In a dramatic move timed to coincide with the 2012 German Medical Assembly meeting in Nuremberg, the German Medical Association issued a formal apology for the role German physicians played in the Holocaust and its related atrocities. Here is a translation of the letter petitioning for the apology plus the text of the apology itself.
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In remembrance of the victims of Nazi medicine
Nuremberg, May 2012
Honoured delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
After thirty-three years, the German Medical Assembly (Deutscher Ärztetag), the annual meeting of the German Medical
Association (Bundesärztekammer), is
once again being held in Nuremberg, the site of the Doctors’ Trial of
1946-1947. This serves as an appropriate and timely opportunity for the German
Medical Association to take an official position on its historical
responsibility and the complicity of its predecessor organization in crimes
against humanity committed under the Nazi regime. The victims of the medical
system under National Socialism – the few still alive today and the many who
have died at the time or in the intervening years – deserve a comprehensive
explanation by the German Medical Association, including an official and
explicit apology. This has yet to be offered.
In light of the lectures given by the medical historian Prof. Richard
Toellner on medicine under National Socialism and the “burden of the lessons
learned” during the 92nd German Medical Assembly in Berlin in 1989,
as well as the resolution of the 99th German Medical Assembly in
Cologne in 1996 on the “values of the Medical Association 50 years after the
Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial,” we would like to encourage you, here in Nuremberg,
where the medical crimes against humanity were publicly put on trial, to use
the 115th German Medical Assembly to publicly and officially take
a stand on this issue.
The human rights violations committed by doctors and the medical system
as a whole under the Nazi regime elicit a multitude of questions for medicine
today. They concern the way in which the German Medical Association perceives
itself as well as possible implications for professional behaviour and medical
ethics.
In contrast to still widely accepted views, the initiative for the most
serious human rights violations did not originate from the political
authorities at the time, but rather from physicians themselves:
- The forced sterilization of over 360,000 individuals classified with
“hereditary illness,”
- the killing of well over 200,000 mentally ill and disabled people,
- involuntary and often deadly medical research conducted on thousands
of experimental subjects.
In addition, there was the dismissal and expulsion of “Jewish” and
“politically unreliable” physicians and the exploitation of slave labourers in
medical institutions, even including university clinics and confessional
hospitals.
The crimes committed by Nazi medicine were not those of a few isolated
and fanatical doctors, but rather took place with the substantial involvement
of leading representatives of the medical association and medical specialist
bodies, as well as with the considerable participation of eminent
representatives of university medicine and renowned biomedical research
facilities.
Many of the doctors involved also held distinguished medical positions
in the post-war period. Similarly, even after 1945, stigmatizing and debasing
concepts and procedures with respect to ill and disabled people continued to be
applied to an alarming extent. For decades, there was no systematic reflection
given to the preconditions for such practices and ways of thinking. The
documentation from the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial as well as the 1947 “Nuremberg
Code” was simply forgotten. In the post-war decades, the issue of medicine
under National Socialism tended to be regarded as a threat to the reputation of
the medical profession.
Only since the 1980s have the German Medical Association and the
institutional bodies of various medical disciplines slowly begun to confront
this historical reality. Since then, research has, only to a very limited
extent, been supported by the German Medical Association. Equally, even in the 1990s, appeals to institutional medical
associations for financial support of key historical research and publication
projects were still rejected. Examples of the suppression and the glossing over
of the Nazi past of medical officials continue to the present day.
The 115th German Medical Assembly in
Nuremberg is a historical opportunity
The 92nd German Medical Assembly in Berlin in 1989 and the 99th
German Medical Assembly in Cologne in 1996 explicitly addressed the issue of
medicine under the Nazi regime and its victims. These reflections can and
should lead to the desire to ask for an apology, which is especially important
to those victims who are still alive. Such an official declaration on the part
of the 115th German Medical Assembly in Nuremberg and the
concomitant obligation to provide comprehensive support towards further
historical research is imperative for the sake of the victims and their
descendants.
We therefore appeal to you as delegates and as responsible members of
the German Medical Association to take the historic opportunity provided by the
115th German Medical Assembly in Nuremberg to issue a
Nuremberg Declaration of the German Medical Assembly
2012.
We have taken the liberty to formulate a draft for such a declaration.
Nuremberg is and remains bound up with the history of National Socialism
and medicine under the Nazi regime. For many years, the city of Nuremberg has
faced up to this history in a remarkable manner and has received great
international recognition for its efforts.
We wish you a pleasant stay in this city and a good Medical Assembly
2012!
With best regards from the first signatories,
Prof. Dr.
Gerhard Baader, Berlin – Prof. Dr. Johanna Bleker, Berlin – Dr. Karl Jürgen
Bodenschatz, Nuremberg – Sir Iain Chalmers, Oxford – Prof. Dr. Wulf Dietrich,
Munich – Prof. Dr. Dr. Klaus Dörner, Hamburg – PD Dr. Fritz Dross, Fürth – Dr.
Hansjörg Ebell, Munich – Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Eckardt, Heidelberg – Prof. Dr.
Frank Erbguth, Nuremberg – Dr. Ursula Ferdinand, Münster – Prof. Dr. Andreas
Frewer, Erlangen – Prof. Dr. Helfried Gröbe, Nuremberg – PD. Dr. Bernd Höffken,
Nuremberg – Dr. Ellis Huber, Berlin – PD Dr. Gerrit Hohendorf, Munich – PD Dr.
Michael Knipper, Gießen – Stephan Kolb, Eckental – Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Kröner,
Münster – Prof. Dr. Johannes Kruse, Gießen – Prof. Dr. Karl-Heinz Leven,
Erlangen – Prof. Dr. Georg Marckmann, Munich – Dr. Nadine Metzger, Erlangen –
Dr. Dr. Günter Niklewski, Nuremberg – Dr. Philipp Osten, Heidelberg – Prof. Dr.
Walter Pontzen, Nuremberg – Prof. Dr. Jens Reich, Berlin – Dr. Helmut Rießbeck,
Schwabach – Prof. Dr. Volker Roelcke, Gießen – Dr. Maike Rotzoll, Heidelberg –
Prof. Dr. Jan Holger Schiffmann, Nuremberg – Prof. Dr. Heinz-Peter
Schmiedebach, Hamburg – Prof. Dr. Dr. Heinz Schott, Bonn – Dr. Horst Seithe,
Nuremberg – Dr. Helmut Sörgel, Nuremberg – Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Söllner,
Nuremberg – Prof. Dr. Hannes Wandt, Nuremberg – Prof. Dr. Paul Weindling,
Oxford – Prof. Dr. Jörg Wiesse, Nuremberg – Dr. Elisabeth Wentzlaff, Nuremberg
– Dr. Holger Wentzlaff, Nuremberg – Prof. Dr. Dr. Renate Wittern-Sterzel,
Erlangen
