PART THREE: Newgenics

CHAPTER 18: From Ashes to Aftermath

On January 17,1945, as the Russian army approached Auschwitz, Mengele
went from office to office methodically gathering his research materials.
"He came into my office without a word," recounted pathologist
Martina Puzyna. "He took all my papers, put them into two boxes, and had
them taken outside to a waiting car." Mengele and the documents fled first
to Gross-Rosen concentration camp, and then into Czechoslovakia. There
he joined up with Hans Kahler, a close friend, coauthor and one of
Verschuer's twins researchers. The Russians liberated Auschwitz on January
27, at about 3 P.M., and Mengele's horrors were quickly discovered. International
commissions listed him as a war criminal. But Mengele slipped
through the Allied manhunt and eventually escaped to South America. 1

Even as the Allies closed in, Verschuer still hoped he and Hitler's Reich
would prevail in its war against the Jews. Just months before Mengele
abandoned Auschwitz, Verschuer published part of a lecture proclaiming,
"The present war is also called a war of races when one considers the fight
with World Jewry .... The political demand of our time is the new total
solution [Gesamtlosung] of the Jewish problem." By the beginning of 1945,
the Reich was collapsing. On February 15,1945, amid the chaos of Berlin's
last stand, Verschuer found two trucks with which to ship his lab equipment,
library, and several boxes of records to his family home in Solz.2

Nazi eugenicists continued their cover-up, in progress since the
Normandy invasion. On March 12, 1945, Hans Nachtsheim, assistant
director at the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics,
wrote Verschuer in Solz. "A mass of documents have been left here which
should be or have to be destroyed should the enemy ever come close to
here .... We should not choose a moment ... too late to destroy them."3
In the first days of May, the Reich was reduced to rubble and der Fiihrer
had killed himself.4 Nazism and its eugenics were defeated. But now its
architects and adherents would reinvent its past.

In April of 1946, the military occupation newspaper in Berlin, Die Neue
Zeitung, published an article on various doctors who had fled Germany, and
followed it up on May 3 with specific accusations against Verschuer. In the
article, Robert Havemann, a communist and chemist who had resisted the
Nazis, expressed out loud what many knew. He openly accused Verschuer
of using Mengele in Auschwitz to obtain blood samples and eyeballs from
whole murdered families.5

A nervous Verschuer reacted at once. He sent a sworn statement to
Otto Hahn, the occupation-appointed administrator of the Kaiser
Wilhelm Institutes, insisting that he had always opposed racial concepts.
"Even before 1933," averred Verschuer, "but also after, I took personal
risks and attacked, as a scientist, in speeches and in writing, the race concept
of the Nazis .... I argued against attributing values to races, I warned
against the high estimation of the Nordic race, and I condemned the misuse
of the results of anthropology and genetics to support a materialistic
and racial point of view of life and history."6

He went on to concede his relationship with Mengele, referring to him
only as "Dr. M.," and insisting it was totally innocent. Verschuer stated, "A
post-doc of my former Frankfurt Institute, Dr. M., was sent against his will
to the hospital of the concentration camp in Auschwitz. All who knew him
learned from him how unhappy he was about this, and how he tried over
and over again to be sent to the front, unfortunately without success. Of his
work we learned that he tried to be a physician and help the sick.... 7

"After I went to Berlin [from Frankfurt]," Verschuer continued, "I
began research on the individual specificity of the serum proteins and the
question of their heredity .... For these experiments I needed blood samples
of people of different geographic background .... At that time my former
post-doc Dr. M. visited me and offered to obtain such blood samples
for me within the context of his medical activity in the camp Auschwitz. In
this manner I received-during this time, certainly not regularly-a few
parcels of20-30 blood samples of 5-10 mls."8

Verschuer then asked Hahn to give him a character reference, and
even drafted a statement for Hahn to sign: "Professor von Verschuer is
an internationally known scientist who has kept away from all political
activity .... Professor von Verschuer had nothing to do with the errors
and misuses of the Nazis, by which his scientific field was particularly
hit. He kept his distance from them and, whenever he was confronted by
them, he criticized them courageously." Hahn would not sign such a
document.9

