An assessment of what Hans Asperger knew about child euthanasia in Vienna during the Nazi occupation.

AIM: Hans Asperger is probably best known for Asperger syndrome. However, he has been accused of knowingly and willingly participating in the National Socialist Child Euthanasia programme by referring patients to the Am Spiegelgrund children's home in Vienna. This later became notorious for euthanising disabled children. We investigated those allegations. METHODS: Clinicians and historians examined original documents and transcripts related to Asperger's referrals from the Viennese Therapeutic Pedagogy Unit, and corresponding Am Spiegelgrund admissions, up to 25 March 1943, when he was drafted. RESULTS: Asperger referred 13 children to Am Spiegelgrund. Eleven survived and apparently received adequate care that allowed them to achieve positive developments, but two girls died. Asperger referred these two girls during June and October 1941, before most of the deaths at Am Spiegelgrund occurred and before its euthanasia programme became public knowledge. Our detailed investigation of the medical records, Unit referral practices and Am Spiegelgrund provided no evidence that Asperger knew about the euthanasia programme at the time of the referrals. One death was probably due to euthanasia, but the other was less clear. CONCLUSION: There was no evidence that Asperger knew about the euthanasia programme when he referred two patients who died at Am Spiegelgrund.

The Social Politics of Karl Escherich's 1933 Inaugural Presidential Lecture.

The essay offers a close reading of the inaugural address Termite Craze by the entomologist Karl Escherich, the first German university president to be appointed by the Nazis. Faced with a divided audience and under pressure to politically align the university, Escherich, a former member of the NSDAP, discusses how and to what extent the new regime can recreate the egalitarian perfection and sacrificial predisposition of a termite colony. The paper pays particular attention to the ways in which Escherich tries to appease the various factions in his audience (faculty, students and the Nazi party); in doing so, it also discusses how Escherich depicts his address in the altered versions of his later memoirs.

Anatomist Hermann Stieve used Nazi victims for his research on the menstrual cycle, but did he also fabricate facts?

PURPOSE: Hermann Stieve (1886-1952), director of the Berlin Anatomical Institute from 1935, benefited from the rise of execution numbers during the "Third Reich". He used organs and tissues from executed women for his histological research on the reproductive organs and investigated the influence of "nervous agitation" on the cyclical changes of endometrium and ovary. It is still controversial how he was able to acquire intimate data on the executed women and it was therefore suggested that some of his data may have been "invented". METHODS: Newly emerged dissection protocols and histological drawings from Stieve's research, together with archived court records, enable a more detailed analysis of Stieve's published data. RESULTS: We extracted 304 case descriptions from Stieve's publications. Of these, 88 could be linked with 33 identifiable women and related historical records. Nearly all reported causes of death and/or verdicts of executed women were false. Reported clinical data, particularly the day of the menstrual cycle and uterine bleeding shortly before death, are more difficult to verify. We found non-standardised documentation and possible confusions of cases, which may in part be attributable to war effects. CONCLUSION: Stieve actively concealed the fate of the executed women, mostly by inventing imaginary stories. This followed a request by the German and Soviet authorities after 1945 not to publish results from cases of political victims, but only from "dangerous criminals". Scientifically relevant clinical data were not always reported correctly, but are not necessarily fraudulent as different interpretations of this finding can be suggested.

[The pathologist Hans Klein (1912-1984) : Autopsy of his role in the "Third Reich"]. / Der Pathologe Hans Klein (1912­1984) : Obduktion seiner Rolle im "Dritten Reich".

The role of pathologist Hans Klein during the National Socialist era and his career in post-war Germany have hardly received systematic attention. During World War II, Hans Klein worked in two medical institutions, where he collaborated with individuals who were significantly involved in Nazi crimes. Klein's participation initially extended mainly to his work as an employed pathologist at the Rudolf Virchow Hospital in Berlin. There he was introduced to autopsy practices in the context of the children's euthanasia programme and autopsies of victims of medical experiments. Later, a shift in his activities is noticeable at the Hohenlychen Sanatorium. Klein's activities there increasingly involved independent research or voluntary collaboration in the projects of other scientists that were closely connected to the SS and experiments on human beings in concentration camps. He never had to face justice. His role was not further investigated by the Allies - probably due to his non-existent Nazi party and SS membership.

