International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a moral lesson from the past

26.01.2021

On the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, Salvatore Mangione (Thomas Jefferson University), MD, will hold a lecture on "Groupthink, Collective Evil, and the Holocaust".

Seventy-six years after the liberation of Auschwitz the horror of the Shoah remains as haunting to mankind as ever, as indicated by countless books, documentaries, and monographs dedicated to the subject. Recent attention has gradually shifted away from "perpetrators" and focused instead on the "rescuers" - those few courageous souls who chose to risk their lives so that others could live.

As the epitome of altruism for the betterment of mankind one would expect physicians to have been both rescuers and resisters during the Holocaust. Yet, German doctors were the most nazified profession in Hitler's Reich, with every second male physician becoming a party member. In fact, many were perpetrators who not only provided "scientific" legitimization and manpower to domestic campaigns of sterilization and euthanasia, but who themselves participated in pseudo-scientific experiments on concentration camp prisoners. Hence, the need to revisit the topic.

Zoom: https://unipd.zoom.us/s/86359332308
Webinar: ID: 863 5933 2308 Passcode: 967086