So Verschuer sought support from his allies in American eugenics.
Shortly after Havemann's expose, Verschuer wrote to Paul Popenoe in Los
Angeles, hoping to reestablish cooperative ties. On July 25, Popenoe wrote
back, "It was indeed a pleasure to hear from you again. I have been very anxious
about my colleagues in Germany .... I suppose sterilization has been
discontinued in Germany?" Popenoe offered tidbits about various
American eugenic luminaries and then sent various eugenic publications. In
a separate package, Popenoe sent some cocoa, coffee and other goodies. 10

Verschuer wrote back, "Your very friendly letter of 7/2 5 gave me a great
deal of pleasure and you have my heartfelt thanks for it. The letter builds
another bridge between your and my scientific work; I hope that this
bridge will never again collapse but rather make possible valuable mutual
enrichment and stimulation." Seeking American bona fides, Verschuer
tried to make sure his membership in the American Eugenics Society was
still active. "In 1940, I was invited to become a member of the American
Eugenics Society," Verschuer wrote. "Now that this calamitous war has
ended, I hope that this membership can be continued. I would be grateful if
you might make a gesture in this matter. In this context, I would like to
mention that in recent months a former employee, a person devoid of character,
has made extremely defamatory statements about me, which have
also found their way into the American press. Therefore, it is possible that
persons who do not know me better might have formed a wrong opinion of
me. You will surely understand that it is important to me that any damage
to my reputation be repaired and I would be very grateful for your kind
help in doing SO."II

Verschuer wrote again at the end of September 1946, requesting
Popenoe's help. Because Verschuer was considered part of the Nazi medical
murder apparatus, the Americans had halted his further work. "Since I
wrote you," said Verschuer, "I have learned that the American military government
does not intend to permit the continuation of my scientific work.
This attitude can only be due to the spread of false information about me
and my work. I have regularly sent you all of my scientific publications and
you have known me for many years through correspondence. Therefore,
may I ask for two things? 1. For a letter of recommendation from yourself
and other American scientists who know me, stating that you know me as a
serious scientific researcher and that you value my continued scientific
work; 2. I ask you and other American geneticists and eugenicists who
know me to undertake steps with the American military government in
Germany to bring about the granting of permission for me to continue my
life's work as a scientific researcher. It is my urgent wish that I be able to
rebuild genetic and eugenic science from the ruins we stand upon in every
area in Germany, a science that-free of the misuse of past years-may
again attain international renown."12

Popenoe, who had also been corresponding with Lenz, was eager to be
helpful, but uncomfortable standing up for an accused Nazi doctor. "I am
distressed to hear that you may not be allowed to go ahead with your scientific
work," Popenoe replied to Verschuer on November 7, 1946, "but it is
hard for me to see how any of us over here could give any evidence that
would be of value to you, even if we knew where to send it. Of course we
could all testify that your scientific work before the war was objective and
maintained very high standards. But if you have been 'denazified,' as I take
to be the case from what you say, it was certainly not for that work, which is
the only work I know about. None of us over here knows anything about
what was going on in Germany from about 1939 onwards, but I suppose
the action taken against you is due to your prominence in public life, as the
successor of Eugen Fischer (who has been attacked bitterly in this country),
etc. I could say nothing that would be pertinent, because I don't know anything
about it. I am being perfectly frank with you, as you see .... But as it
stands now, all I could say is: 'All his work that I saw before the war was of
high quality,' and the authorities would presumably reply, 'That has nothing
to do with it.'''13

Correspondence bounced back and forth between the two until
Popenoe finally sent a brief letter of endorsement, limited to the prewar
years. Verschuer then asked if he could be invited to join the faculty of an
American university. "I have inquired from some leaders in American
genetics," Popenoe replied, "and they all feel that it will be a long time
before any university here is ready to offer a position to any German scientist
who occupied an important position in Germany during the war years.
As you perhaps know, our army brought over a number of physicists and
other specialists, and their presence in this country has led to many protests
and recriminations. I think it is out of the question, therefore, for you to
look forward to any scientific activity here in the next few years-much as I
myself should like to have a visit from you."14