[Persecution, expulsion, annihilation. Neurologists in the NS era-For active remembrance]. / Verfolgung, Vertreibung, Vernichtung. Neurologinnen und Neurologen in der NS-Zeit ­ Für ein aktives Erinnern.

The German Neurological Society (DGN) has commissioned historical research related to the expulsion and murder of German-speaking neurologists during the National Socialism era (NS). Intended as an introduction to the following background essays and biographies in this special issue of Der Nervenarzt, this article summarizes the results and perspectives of medical historical research addressing the persecution of German physicians. Additionally, it shows how the current project of the DGN fits into the context of an interdisciplinary culture of commemoration by a confrontation with National Socialism. Of particular importance for the DGN is that it was founded as the successor to the Society of German Neurologists (GDN), which was dissolved in 1935. In the early stages of the NS era, the GDN was the professional home of numerous Jewish specialists and those labeled "Jewish" by NS law, who were expelled from Germany and (after the "Anschluss" of 1938) from Austria, deported to concentration camps or driven to suicide. With this in mind, "persecution", "expulsion", and "extermination" raise not only questions of collegiality, decency, and morality. Investigating and remembering this era also affects today's public image of the neurological specialist society and constitutes an important part of its culture of remembrance and its history politics.

[Context of the emigration of Jewish neurologists (1933-1939)]. / Rahmenbedingungen der Emigration jüdischer Neurologinnen und Neurologen (1933­1939).

This article focuses on the historical context of the emigration of "Jewish" doctors during the "Third Reich". The approximately 9000 Jewish physicians, who were still able to emigrate, represented 17% of the German medical profession in 1933. Around three quarters of them left the German Reich by 1939, mainly for the USA, Palestine and Great Britain. Initially, Jewish organizations fueled hopes of a temporary exile; however, in the wake of the events of 1938 ("Anschluss" of Austria, failure of the Evian Conference, establishment of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration headed by Adolf Eichmann in Vienna, maximization of economic plundering etc.) emigration via the intermediate step of forced emigration had turned into a life-saving flight. Scientists could appeal to special aid organizations for support. Among the best known are the Emergency Community of German Scientists Abroad initiated in Zurich, the Academic Assistance Council founded in England, from which originated the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning as well as the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars created in New York. Their help was often subject to criteria, such as publication performance, scientific reputation and age. Promising researchers who were awarded a scholarship before 1933 could rely on a commitment from the Rockefeller Foundation. The historical analysis of options and motivations but also of restrictions and impediments affecting the decision-making process to emigrate, provides the basis for a retrospective approach to individual hardships and fates.

[Disparate lives: Ludwig Guttmann and Robert Wartenberg]. / Disparate Lebenswege: Ludwig Guttmann und Robert Wartenberg.

The neurologists Sir Ludwig Guttmann and Robert Wartenberg had a number of things in common, e.g., both enjoyed high international recognition for the clinical care they provided to paraplegics and for their contributions to the development of neurological diagnostics. Both were born before 1900. Both were classified as "Jewish" by the National Socialist regime because of their origins. Both had to flee from Germany in the 1930s but nevertheless did not appear to harbor any grudges after 1945; however, both also show differences even more than similarities. Guttmann (1899-1980) stood up for those persecuted, for instance during the November pogroms in 1938. After his late emigration, he soon found a new home in England. His skills in neurosurgery enabled him to convert a military hospital into the world's leading treatment center for spinal cord injuries. He was the founder of the Paralympic Games and received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II. In 1971 the German Neurological Society (DGN) awarded him with a late honorary membership during the presidency of the former SS captain Helmut Bauer. In contrast, Robert Wartenberg (1886-1956) found a new neurological home at the University of California in San Francisco and published numerous books, some of which also attracted attention in the German translation. On various occasions, he opposed the remembrance of National Socialist injustice and even justified the "concurrent research" in conjunction with "euthanasia".

[" no reservations against the dismissals": the expulsion of neuroscientists from Berlin]. / " keinerlei Bedenken gegen die Entlassungen": die Vertreibung von Neurowissenschaftlerinnen und Neurowissenschaftlern aus Berlin.

