| Literature DB >> 36197483 |
Michael Martin1,2, Heiner Fangerau1, Axel Karenberg3.
Abstract
Neurologists as victims of National Socialist extermination policies have been rarely addressed as a special group in historical research. On the basis of archival documents and biographical literature, this essay presents 9 exemplary fates of a group of victims of violence whose number and structure so far cannot be estimated. These neurologists died in the ghettos of Lwów (e.g. Lucja Frey) and Theresienstadt (Alexander Spitzer/Vienna), were murdered in the concentration or extermination camps of Mauthausen (e.g. Raphael Weichbrodt/Frankfurt, Hans Pollnow/Berlin) and Auschwitz (e.g. Otto Sittig/Prague), or were executed in the East (e.g. Arthur Simons/Berlin). Others whose attempts to emigrate failed or whose deportation was imminent, chose to commit suicide. This group included the neuroserologist Felix Plaut (Munich), the encephalitis researcher Felix Stern (Göttingen), and presumably Fritz Chotzen (Breslau). In all these cases it was an eponym or a relationship to university medicine that prompted the investigations; however, the fate of innumerable colleagues employed in communal departments and medical practices remains unknown to date. Future studies will have to undertake a deeper look at the suffering of neuroscientists who perished in the Holocaust.Entities:
Keywords: Holocaust; Jewish physicians; Medicine in National Socialism; Neurology, history; Neurosciences, history
Mesh:
Year: 2022 PMID: 36197483 DOI: 10.1007/s00115-022-01334-x
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Nervenarzt ISSN: 0028-2804 Impact factor: 1.297