ONE new article in the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the oldest and most respected medical research publications, criticizes the journal for giving only “superficial and idiosyncratic attention” to the atrocities committed in the name of medical science by the Nazis.
The journal was “excessive in its sporadic coverage of the rise of Nazi Germany,” wrote the article’s authors, Allan Brandt and Joelle Abi-Rached, both historians of medicine at Harvard. Often, the magazine simply ignored Nazi medical disasters, such as the horrific experiments conducted on twins at Auschwitz, which were largely based on the fake “Adolf Hitlerracial science.”
In contrast, two other leading scientific journals — Science and the Journal of the American Medical Association — covered the Nazis’ discriminatory policies throughout Hitler’s tenure, the historians noted. The New England Journal did not publish an article that “expressly condemned” Nazi medical atrocities until 1949four years after the end of World War II.
The new article, published in this week’s issue of the journal, is part of a series launched last year to address racism and other forms of bias in the medical establishment. Other recent article described the magazine’s enthusiastic coverage of eugenics during the 1930s and ’40s.
“Learning from the mistakes of the past can help us move forward,” said the journal’s editor, Dr. Eric Rubin, an infectious disease expert at Harvard. “What can we do to make sure we don’t fall for the same kinds of unacceptable ideas in the future?”
In the publication’s archives, Dr. Abi-Rached discovered a document that confirmed Nazi medical practices: “Recent Changes in German Health Insurance Under the Hitler Government,” a 1935 treatise written by Michael Davis, a major figure in health care, and Gertrud Kroeger, a nurse from Germany. The article praised the Nazis emphasis on public healthwhich was imbued with dubious ideas about the innate superiority of the Germans.
“There is no mention of the multitude of persecutory and anti-Semitic laws that had been passed,” wrote Dr. Abi-Rached and Dr. Brandt. In one excerpt, Dr. Davis and Ms. Kroeger described how doctors were forced to work in Nazi labor camps. The task there, the authors boldly wrote, was an “opportunity to interact with all sorts of people in everyday life.”
“Apparently, they saw discrimination against Jews as irrelevant to what they saw as rational and progressive change,” wrote Dr. Abi-Rached and Dr. Brandt.
Mostly, though, the two historians were surprised by how little the magazine had to say about the Nazis, who murdered an estimated 70,000 disabled people before turning to massacring Europe’s Jews, as well as other groups.
“When we opened the file drawer, there was almost nothing there,” said Dr. Brandt. Instead of discovering articles either condemning or justifying the perversions of Nazi medicine, there was something more puzzling: an apparent indifference that lasted until well after the end of World War II.
The magazine recognized Hitler in 1933, the year he began implementing his anti-Semitic policies. Seven months after the advent of the Third Reich, the journal published “The Abuse of the Jewish Physicians,” an article that today would likely face criticism for its lack of moral clarity. It appeared to be based heavily on a New York Times report.
“Without providing any details, the statement said there was some indication of ‘a bitter and implacable opposition to the Jewish people,'” the new article said.
Other magazines saw the threat of Nazism more clearly. Science expressed concern about the “brutal suppression” of Jews, which took place not only in medicine but also in law, the arts, and other professions.
“The magazine and America had tunnel vision,” he said John Michalczyk, co-director of Jewish Studies at Boston College. American companies avidly did business with Hitler’s regime. The Nazi dictator, in turn, looked favorable during the massacre and displacement of Native Americans, and tried to adopt the eugenics efforts that had taken place throughout the United States in the early 20th century.
“Our hands are not clean,” said Dr. Michalczyk.
Dr. Abi-Rached said that she and Dr. Brandt wanted to avoid being “anachronistic” and see the magazine’s silence on Nazism through a modern lens. But once he saw that other medical publications had taken a different course, the journal’s silence took on a huge new meaning. What was said was dwarfed by what was never said.
“We were looking for strategies to understand how racism works,” said Dr. Brandt. It seemed to work, in part, through apathy. Many institutions would later claim that they would have acted to save more of the Holocaust victims had they known the extent of the Nazi atrocities.
That excuse rings hollow to experts who point out there were enough eyewitness reports to warrant action.
“Sometimes, silence contributes to these kinds of radical, immoral, destructive changes,” said Dr. Brandt. “This is implicit in our document.”