Diploma thesis by Arnd Schweizer (Hannover, August 15, 1997)
From the foreword:
“Medics injected pus into the legs of concentration camp prisoners and castrated women and men with X-rays. People condemned to death froze to death in ice-cold water or died in negative pressure chambers – all in the name of science. On August 20, 1947, the 1st American Military Tribunal convicted doctors and officials of the Third Reich for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Almost 50 years later, the 99th German Doctors’ Day in June 1996 commemorates the victims of National Socialist medicine – for the first time in the sense of a comprehensive declaration of guilt. Repentance is late; for many of those abused and killed it comes too late.
“Scientists are not interested in the history of their science,”1 wrote the molecular geneticist Benno Müller-Hill in 1984. But it wasn’t just researchers who suppressed their history. In 1952, the philosopher and theologian Romano Guardini said about Nazi euthanasia at the University of Tübingen:
“It is a cause for deep concern how little the German people have become aware of what actually happened and what the event means for their, the German people’s, entire existence.” 2
Remembering is difficult, both for perpetrators and victims. 50 years have passed since the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial. This period is not just a piece of contemporary history. It also shows whether and how the past will be overcome. The mass media is crucial here. As the “fourth power,” they are responsible for making what is hidden visible and bringing what has been repressed to light. But do they succeed? Do they address issues early on, or are they just a reflection of a society that doesn’t want to see or hear?
This work aims to show the way in which Nazi crimes committed by doctors – and thus a piece of the past – are dealt with in the media.
Journalists give the general public essential access to historical knowledge and historical perspectives, writes Regina Holler3.
50 years of contemporary history also become 50 years of historical journalism.”
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1 Müller-Hill, Benno: Deadly Science. Excerpt from the book of the same name in the ZEIT from July 13, 1984, p. 45.
2 Quoted from Strothmann, Dietrich: Where justice has its limits. ZEIT from June 8, 1984, pp. 23-24.
3 Holler, Regina: July 20, 1944, legacy or alibi? Munich, Saur 1994 (=communication and politics; vol. 26), p. 7.
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