Before 1933 Berlin was considered a center of clinical neurology and neuroscientific research in the German Reich. Using a group biographical approach and drawing upon scattered secondary literature as well as upon various archival documents, this article provides an overview of 12 less well-known physicians and researchers who were forced into exile during the nationalsocialist (NS) era, primarily for racist reasons. Among those affected by NS persecution were Franz Kramer and Fredy Quadfasel (Charité), Ernst Haase, Carl Felix List, and Lipman Halpern (Moabit Hospital), Paul Schuster (Hufeland Hospital), and Clemens Ernst Benda (Augusta Hospital). Others who were forced to emigrate were Franz Josef Kallmann (Herzberge Sanatorium), Max Bielschowsky, and Hans Löwenbach (Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research), Otto Maas (Berlin-Buch Clinic), and Kurt Löwenstein (Lankwitz). A total of 6 neurological departments at municipal hospitals were run by (in NS terminology) "non-Aryans" in 1933. With their expulsion, the existence of neurological treatment and training centers outside the university ended and did not resume until the 1960s.

[Radicalization and "forced emigration": the dismissal and expulsion of neuroscientists and neuropsychiatrists from Vienna]. / Radikalisierung und "forcierte Emigration": die Entlassung und Vertreibung von Neurowissenschaftlern und Neuropsychiatern aus Wien.

Austria's so-called annexation (Anschluss) to Germany from March 1938 was followed by the ousting of "Jewish" doctors out of Vienna which happened faster and with more brutality than in the "Old Reich". According to National Socialist (NS) criteria, 92% of the neurologists at Vienna University were understood as being "non-Aryan". Victims of these expulsions were prominent figures, such as the head of the Neurological Institute Otto Marburg (1874-1949), a renowned multiple sclerosis researcher, and his pupil Ern(e)st Spiegel (1895-1985), a pioneer of stereotaxis. Similar to Berlin, nonuniversity departments of neurology were run by doctors who served as professors at the university, e.g., Josef Gerstmann (1878-1967) and his assistant Ilya Mark Scheinker (1902-1954). While these four continued their careers in the USA, the founder of neuroradiology Arthur Schüller (1874-1957) was able to flee to Australia. Hans Hoff (1897-1969) was part of the small group of returning emigrants, who in 1950 was appointed as the chair of psychiatry and neurology. The fate of the neurologists Ernst Sträussler (1872-1959) and Erwin Stransky (1877-1962) appears to be exceptional: both were dismissed and banned from teaching and practicing, but being married to "Aryan" wives spared them further persecution. Overall, within a short period of time neurology in Vienna lost a large number of its highly respected clinicians and researchers. Some of them refined their ideas and innovations abroad after 1945.

["Impossible to be part of this system any longer": the expulsion of neuroscientists from Frankfurt am Main (1933-1939)]. / "Impossible to be part of this system any longer": die Vertreibung von Neurowissenschaftlerinnen und Neurowissenschaftlern aus Frankfurt am Main (1933­1939).

In the 1920s, the situation of neuropsychiatry in Frankfurt was characterized by the rivalry between two institutions (Edinger Institute and University Neurology Clinic), two subdisciplines (neurology and psychiatry), and the physicians Kurt Goldstein (1878-1965) and Karl Kleist (1879-1960). After the National Socialists' assumption of power, university neuropsychiatric institutions in Frankfurt showed the highest number of dismissed university teachers and personnel in the German Reich. In neurology and psychiatry alone the university lost almost 50% of the personnel. Among those persecuted on racist grounds was Leo Alexander (1905-1985), who carried out genetic studies before 1933, prepared the "Alexander Reports" on behalf of the Allies after the Second World War, and was one of the prosecution counselors in the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial. His colleague Walther Riese (1890-1976) fled via France also to the USA and dedicated himself to the historical and ethical principles of neurology. Alice Rosenstein (1898-1991) was the first woman to specialize in neuroradiology and neurosurgery. In contrast to her male colleagues who were also dismissed in 1933, she committed herself to psychiatry after her arrival in North America and belonged to the early campaigners for the rights of homosexuals. Ernst (1905-1965) and Berta (1906-1995) Scharrer finally left Germany because of the prevailing political climate in the country. They excelled as co-founders of neuroendocrinology and neuroimmunology on the other side of the Atlantic.

[" without a visible sign of protest or at least solidarity from colleagues": the expulsion of neuroscientists from Hamburg]. / " ohne ein sichtbares Zeichen des Protestes oder wenigstens der Solidarität der Kollegen": die Vertreibung von Neurowissenschaftlern aus Hamburg.

