Germany buries victims of Nazi experiments more than 70 years later – 13/05/2019

The city of Berlin buries on Monday, in the presence of the descendants, the newly discovered microscopic remains of victims of Nazism whose bodies were subjected to medical experiments during the war, an episode of the National Socialist period.

The ceremony is an initiative of the big hospital of the German capital, Charité, after three years of investigations.

It will begin around 3 pm (10 am Argentinian) in the Dorotheestadt Cemetery, in the presence of a rabbi and members of the Protestant church.

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"With the burial of microscopic samples" extracted at this time from the bodies, "We want to give some dignity to the victims"said Karl Marx Einhäupl, director of Charité Hospital.

The initiative is an example of the hospital's recent efforts to "face the past," says the memorial of the German Resistance, co-organizer of the ceremony.

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For "many of his doctors who have held leadership positions have transformed, during the National Socialist period, their clinics and institutes in places where racial medicine and Nazi destruction was practiced"he added.

Among the opponents of the Nazi regime who will be buried, only 300 remains laboratory slides that the heirs of the anatomist doctor who performed experiments at that time, Hermann Stieve, They found in a small box.

The remains, barely visible, were delivered in 2016 to Professor Andreas Winkelmann to try to identify the owners.

"In general, one would not consider that such tiny fabrics deserve to be buried, but in this case, the story is special because they come from people who were deliberately denied the burial so that their relatives do not know where they are, "said Winkelmann. .

Although he could not know exactly how many people belonged to these 300 samples, Winkelmann was able to work from twenty names and some encrypted clues establishing a clear link with Plötzensee prison, where Some 2,800 people were hanged or beheaded by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945.

At the request of families, It will not be publicly identified which victims belonged to the remains that will be buried. But we know that most were women.

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And that, because Hermann Stieve, director of the Berlin University Institute of Anatomy from 1935 until his death in 1952, specialized in studying the effects of the stress and fear on the female reproductive system.

To advance your research, this renowned scientist studied bad tissue extracted from women executed by the Nazi regime.

Among his subjects were 13 of the 18 resistance fighters of the Berlin group "The Red Orchestra", which belonged to the American Mildred Fish Harnack, slaughtered in 1943 at the express request of Hitler.

Unlike what happened with other scientists more known for their cruelty, such as Josef Mengele ("The Angel of Death" from Auschwitz), Hermann Stieve did not belong to the National Socialist Party (NSDAP) and he did not experiment with living people. But he knew perfectly well that his dead guinea pigs had been tortured.

"It shows how cold it was, I saw these people as mere objects," said Andreas Winkelmann.

The doctor "cooperated with the Nazi justice system to advance their investigations," he said. The bodies were probably thrown into mbad graves.

Yet after the war, Hermann Stieve was not the subject of a judicial investigation or prosecution and continued his career, as did many other scientists who worked with and for the Nazis.

At present, its results, despite the conditions of its research, continue to be considered important for modern gynecology. He remains a "posthumous honorary member" of the German Society of Gynecology and Obstetrics.

AFP Agency.

GML