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`Deadly Medicine'
D. C. exhibit shows how Nazi "science" aided genocide.
JUSTIN BOSCH
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Washington
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orced killings are "mercy
deaths;" the condemned are
"research material;" and "disin-
fecting" describes sterilizations, killings
and exile.
"Deadly Medicine," a new special
exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Washington,
navigates the pseudo-science that
underpinned the Holocaust.
How Germany, which had been a
medical leader early in the 20th centu-
ry, devolved into an epicenter of bad
science is the exhibit's central concern.
"We're trying to help people under-
stand how something like this could
evolve," said Arthur Berger, the muse-
um's director of communications.
The exhibit abounds with medical
instruments, artifacts and records and
explains how science, economics and
politics acted as catalysts for the
Holocaust.
Science to most would seem a
benevolent instrument; but the exhibit
•shows how science can aid, if not
spawn, massive-scale genocide.
The role of science in legitimizing
large-scale forced killings, sterilizations
and deportations is a contributing fac-
tor to the uniqueness of the
Holocaust, compared to other repres-
sive and genocidal regimes, said exhib-
it curator Susan Bachrach.
The roots of the Nazis' "science"
date to the 19th century, when scien-
tists worldwide wondered whether
Charles Darwin's "survival of the
fittest" theory could be applied to
humans.
This application — eugenics —
sought to improve the human genetic
code via selective breeding. A conflu-
ence of events in Germany propelled
the program from obscurity to a sadis-
tic national movement.
"Mercy Deaths"
An economic crisis created a pretext
for the Nazis to pour resources into
filtering the population of those
"unfit" elements who were a financial
burden, and physicians afforded the
development credibility. Significantly,
the Nazi Party enjoyed a rate of mem-
bership among physicians higher than
in most other professions.
"The underlying idea and ideology
was that some people were less valu-
able than others," Bachrach said.
German eugenics eventually cast
Jews and others, including blacks and
Gypsies, as an economic dredge whose
very existence taxed the economy and
their compatriots.
"Mercy deaths" first befell disabled
infants and children but rapidly
expanded to Jews and others deemed
undesirable.
"Deadly Medicine" divides the his-
tory into three periods. "Science as
Salvation" tracks the pre-Nazi period;
"The Biological State" is concurrent
with the rise of the Nazis; and "Final
Solution" covers the forced murders
that began under the shadow of war.
The stark layout uses sharp graphics
to evoke the Holocaust chronology.
The exhibit begins with bright
lights, and then grows dim and
opaque. Shades of green create the feel
of a medical laboratory and patches of
antiseptic white tiles suggest psychi-
atric wards. Late in the exhibit, the
few splashes of color come from artis-
tic works of condemned schizophren-
ics.
A chair with raised ridges along the
seat once forced photographic subjects
into upright posture; a steel gynecol-
ogical examination chair resembles a
torture device; and an acrylic cube dis-
plays two plaster-cast human heads
used for medical education, one of
Nordic descent, the other African.
A European map tracks the distribu-
tion of the races by colored dots, and
its key ranks the races in descending
order. Nordics top the list while Jews
and Africans fall to the bottom.
Posters depict "undesirable" mem-
bers of society as literally backbreak-
ing. In one, a fit Aryan, the German
racial ideal, bears a shoulder-straddling
pole seating two men — one sickly
and one "subhuman." Others calculate
the annual economic burden of such
individuals in terms of tens of thou-
sands of Reichsmarks and appeal to
economic and nationalist sensitivities.
The exhibit concludes with a cast of
a Jewish face once used for medical
study.