In Hamburg, the National Socialists' racially motivated exclusion principally hit neurologists from two institutions: the Eppendorf Neurological Clinic (director until 1934 Max Nonne) and the Psychiatric and Neurological Clinic of Friedrichsberg State Hospital (director Wilhelm Weygandt). The chief physician of the neurological department of Barmbek Hospital, Heinrich Embden (1871-1941), who had been trained by Nonne, emigrated to Brazil, whereas Friedrich Wohlwill (1881-1958), another Nonne pupil who had been a pathologist at St Georg since 1924, lived for many years in Lisbon, before he found a new scientific home at the Harvard Medical School. The cerebrospinal fluid researcher Victor Kafka (1881-1955), a Freemason and intermittent member of the Communist Party, was briefly in so-called protective custody (Schutzhaft) in Fuhlsbüttel then fled via Norway to Sweden. Hermann Josephy (1887-1960) and Walter R. Kirschbaum (1894-1982), both imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp after the November pogroms in 1938, could successfully continue their professional careers in Chicago. Richard Loewenberg (1898-1954) first opted to continue his career in China, then changed his mind and also went to the USA after the Japanese invasion. With the exception of the latter all were full members of the Society of German Neurologists. The broad scope of their research work clearly illustrates that in addition to clinical core competence, former neurologists could intensively follow scientific interests in the neighboring disciplines of pathology, serology, and psychiatry.

["There are no worthy life opportunities from a human, professional or scientific viewpoint": expelled neurologists outside the centers of German-speaking neuroscience]. / "Weder menschlich noch beruflich, noch wissenschaftlich würdige Lebensmöglichkeiten": vertriebene Neurologen außerhalb der Zentren der deutschsprachigen Neurowissenschaft.

The persecution and expulsion of German-speaking neurologists were not limited to research centers, such as Berlin, Vienna, Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg. The exclusion from science, teaching and clinical care also occurred at other (university) sites. The different aspects and implementation of the exclusion are presented here exemplified by 10 physicians involved in neuroscience. These ranged from forced internal emigration (Georg Stertz/Kiel), racially motivated removal from office (Max Isserlin and Karl Neubürger/both Munich, Ernst Grünthal/Würzburg, Gabriel Steiner/Heidelberg, Rudolf Altschul and Francis Schiller/both Prague) to publicly staged denunciation and humiliation (Otto Löwenstein/Bonn). Furthermore, without being directly persecuted themselves, individual physicians reacted to the poisoned political and academic climate in that they either sooner or later left their homeland (Eduard Heinrich Krapf/Cologne, Hartwig Kuhlenbeck/Jena). The results and conclusions summarized in this article for university clinics and institutes represent only a narrow section of the neurological scene in 1933-1939; however, they emphasize how necessary an expansion of the historical research perspective is on the fate of neurologists at communal hospitals, in field practices and other professional areas.

["We have to get rid of the Jews, either way": victims of violence among the neuroscientists]. / "Mit den Juden muß so oder so Schluß gemacht werden": Gewaltopfer unter den Neurowissenschaftlerinnen und Neurowissenschaftlern.

Neurologists as victims of National Socialist extermination policies have been rarely addressed as a special group in historical research. On the basis of archival documents and biographical literature, this essay presents 9 exemplary fates of a group of victims of violence whose number and structure so far cannot be estimated. These neurologists died in the ghettos of Lwów (e.g. Lucja Frey) and Theresienstadt (Alexander Spitzer/Vienna), were murdered in the concentration or extermination camps of Mauthausen (e.g. Raphael Weichbrodt/Frankfurt, Hans Pollnow/Berlin) and Auschwitz (e.g. Otto Sittig/Prague), or were executed in the East (e.g. Arthur Simons/Berlin). Others whose attempts to emigrate failed or whose deportation was imminent, chose to commit suicide. This group included the neuroserologist Felix Plaut (Munich), the encephalitis researcher Felix Stern (Göttingen), and presumably Fritz Chotzen (Breslau). In all these cases it was an eponym or a relationship to university medicine that prompted the investigations; however, the fate of innumerable colleagues employed in communal departments and medical practices remains unknown to date. Future studies will have to undertake a deeper look at the suffering of neuroscientists who perished in the Holocaust.

[The exclusion of "non-Aryan" scientists: universities, clinics and professional organizations]. / Der Ausschluss "nichtarischer" Wissenschaftler: Universitäten, Kliniken, Standesorganisationen.

