Memory Unbound, Unfounded Memory? On Medicine, the Holocaust, and Bioethical Reflection

Abstract

Abstract The article deals with the notion that medical theories and practices played a significant role in the advent and execution of the Holocaust, and that bioethical lessons need to be drawn from this relation. Three underlying premises of this notion are critically assessed: First, that the importance of medicine for the Holocaust has been neglected by Holocaust scholarship; secondly, that there is a considerable empirical connection between Nazi medical crimes and the Holocaust; and thirdly, that this empirical connection represents a paradigmatic epistemological significance of medicine for the Holocaust. The article stresses that the Nazi medical crimes and the participation of physicians in inhumane research practices and mass murder were a significant aspect of Nazi history, but did not play a constitutive role in the extermination of European Jewry. For reasons of historical accuracy, as well as ethical specificity, they should, therefore, not simply be subsumed under the term Holocaust.