The Choice Without Real Chance to Choice: Hatches to the Portrait of professor D. Frank

Abstract

The article is devoted to the biography of professor D. B. Frank who was a well-known scholar and psychiatrist. Frank graduated from medical faculty of Yurivski university. Later he worked in the leading clinics of the Russian empire. At the beginning of XX century he went abroad to take over the experience of theprominent European specialists. His aim was to enhance his professional level. As a doctor he participated in Russian-Japanese War and World War First. After the Soviet rule had been established, Frank worked in Kharkiv. In 1921 he got professor position in Katerynoslav Medical Institute. There he headed the Department of Psychology and later the Department of Psychiatry. During his Katerynoslav period he researched the phenomenon of cannibalism and then he published a monograph on this topic. He also worked in Igren psychiatric clinic that was in Dniproprtrovsk. During the Nazi occupation the physicians of that hospital had to kill mentally ill patients according to the order of the Nazis. Patients were given morphine, ammonia and other medical preparations. During the years of occupation, 1,200 patients were killed in this way. At the first stages of euthanasia program Franck's task was to select candidates for it – Jewish people, seriously ill patients and the communists. Nevertheless the cooperation with the Germans did not save his life. D. Frank was executed by shooting during the Holocaust as he was a Jew.