Throughout late 1947 and 1948, Verschuer continued corresponding
with leading eugenicists and geneticists at American institutions, seeking to
reestablish academic exchanges and professional standing. He submitted
one of his older books for a new review by the American Eugenics Society.
Popenoe promptly assured he would review it in a new eugenic publication
called Family Life, and then bemoaned the loss of German eugenic publications.
"It is sad to think," Popenoe wrote, "that the scientific journals, and
even the publishing houses that produced them no longer exist!" Verschuer
also began exchanges with scientists at the University of Michigan and the
University of Minnesota. These were received with goodwill and even
enthusiasm. When Nazi agitator C. M. Goethe of California received
Verschuer's letter, he replied that he was "thrilled."'5

While Verschuer was busy reestablishing his support in America, he
was rehabilitating himself in occupied Germany as well. After making his
accusations public, Havemann organized a committee of Kaiser Wilhelm
Institute scientists to examine the evidence against Verschuer. They ruled
that Verschuer indeed had engaged in despicable acts in concert with
Mengele at Auschwitz, but their report was kept secret for fifteen years. In
1949, while the first report remained under lock and key, a second board of
inquiry was urged to reexamine the issue. This second board unanimously
ruled that he had committed no transgressions involving Auschwitz, and
indeed that "Verschuer has all the qualities which qualify him to be a
researcher and teacher of academic youth." Virtually comparing Verschuer
to Christ being crucified, the esteemed panel of German scientists declared
they could not sit in judgment of him as "Pharisees" (Pharisiie1'haft).16

Soon, Verschuer once again became a respected scientist in Germany
and around the world. In 1949, he became a corresponding member of the
newly formed American Society of Human Genetics, organized by American
eugenicists and geneticists. Hermann Joseph Muller of Texas, a
Rockefeller fellow who had worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for
Brain Research during 1932, served as the first president of the American
Society of Human Genetics.l?

In the fall of 1950, the University of Miinster offered Verschuer a position
at its new Institute of Human Genetics, where he later became a dean.
At about that time he helped found the Mainz Academy of Sciences and
Literature, which later published his books, including one on cancer. In
the early and mid-1950s, Verschuer became an honorary member of
numerous prestigious societies, including the Italian Society of Genetics,
the Anthropological Society of Vienna, and the Japanese Society for
Human Genetics.18

A later president of the American Society of Human Genetics, Kurt
Hirschhorn, remembered his own encounter with Verschuer in about
1958. An Austrian Jew, Hirschhorn had come to the United States as a
refugee during the Hitler era. Hirschhorn became a genetic researcher
and, while on a fellowship to Europe, he had visited Verschuer at the
University of Munster. "Verschuer was partly responsible for the whole
extermination," Hirschhorn related emphatically during a February 2003
interview. "He was the one that gave the Nazis the pseudo-genetic rationale
to destroy the Jews and Gypsies. He was part of the organization
[American Society of Human Genetics] in 1949 because in those days ... it
was all covered up. No one really knew. But I'll never forget. I was sitting in
his university office in Miinster as a young man, and he asked a lot of personal
questions about my background, and so forth, until he found out I
was Jewish. I knew who he was by that time. I took a great deal of pleasure
in telling him that I came to the United States from Austria, and when I
turned eighteen, I enlisted in the army and went over there and fought the
Nazis-and went right through Munster. He was taken aback."19

In the 1960s, Frankfurt prosecutors were obliged by international pressure
to continue their hunt for Nazis. The same prosecutors who investigated
Mengele examined his relationship to Verschuer but concluded there
was no connection between the two. Benno Muller-Hill, a German geneticist,
later investigated Verschuer's activities. Muller-Hill reviewed
Verschuer's many written defenses, including the one in which Verschuer
claimed that while in Auschwitz, Mengele "tried to be a physician and help
the sick." Writing in the journal History and Philosophy of Science, Muller-
Hill described Verschuer's account as "Lies, lies, lies."20

Verschuer was never prosecuted. In 1969, he was killed in an automobile
accident. But the legacy of his torturous medicine, twisted eugenics
and conscious war crimes lives on.

