Teaching Hard Truths About Medicine and the Holocaust

Chelouche, Tessa

doi:10.1001/amajethics.2021.59

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 7 publications

(8 reference statements)

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“…In our opinion, there is also a further important distinction to highlight: the medical ethics with the role played by the Nazi doctors. Early-onset diseases, in fact, were caused with the complicity, active collaboration and dehumanization of the medical profession (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6). Prompted by venomous and envious feelings for Jews, career ambition, illusory superiority, delusions of grandeur and economic grounds (before the rise of National Socialism there was a 41% drop in incomes for physicians in Germany), the German medical establishment conducted a rapid immoral transition from healer to murderer which started with the collusion in the exclusion of Jewish physicians from the medical profession betraying the same oaths and codes sworn years before as university students with their Jewish classmates (3).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Holocaust Is a Significant and Independent Risk Factor of Late-Onset Cancers: A Systematic Review of the Literature and Original Data on Jewish Israeli, Jewish Non-Israeli and Non-Jewish Non-Israeli Survivors

Virgilio

Camilli²,

Gili³

et al. 2021

Anticancer Res

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Background/Aim: Seventy-six years after Auschwitz Liberation, the Holocaust keeps on persecuting its surviving victims. As witnessed by the psychiatric and medical literature in the last decades, in fact, the Holocaust survivors (HS) appear to suffer from several Shoah-related late-onset diseases impacting their survival, such as internal illnesses and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Cancer represents a further severe pathology which seems to be connected with the Holocaust experience. Our aim was to review the existing knowledge of Holocaust-related cancer in HS in order to assess its real incidence and clinicoprognostic significance. Materials and Methods: We systematically reviewed the literature dealing with Israeli Jewish and non-Jewish non-Israeli HS developing cancer. We also reviewed and analyzed the cancer data of noted Jewish HS not resident or having resided in Israel available as public information. Results: We found 16 and 15 studies on Israeli Jews and non-Jewish non-Israeli survivors, respectively.A statistically significant association between the Holocaust and development of late-onset cancer in HS was seen in most studies with cancer adversely impacting the survival. We also selected 330 noted Jewish non-Israeli HS: genocide-related late-onset cancer resulted to be a significant and independent risk factor of poor prognosis (p<0.0001) imparting shorter survival in affected versus non-cancer subjects (57 versus 64 years, respectively, p=0.0001). Conclusion: Although 76 years have passed, our review shows how the Holocaust keeps on burdening its survivors. Moreover, we offered the first analysis of Jewish HS not resident or having resided in Israel in terms of genocide-related late-onset diseases focusing on cancer. Further studies on Jewish non-Israeli HS are needed in order to corroborate our findings on late-onset cancer occurring in this targeted population.The Holocaust undoubtedly represents one of the darkest pages in the history of mankind: still today, European concentration and extermination camps, the ghettos and all the Memorial sites are steeped in horrors and crimes perpetrated by the Nazi Germany (1). Interestingly, differently from other past or current genocides, only the Shoah was characterized by a systematic and dehumanized medicalization of the sufferings (1, 2). To the physicians and medical students of today, in fact, it is emotionally and rationally shocking to know that the atrocities inflicted in anus mundi were realized with the active complicity of the German medical community and that, with very few notable exceptions, history has ignored 2745 This article is freely accessible online.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…such despicable behaviors for about 50 years (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6). As of 2021, according to the Claims Conference, approximately 400,000 of the 3,586,993 million Jews who were in Europe at the end of the Second World War (WWII) are still alive in the world today (7).…”

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confidence: 99%