Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on March 13, 2024

About 60 University of Michigan community members gathered at the Michigan League Monday evening for a presentation from Dr. Sabine Hildebrandt, instructor in pediatrics at Boston Childrens Hospital and associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. The talk, which focused on medicine in Nazi Germany, was the first of a three-part series hosted by the Students for Holocaust Awareness, Remembrance and Education as part of their third annual conference.

Hildebrandt started the presentation by talking about eugenics, the study of creating a genetically superior human being by excluding inferior traits from the human gene pool. Eugenics has been condemned as racially biased and unscientific, especially following its growth in popularity in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. One way in which countries excluded those deemed inferior from the gene pool was through sterilization laws.

In Germany, it was leading psychiatrists that were instrumental in formulating the Nazi-forced sterilization on July 14, 1933, with the so-called Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases, Hildebrandt said. Psychiatrists, neurologists and others served on the hereditary health courts, which passed sentences enforcing sterilizations.

Hildebrandt then explained how eugenics became more racially motivated through the creation of the term racial hygiene by a German eugenicist. Where before the people considered genetically inferior were those with hereditary diseases, the term racial hygiene created the idea that certain races were genetically inferior. This idea was picked up by Nazi Germany and used to further endorse antisemitic and racist ideologies.

So (German doctors) decided about characteristics based on genes that have provided scientific rationales for antisemitic and racist thoughts and policies to exclude, persecute and murder Jews, Hildebrandt said.

The Nazis used eugenics and racial hygiene as justification for conducting brutal medical experiments on Jewish people in concentration camps without consent. During her talk, Hildebrandt discussed how people can learn from the brutality of the Holocaust and how these lessons can be applied to the modern day.

The core values and ethics of health care are fragile and need to be protected, Hildebrant said. They require constant critical assessment and reinforcement. Courage, resistance and resilience are necessary to prevent and counteract potential abuses of trust, power and authority in health care.

LSA freshman Ella Blank said as a Jewish student intending to major in public health, this event helped her explore the intersection between her identity and her intended career.

As a Jew, I think its really important to be educated on my own history, Blank said. I was also specifically fascinated by this topic because Im hoping to get into the medical field.

LSA senior Sydney Kaplan, co-president of SHARE, said the speaker had influenced her senior thesis, making it especially meaningful to hear from her.

We were just very honored to have had Dr. Hildebrandt here, Kaplan said. Her work had inspired my senior thesis on medicine in the Holocaust and she is really a pioneer in this history.

LSA senior Russell Jacobs, co-president of SHARE, said events like SHAREs conference provide an important space for Jewish students and help advance Holocaust education across the U-M campus.

For myself, its just a way for me to express my Jewish identity here on campus and as a way to honor my grandparents, Jacobs said. It makes me really happy to be able to create events like these to show the University of Michigan community why Holocaust education is relevant and why it continues to be.

Daily News Contributor Alyssa Tisch can be reached at tischaa@umich.edu.

Link:

Sabine Hildebrandt speaks on medicine during the Holocaust - The Michigan Daily

Category: Holocaust
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