Norman Ananda

Professor Wertz-Orbaugh
UWRT 1102-016
22 October 2015
Weekly Writing 7

Racial Hygiene discusses the place of science, more specifically the

place of biomedical science under the rule of the Nazis. While most literature
focuses on how the Nazis either abused or corrupted science, this book
mostly covers the topic of how scientists participated in the creation of the
Nazi racial policy. The book also discusses the distinguishing differences
between the political nature of science and the political consciousness of the
scientists, i.e. how the development of the discipline was shaped by the
political influences at the time. Another subject that this book investigates is
the history of persecution during the Holocaust that helped create the racial
hygiene movement which helped to establish the medical experimentation
program within the concentration camps.
During the period, anti-Semitism was also fueled by outlandish claims
made by German physicians in such a way that would medicalize it.
Overall, these statements portrayed the Jews as a metaphoric parasite or
cancer in the German Volk (195). Here are some examples of unproven
claims made: A Dr. Rajansky pointed out how a German census taken in 1871
shows that Jews were Nearly twice as likely to suffer mental illnesses that a

Christian (196). In 1935, a Dr. Edgar Schulz published an article

demonstrating higher rates of insanity, feeble mindedness, hysteria, and
suicide among Jews which resulted from their impure racial constitution,
which at the time were thought of as a mix of Negro and Oriental blood
(196). This, in result, helped form the opinion that the interbreeding of Jews
with non-Jews would pose a grave risk to German public health (196).
Interestingly, the findings also stated that Jews were Jews were less
susceptible to certain illnesses such as lung infections, typhus, various
fevers, syphilis, and alcoholism.
I believe the preceding extracts will help give my inquiry work a bit of a
background that will help explain the beginnings of the medical
experimentation movement within the concentration camps. I found it
interesting that this was a way for the Nazis to justify their hatred for the
Jews and other lesser groups of individuals, It was a cruel, yet effective
method to somehow relate people with lives not living as nothing more
than undesirables with genetic defects that would somehow taint the pure
German blood if intermingling was allowed.
Even though inferior races were viewed as nothing more than ulcers
which must be cut away from the body of the European nations, the Nazis
also viewed them as a potential opportunity to learn more about the inner
workings of the human body. It was, although unfortunate that they were
treated as nothing more than disposable test subjects that can be easily
replaced. I felt that this book gave an excellent discussion of how science

can be influenced by political forces and how results can be altered to meet
the viewpoints of a popular belief

Proctor, Robert. Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under The Nazis. Harvard UP,
1988. Print.