***

As the ashes of Jews and Gypsies wafted into the air of Europe and were
dumped into the Vistula River coursing through the heart of Europe, so
their victimization flowed into the mainstream of modern medical literature.
Medical literature evolves from decade to decade. As American
eugenic pseudoscience thoroughly infused the scientific journals of the first
three decades of the twentieth century, Nazi-era eugenics placed its unmistakable
stamp on the medical literature of the twenties, thirties and forties.

The writings of Nazi doctors not only permeated the spectrum of
German medical journals, they also appeared prominently in American
medical literature. These writings included the results of war crime experimentation
at concentration camps. Verschuer's own bibliographies, circa
1939, enumerated a long list of Nazi scientific discoveries, authored by
him, his colleagues and assistants, including Mengele. Such scientific publication
continued right through the last days of the Third Reich. The topics
included everything from rheumatism, heart disease, eye pathology,
blood studies, brain function, tuberculosis, and the gastric system to endless
permutations of hereditary pathology.21 Much of it was sham science.
Some of it was astute. Both types found their way into the medical literature
of the fifties and sixties. Hence, Nazi victimization contributed significantly
to many of the modern medical advances of the postwar period.

For example, the Nazis at Dachau, using ice water tests, were the first
to experimentally lower human body temperature to 79.7 degrees
Fahrenheit-this to discover the best means of reviving Luftwaffe pilots
downed over the North Sea. Nazi scientists learned that the most effective
method was rapid rewarming in hot water. Nuremberg testimony revealed
that Dr. Sigmund Rascher, who oversaw these heinous hypothermia tests,
prominently reported his breakthroughs at a 1942 medical symposium with
a paper entitled "Medical Problems Arising from Sea and Winter."22

After the war, Rascher's conclusions were gleaned from Nazi reports
and reluctantly adopted by British and American air-sea rescue services. A
Nuremberg war crimes report on Nazi medicine summed up the extreme
discomfort of Allied military doctors: "Dr. Rascher, although he wallowed
in blood ... and in obscenity ... nevertheless appears to have settled the
question of what to do for people in shock from exposure to cold .... The
method of rapid and intensive rewarming in hot water ... should be immediately
adopted as the treatment of choice by the Air-Sea Rescue Services
of the United States Armed Forces."23

Rascher reported to Hubertus Strughold, director of the Luftwaffe
Institute for Aviation Medicine. Strughold attended the Berlin medical
conference that reviewed Rascher's revelations. A Nazi scientist wrote at
the time that there were no "objections whatsoever to the experiments
requested by the Chief of the Medical Service of the Luftwaffe to be conducted
at the Rascher experimental station in the Dachau concentration
camp. If possible,]ews or prisoners held in quarantine are to be used."24

After the war, Strughold was smuggled into the United States under the
infamous Operation Paperclip project, which offered Nazi scientists refuge
and immunity in exchange for their scientific expertise. Once in the U.S.,
Strughold became the leader in American aviation medicine. His work was
directly and indirectly responsible for numerous aeromedical advances,
including the ability to walk effortlessly in a pressurized air cabin-now
taken for granted-but which was also developed as a result of Dachau
experiments. He was called "the father of U.S. Space Medicine," and
Brooks Air Force Base in Texas named its Aeromedical Library in his
honor. A celebratory mural picturing Strughold was commissioned by
Ohio State University. When Jewish and Holocaust-survivor groups, led
by the Anti-Defamation League, discovered the honors extended to
Strughold, they objected. Ohio State University removed its mural in
1993. The U.S. Air Force changed its library's name in 1995.25

In 2003, the state of New Mexico still listed Strughold as a member of
its International Space Hall of Fame. But on February 13, 2003, when this
reporter asked about their honoree's Nazi connection, a startled museum
official declared, "Ifhe was doing experiments at Dachau, it would give one
pause why anyone would ever nominate him in the first place." Museum
officials added they would immediately look into removing his name.26

