About the report
The Nazi era arguably provides the best-documented historical examples of medical involvement in transgressions and crimes against vulnerable individuals and groups. Health professionals played an important role in formulating, supporting, and implementing the Nazi regime’s programme of eugenics and ‘racial hygiene.’
This included participation in forced sterilizations, coerced and often deadly human experiments, the ‘euthanasia’ killing programmes, medicalized killings in concentration camps, and selecting prisoners for murder in the extermination camps of the Holocaust. What happened in Europe during the Second World War has wide-ranging ramifications for medical professionals to this day. Confronting what happened in medicine in this period is crucial to inform the ethical practice of health care and to understand potential dangers in medicine today.
With this report, the commission aims to provide a reliable, up-to-date historical documentation and a thorough analysis of the implications. Teaching of this subject should be part of health professional curricula around the world, helping to promote ethical conduct, moral development, courage to stand up against antisemitism, racism, and other forms of discrimination, and the formation of a history-informed professional identity based on compassion.