With the implementation of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (1933), including the Third Implementation Decree (1934), the Regulation for Obtaining a Teaching License (1934) and the Law for the Dismissal and Transfer of University Teachers (1935), the National Socialist (NS) government created legislative instruments to ban university staff (from lecturers to full professors) labelled as Jewish or considered politically unwanted from teaching and research. Whereas around 20% of the staff at the universities were affected by these measures after 1933, at various medical faculties the figures reached 30-40% and at neurological departments and institutes sometimes up to 90%. Student Nazi activists played a significant role in expelling faculty members from office. As beneficiaries of the expulsions, young doctors often improved their career prospects and established professors remained silent out of political conviction, opportunism or fear. A (self) coordination (Gleichschaltung) with immediate or gradual exclusion of "non-Aryan" members and boards is documented for numerous medical organizations and associations (e.g. Deutscher Ärztevereinsbund, Hartmannbund, German Medical Women's Association, Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians) as well as for scientific academies (e.g. Leopoldina) and research societies (Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, German Research Foundation). The NS-loyal Society of German Neurologists and Psychiatrists, which had been founded in 1935, tolerated "Jewish" members until 1938. As a whole, the picture that emerged from everyday medical (and neurological) practice is one of drastic changes that massively affected not only the lives of many doctors but also the moral standards in terms of patient care, teaching, research and collegiality.

[Late forced emigration without perspectives: Alfred Hauptmann and Adolf Wallenberg]. / Späte Zwangsemigration ohne Perspektive: Alfred Hauptmann und Adolf Wallenberg.

Archival documents and further biographical testimonies reveal that dismissal and expulsion on racist grounds also affected neurologists in leading clinical positions and at an advanced age. Alfred Hauptmann (1881-1948), full professor for neurology and psychiatry in Halle/Saale, member of the Leopoldina and discoverer of phenobarbitone treatment for epilepsy, emigrated first to Switzerland and then to the USA after the anti-Jewish pogroms in November 1938 and a subsequent "protective custody" imposed on him at the age of 58 years. Adolf Wallenberg (1862-1949), a self-made neurologist, described the syndrome later named after him in 1895. As a clinician he carried out research in the field of neuroanatomy until the National Socialists ousted him from his workplace in Danzig. At the age of 77 years, he emigrated to the USA via Great Britain, but did not manage to settle down again in his profession. For both physicians, neurology was their purpose in life, they felt patriotically attached to their home country and saw no future for themselves after their late forced emigration. Hauptmann is today commemorated by an award for experimental and clinical research on epilepsy, Wallenberg by the German Neurological Society award for outstanding achievements in the fields of cerebrovascular diseases, brain circulation and brain metabolism.

[Persecuted and forgotten? The neurologists Kurt Goldstein and Friedrich Heinrich Lewy]. / Verfolgt und vergessen? Die Neurologen Kurt Goldstein und Friedrich Heinrich Lewy.

This paper commemorates the careers and the scientific influence of the clinical neurologists Kurt Goldstein and Friedrich Heinrich Lewy including their forced migration in the mid-1930s. Goldstein (1878-1965) set up independent neurological departments in Frankfurt/Main and Berlin, adopting a decidedly holistic approach in medical care, research and teaching. He is therefore considered a co-founder of modern neuropsychology and neurorehabilitation. Goldstein came into the focus of the National Socialists as a Jew, socialist and adherent of psychotherapeutic methods. After a short incarceration he fled via Switzerland and Holland to the USA. Lewy (1885-1970) for his part specialized in neuropathological examinations and in 1912 quickly discovered the inclusion bodies in the cytoplasm of nerve cells named after him. As head of a neurological institute in Berlin with inpatient beds, he decided to leave Germany as early as 1933 and arrived after a stopover in England in the United States one year later. The biographies of the two highly innovative neurologists illustrate that career opportunities for doctors of Jewish descent were already clearly limited during the Weimar Republic and that they had to face anti-Semitic tendencies even after their arrival in the USA.

[Mathilde Ludendorff (1877-1966): specialist for nervous and mental diseases and Germanic philosopher]. / Mathilde Ludendorff (1877­1966): Nervenärztin und völkische Philosophin.

