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Medical history
Historian report: The dark past of the Robert Koch Institute
Historian report The dark past of the Robert Koch Institute
Brutal human trials, fanatical loyalty, lack of civil courage: the Berlin Robert Koch Institute has presented the final report on its role in the Third Reich. It is a bitter record.
10/01/2008, 5:47 p.m.
Berlin - Inhumane human trials and a blatant lack of civil courage - that is the summary of the Berlin Robert Koch Institute (RKI) at the time of National Socialism. Since 2006, the federal authority has had the darkest part of its past researched by an international commission of historians.
Robert Koch Institute: A look into the Nazi past
Robert Koch Institute: A look into the Nazi past
AP
"At no time in the world is there any justification for violating humanistic principles, for violating dignity and physical integrity," said RKI President Jörg Hacker on Wednesday when the final results were presented. According to the investigation report, the RKI was significantly involved in the National Socialist policy on violence. It had a central position in the state health administration and was also part of the Reich Health Office between 1935 and 1942.
The RKI had published partial results of the investigation in recent years. The participation of RKI scientists in inhumane human experiments in concentration camps and psychiatric institutions was already known.
However, the research project gradually brought to light a number of new names and deeds. Above all, the "almost complete penetration of the RKI with the Nazi ideology has become clear," said Hacker. Many scientists at the institute had to emigrate or hide. Just three months after the so-called seizure of power by the National Socialists in January 1933, there was a wave of layoffs at the RKI in which the entire mid-level structure of the institute had been replaced. Later the director and almost all department heads were in the NSDAP.
The lack of civil courage from their predecessors is particularly sad for today's researchers. No evidence of protest was found in the files. Medical historians have seen only the effort to pave the way for a new job abroad through a positive assessment. "We had hoped for more courage," said the RKI president.
He also emphasized that it was by no means only individual scientists who "crossed moral boundaries". This thesis could still be read in 1991 in the commemorative publication on the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the institute. "We have to revise this assessment," said Hacke. "Almost everyone took part or remained silent."
Hacke went even further: at the RKI it was not "like everywhere", but worse than at many other facilities - among other things because, according to historians, physicians "had a disproportionately higher affinity for National Socialism than other professional groups".
The crimes committed by the institute are recorded in the book "The Robert Koch Institute in National Socialism". On the RKI site, a place of remembrance and remembrance is also planned, the authority said.
mbe / dpa
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