Nazi Medicine exhibition at Jewish Holocaust Centre

9 November 2008 - 31 January 2009

The JHC will be hosting a special temporary exhibition on Nazi Medicine from November 2008 until the end of January 2009. The exhibition, which has been a great success at the Sydney Jewish Museum, was created by Sydney orthopedic surgeon, Dr George Weisz who passionately and tirelessly researched and developed it over many years. He worked with the Sydney Jewish Museum to produce the exhibition and was assisted by notable historian, Professor Konrad Kweit.

From the time Dr Weisz first contacted us, we expressed immediate interest in hosting the exhibition, which will give the Centre its first opportunity to explore in depth a subject of such importance. The display covers the key areas where Nazi doctors practiced their brand of deadly medicine: eugenics, euthanasia, extermination and experimentation. Central to the exhibition's focus is the concept of medical ethics.

Eugenics was a was a form of selective breeding that the Nazi regime keenly embraced and promoted, particularly to exclude those they deemed undesirable such as Jews, the handicapped, Sinti and Roma ('gypsy') and others. In 1939 Professor Eugen Fischer, the Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology in Berlin stated: I do not characterize every Jew as inferior, as Negroes certainly are…but I reject Jewry with every means in my power, and without reserve, in order to preserve the hereditary endowment of my people.

The exhibition looks at euthanasia during the war and includes the statistic that approximately 200,000 people were murdered with the help of doctors, through starvation, exposure, narcotic ingestion, lethal injections and carbon monoxide gassing. In order to improve mankind the Nazis rationalized and later advocated forced sterilization of such people, medical experimentation on them and eventually this ended with their extermination.

For the medical experimentation display Dr Weisz interviewed JHC guide Stephanie Heller who was, with her twin sister, the subject of medical experimentation under the direction of Dr Joseph Mengele. The forced experimentation on humans during the war is one of the many examples of inhumane and unethical behaviour by Nazi doctors during the war period.

With its accompanying public program, we believe this exhibition will offer a challenging and stimulating educational experience.

Jewish Holocaust Centre
15 Selwyn Street Elsternwick
Melbourne Australia
www.jhc.org.au
ph 03 9528 1985