Another case involved Nazi doctors Hallervorden and Spatz. In 1922,
the two had successfully identified a rare and devastating brain disease
caused by a genetic mutation. The disease came to be known as
Hallervorden-Spatz Syndrome in their honor. During the Hitler era, while
working at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research, Hallervorden
and Spatz furthered their research by utilizing hundreds of brains harvested
from T-4 victims. Right through the 1960s, Hallervorden authored
numerous influential scientific papers on the subject. For decades, the
name Hallervorden-Spatz has been used by the leading medical institutions
in the world, honoring the two Nazis who discovered the disorder.
Thousands of articles and presentations have been made on the topic, using
the name Hallervorden-Spatz. Medical investigators created an "International
Registry of Patients with Hallervorden-Spatz Syndrome and
Related Disorders. "27

Leading family support groups involved with the disorder have also
taken their organizational names from the two Nazi doctors. But the news
about Hallervorden and Spatz's Nazi past recently became known to many
in the field. In 1993, two doctors expressed the view of many in a letter to
the editor of the journal Neurology. "It is also time to stop using the term,
'Hallervorden-Spatz disease' whose only purpose is to honor Hallervorden
by using his name." Another journal, Lancet, expressed a similar view in
1996, describing the continued honorary use of the name "Hallervorden-
Spatz" as "indefensible" because "both Hallervorden and Spatz were
closely associated with the Nazi extermination policies."28

In January of 2003, the Hallervorden-Spatz Syndrome Association
renamed itself the NBIA Disorders Association; the acronym was derived
from "neurodegeneration with brain iron accumulation." Just after the
announcement, the newly-renamed association's president, Patricia Wood,
told this reporter that the name change was certainly due to the legacy of
Nazi experiments attached to Hallervorden and Spatz. The association's
website confirmed that the name change was driven by "concerns about the
unethical activities of Dr. Hallervorden (and perhaps also Dr. Spatz)
involving euthanasia of mentally ill patients during World War II."29

The National Institutes of Health also adopted the Hallervorden-Spatz
appellation for its research into the disease. NIH convened a two-day
workshop on the disorder in May of 2000. As of March 2003, the National
Institutes of Health continues to maintain a Hallervorden-Spatz Disease
Information web page. On February 13, 2003, an NIH spokesman said that
the institute was becoming aware of the Hallervorden-Spatz Nazi legacy
and monitoring name changes in the field. "It is unfortunate that the two
people who have discovered and researched this disease have undergone
political scrutiny," the spokesman said, "but I don't see any name change at
this time." The spokesman stressed that the problem was mere "political
scrutiny." The spokesman did confirm that the institute would adjust
its website's search engine to permit the term "NBIA" to reach its
Hallervorden-Spatz information sites.3D

Nazi medical victims suffered torture to substantially advance Reich
scientific knowledge and modern medicine. Then the murdered specimens
were delivered to the likes of Verschuer and Hallervorden and their
eugenic institutions. But then what? After the war, victims' remains were
transferred to or maintained by some of Germany's leading medical
research facilities. Hence the exterminated continued to provide organic
service to German medicine. In 1989, the Max Planck Institute for Brain
Research, the successor to Hallervorden's center, admitted that it still possessed
thirty tissue samples in its files. That same year, tissue samples and
skeletons were also found in universities in Tiibingen and Heidelberg. In
1997, investigators confirmed that the University of Vienna's Institute of
Neurobiology still housed four hundred Holocaust victims' brains. The
University of Vienna had functioned as part of the Reich after Austria's
union with Germany in 1938. Similar discoveries have been made elsewhere
in former Nazi-occupied Europe.Jl

In many cases, local officials, acting nearly a half-century after the fact,
have elected to cremate the remains respectfully and bury them in memorial
cemeteries. At one such burial service, conducted by Eberhard-Karls
University in Tubingen, Professor Emeritus of Neuropathology Jurgen
Peiffer spoke solemnly. "We must remember," he eulogized, "that there is a
dangerous possibility that we may bury our bad consciences together with
these tissue remains, thereby avoiding the necessity of remembering the
past .... I know that there are those who think we are acting out of faintheartedness
and anxiety; some ask whether 'dust to dust' really applies to
glass slides and whether this act is the appropriate answer?" He answered
his own question when he read aloud the inscription on the tablet.32

Displaced, oppressed, maltreated,
Victims of despotism or blind justice,
They first found their rest here.
Science, which did not respect
Their rights and dignity during life,
Sought even to use their bodies after death.
Be this stone a reminder to the living. 33

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