Mathilde Ludendorff (nee Spiess, widowed von Kemnitz, divorced Kleine) was one of the first women who studied medicine in Imperial Germany. She wrote a feminist doctoral thesis, refuted Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis early in her career, detected the fraud of Albert von Schrenck-Notzing's spiritualist research, became a specialist for nervous and mental diseases after only 17 months of training with Emil Kraepelin, as his-according to her own words-best pupil, treated General Ludendorff's first wife and soon became his second, developed a Germanic philosophy too radical for Adolf Hitler's taste, was considered as a primary culprit after a first denazification trial in 1949 and contested the expert opinion of her colleague Professor Georg Stertz about her own mental state. Her books are still in print and her Alliance for God Cognizance (Ludendorff) still exists and is monitored by the National Intelligence Agency.

[Legalized deprivation of rights: on the legal construction of dismissal and expulsion under National Socialism]. / Legalisierte Entrechtung: zur juristischen Konstruktion von Entlassung und Vertreibung im Nationalsozialismus.

In order to provide a deeper understanding of the mechanisms and background leading to the persecution and expulsion, particularly of physicians labelled as "Jewish" in Nazi Germany, this article outlines their gradual disenfranchisement, through laws and decrees in the years 1933-1939. As the publicly visible terror immediately after the Nazi takeover was rejected in large parts of society, the regime resorted early on to supposedly legal forms of exclusion. With the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service of 7 April 1933, "non-Aryan" (§â€¯3) and politically unreliable (§â€¯4) persons could be removed from office, if necessary, even without any further comment (§â€¯6). However, regulations for long-standing civil servants as well as the "front-line fighter privilege" reduced the desired effect, e.g. in university medicine in a way that was not intended by those in power. The Reich Citizenship Law of 1935, as part of the so-called Nuremberg Laws introduced the criterion of "German blood". This resulted in a second large wave of dismissals. Outside the universities, a plethora of further defamatory legal norms, from the regulation on the approval of physicians for activities with the health insurances and the Law on Honorary Appointments (both in 1933), the so-called Flag Decree (1937) and withdrawal of the approbation (1938), aimed at the gradual "elimination" of Jewish physicians, which for many of them ended in extermination in the Holocaust. This practice implemented over years was based on a jurisdiction devised especially for that purpose and in hindsight it has been perfectly defined as "legal injustice".

The Editors of Scientific Journals in Dentistry in Nazi Germany and after 1945: A Sociodemographic Study.

This socio-demographic study examines the effects of the Nazification of the professional press in the Third Reich using the example of the dental press organs. Three subgroups were examined: (1) dental editors who lost their positions after Hitler assumed power; (2) editors who were newly appointed or confirmed in their positions during the Third Reich; and (3) editors who were recruited for these positions in the post-war period. The study was based on archival sources, contemporary registers, and dental journals from 1932-1949. These sources were supplemented by available secondary literature. A total of 34 editors were identified and their biographies reconstructed. Several of the editors appointed during the Nazi regime were able take up their positions again after 1945. Overall, the majority of editors appointed between 1945-1950 were former party members; in contrast, not a single Nazi victim was appointed to a position of this kind. We conclude in this article that denazification had no consequences for the specialist dental press. On the contrary, dentists who had benefited professionally from the Nazi regime during the Third Reich stood a good chance of furthering their careers after 1945.

From scientific exploitation to individual memorialization: Evolving attitudes towards research on Nazi victims' bodies.

During the Third Reich, state-sponsored violence was linked to scientific research on many levels. Prisoners were used as involuntary subjects for medical experiments, and body parts from victims were used in anatomy and neuropathology on a massive scale. In many cases, such specimens remained in scientific collections and were used until long after the war. International bioethics, for a long time, had little to say on the issue. Since the late 1980s, with a renewed interest in the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes, a consensus has increasingly taken hold that research on human tissues and body parts from the Nazi era is inadmissible, and that such specimens should be removed from scientific collections and buried. The question of what to do with scientific data obtained from these sources has not received adequate attention, however, and remains unsolved. This paper traces the history of debates about the ethical implications of using human tissue or body parts from the Nazi period for scientific purposes, primarily in the fields of anatomy and neuropathology. It also examines how this issue, from after the war until today, influenced the establishment of legal and bioethical norms on the use of human remains from morally tainted sources, with a particular emphasis on Germany and Austria. It is argued that the use of such specimens and of data derived from them is unethical not only because of potential harms to posthumous rights of the victims, but also because such use constitutes a moral harm to society at large.