to the Age of Sixty,” reproduced in a high school biology textbook by Jakob Graf. The image illustrates Nazi propaganda on the need to prevent births of the “unfit.”

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