The Legacy of Nazi Medicine in Contemporary Mental Health Ethics
Department for Medical Ethics and History of Medicine
Comparing three decades of debates in Germany and Israel, 1990-2020
Researchers
Prof. Dr. Silke Schicktanz, Göttingen, Germany sschick(at)gwdg.de
Prof. Dr. Nadav Davidovitch, Be'er-Sheva, Israel nadavd(at)bgu.ac.il
Dr. Rakefet Zalashik, Be'er-Sheva, Israel rakez(at)hotmail.com
Karina Korecky, M.A., Göttingen, Germany karina.korecky(at)med.uni-goettingen.de
Associated scholars
Dr. Limor Malul, Zefat, Israel limor.mlr(at)gmail.com
Dr. Tobias Weidner, Göttingen, Germany, tobias.weidner(at)med.uni-goettingen.de
Funding: Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony, Program "Research Cooperation Lower Saxony – Israel"
Duration: 2022–2025
Summary
Our joint German-Israeli project studies the legacy of Nazi medicine and the Holocaust in mental health ethics.
National Socialist medicine and medical research was based on eugenics and racial hygienics, on the systematic discrimination, sterilization and killing of disabled and psychiatric patients.
Modern bioethics and mental health ethics provide reflection and moral orientation for health care professionals, patients, and health politics. Strikingly, the connections between bioethics and Holocaust memory have never before been systematically examined. To fill in this gap, we will look at how perceptions of Nazi atrocities have shaped the emergence of bioethics by comparing contemporary mental health ethical debates in Germany and Israel between 1990 und 2020.
Our investigation focuses on two research questions in the area of mental health ethics:
- What image of the patient has informed mental health ethics – particularly the concepts of informed consent and patient autonomy – and on which formal regulations, informal assumption and historical references is that image based?
- What are the ethical imperatives that guide research on mentally incompetent or incapacitated persons, or patients with severe mental illness (e.g. dementia research and placebo-controlled clinical trials) and how are they influenced by collective memory of a traumatic past?
By comparing ethical debates in Germany and Israel we aim at detailed, disciplinary-reflective understandings of the historical, social, and political factors which influence the development of ethical discourse in psychiatry and mental health. Such comparative insights will prove fruitful in understanding the cultural framing of bioethical thinking.
Outreach Conferences Lectures Workshops
Outreach and results
"Rethinking the Legacy of Nazi Medicine and Debating the Future of Psychiatric Bioethics"
International Project Workshop, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva
July 14-15, 2024
Project papers
Dr. Rakefet Zalashik, Dr. Limor Malul, Prof. Dr. Nadav Davidovitch, "Close to Memory and Fortgetfulness of the Holocaust: Initial Findings of a Qualitative Interview Study"
From the 1930s until the 1980s many of the psychiatrists and the patients were themselves survivors from Nazi Europe – either the luckier ones, who manages to escape persecution in the 1930s or those who came to Israel after the war. This unique situation had a direct and an indirect influence on the dynamic of the way Israeli mental health system has evolved. Today the Holocaust and Nazi medicine, as the initial finding of our interview show, is both omnipresent and absent in psychiatric bioethics in Israel.
Karina Korecky, "From Past Crimes to Present Ethics? Ethical Lessons From Nazi Psychiatry in German Debates"
What is the temporal-moral connection between the past and present of psychiatry? The legacy of Nazi crimes is present in today's debates on German psychiatry – in unexpected ways, though. In this paper I present collected data (discourse analysis; qualitative interview study), raise the meaning of institutionalization of medical ethics and bioethics, and briefly elaborate how ethics and NS commemoration started to interconnect in German psychiatry in the 1990s. I conclude with a discussion of two contrasting ethical positions, emphazising different aspects of Nazi patient killings and therefore stressing different lessons learned from Nazi psychiatry.
Full program see here.
