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Subscribe to RSSThe German Medical Association has issued a remarkably blunt and straightforward apology, more than six decades after the end of World War II, for the role it played during the Holocaust in the mass murder, sterilization and barbaric medical experiments done on Jews and many other groups.
The apology, made Wednesday at the Bundesärztekammer (German Medical Association) meeting in Nuremberg, makes no excuses.
Unanimously adopted by the delegates of the Physician's Congress, the declaration says that contrary to popular belief doctors were not forced by political authorities to kill and experiment on prisoners but rather engaged in the Holocaust as leaders and enthusiastic Nazi supporters.
The apology notes that “outstanding representatives of renowned academic medical and research institutions were involved” in organizing and carrying out the mass extermination of millions.
In the statement, the German doctors said they “remember the living and deceased victims and their descendants and ask them for forgiveness."
I don’t know if forgiveness will be forthcoming.
But in the history of apologies for crimes and abuses carried out in the name of medicine this is the most important ever made. It does nothing to soften the horror of the Holocaust but it both ascribes responsibility where it belongs and ends any further efforts to deny or obfuscate what actually happened.
My father was there to see some of it. On April 29, 1945, Army Sgt. Sidney D. Caplan was among the troops that liberated the Dachau death camp outside of Munich Germany. By the end of the war, nearly 6 million Jews and countless others had been killed.
The Nuremberg trials that followed the defeat of the German Reich showed the intimate role that medicine had played in the Holocaust. Many know about Dr. Josef Mengele's gruesome experiments, but now the actions of mainstream medicine have been acknowledged.
German medicine as field has remained silent about it all these decades – until today.
The world must still grapple with the Holocaust as genocide carried out in the name of science and medicine. But it no longer needs to try and push those involved in German medicine to speak about their role. They have done so and they deserve full credit for it.
The world should acknowledge that medicine has finally stared its worst crimes directly in the face and shuddered.
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If they hadn't lost the war, would they be appologising? Hmmm...
Opps, apologising
Germany never had a chance to win the war. Russia was simply too big to conquer and hold, and the U.S. had too much productive capability for them to compete with along with our military capability. When Germany invaded Russia, it started on the road to defeat. When Hitler declared war on the U.S., he guarenteed it.
To answer an earlier question, yes, German automotive companies and german drug companies. For example, Henschel built the Tiger tank using slave labor. The company which makes Bayer aspirin also used slave labor.
Tina: this is a specific apology by the Medical profession in Germany. It is a sign of ethical health in the profession there. You are right to a certain extent, though. I am owed an apology for your statement.
I applaud the German doctors for the courage and honesty it took to make this apology. Im sure that these doctors, if they were even born, were not practicing medicine at the time. They are confirming for those nonbelievers that the holocost did take place. They are also opening a terrible old wound that I'm sure most Germans want to stay closed. This will not make them popular at home I'm sure.
All these apologies are pathetic, as if that some how makes it OK. Why don't we let those on Death Row out once the apologize ? The media tends sniff things out and then begin a campaign to force out an apology. History is History, the only thing you can do about it is study it, so that those mistakes are not made again. But it will happen again since many now believe that people are smarter, better school'd.
Wow....eloquently presented apology....it's just a shame that it didn't come from the physicians who perpetrated their crimes. But it's also a bit of a relief that this generation acknowledges and hopefully has learned something from the mistakes of the past so as not to repeat those mistakes.
Are the people issuing this apology personally responsible for the holocaust?
If not, then why are they doing it? It's completely meaningless.
And now, if we can get our own Imam/Fuhrer Adolf Obamanation and his own Josef Mengele, Kathleen Judas Sebelius to confess to their own crimes in encouraging experimentation on innocent, pre-born human beings--maybe we can claim to have learned something from the Holocaust. Until that happens, we're still blind to the truth.