[Transformative Experiences in Medicine]
[Online Lecture Series, University Hospital of Duesseldorf]
May 23, 2024
Lecture
Karina Korecky, ["From Past Crimes to Present Ethics? Milestones in the Development of Psychiatric Ethics in Germany"]
"Rethinking Mental Disease and the Birth of Bioethics in the Shadow of the Holocaust"
International Project Workshop, ETH Zurich
April 24-25, 2024
Chair for Science Studies
Organizers: Michael Hagner, Rakefet Zalashik
Project papers
Prof. Dr. Nadav Davidovitch, "From Bioethics to History of Medicine and Public Health and Back. What is the Relevance of Nazi Medicine to Mental Health Ethics"
Karina Korecky, "From Past Crimes to Present Ethics? Milestones in Psychiatric Ethics in Germany"
Prof. Dr. Silke Schicktanz, "The (not so) Slippery Slope of Historical References in Bioethical Argumentation"
Full program see here.
[First Spring Conference of the Academy for Ethics in Medicine]
April 24, 2024, online
Project paper
Prof. Dr. Silke Schicktanz, Karina Korecky, ["From Past Crimes to Present Ethics? Milestones in the Development of Psychiatric Ethics in Germany"]
6th Conference of Scientific Cooperation between Lower Saxony and Israel
Hannover
March 18-19, 2024
Project presentation
Silke Schicktanz, Nadav Davidovitch, "The Legacy of Nazi Medicine in Contemporary Mental Health Ethics –Comparing Israel and Germany"
National Socialist medicine was based on eugenics and racial hygienics, on the systematic discrimination, sterilization and killing of disabled and psychiatric patients. Among other members of the medical community during the National Socialist era, psychiatrists in particular participated in “medical killings” (R. J. Lifton). Beginning in the 1960s, modern bioethics and mental health ethics has offered moral orientation for health care professionals, patients, and health politics. Yet strikingly, the connections between bioethics and the legacy of Nazi atrocities have never before been systematically studied.
Historians and medical ethicists often work at cross purposes. If the former look at how historical lessons have impacted ethical considerations, the latter ask whether and what normative lessons we should draw from historical experiences. By taking a heuristic approach that integrates both perspectives, our project illuminates the importance of interdisciplinary teams undertaking joint explorations. In combining normative and historical perspectives, we suggest a new, comparative outlook for empirical bioethics. As medical standards become increasingly international, such comparative research that transcends national discourses is becoming ever more relevant.
[Double Persecution. Mentally Ill and Disabled Jews in the Nazi Era & Inclusive Approaches in Historical Education – Lecture Series Online Advanced Seminar by Yad Vashem, World Holocaust Rememberance Center"]
December 12, 2022
Lecture
Rakefet Zalashik, Karina Korecky, ["The Influence of the Holocaust and Nazi Medical Crimes on Medical Ethical Questions in Israel and Germany – Comparative Research Questions"]
Full program here.
Publications
- Schicktanz, S., Michl, S., Stoff, H. 2021: “Bioethics and the argumentative legacy of atrocities in medical history: Reflections on a complex relationship,” Bioethics, 3 Jan 2021 https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.12841
- Boas, H., Davidovitch, N., Filic, D., Zalashik, R., “From bioethics to biopolitics: ‘Playing the Nazi card’ in public health ethics—the case of Israel,” Bioethics, 28 May 2021 https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.12883
- Malul, L., Davidovitch, N., Almog, S., “The Impact of Past Events on the Development of Human Medical Experimentation in Israel,” Korot, The Israel Journal of the History of Medicine and Science, Vol. 25, 2019-2020, 77-100
About us
Our interdisciplinary team brings together top-tier researchers with diverse expertise in bioethics, public health, history, and sociology. Silke Schicktanz, Nadav Davidovitch, and Rakefet Zalashik have conducted a long-standing exchange on the influence of history and memory on current debates in bioethics. Since 2017, they have jointly organized several workshops on bioethics after the Holocaust in Israel and Europe, and together with Heiko Stoff have founded an international working group on “Bioethics and the Legacy of the Holocaust”. Starting in 2022, they are joined by Karina Korecky, whose research focuses on sociology of psychiatry. Associated scholars Tobias Weidner and Limor Malul will be contributing their expertise in the history of bioethical debates and historical impacts on the development of medical research in Israel.
We are drawn together by a common interest in understanding how the legacy of medical practices during the Holocaust has influenced the emergence of bioethics and, more broadly, in reflecting on the relationship between medical history, ethical debates, and current medical practices.
