Jewish skeleton collection
Encyclopedia
The Jewish skeleton collection was an attempt by the Nazis to create an anthropological
display to showcase the alleged racial inferiority of the "Jewish
race" and to emphasize the Jews status as untermenschen
as opposed to the German
race which the Nazis considered to be Aryan
ubermenschen
. The collection was to be housed at the Anatomy Institute at the Reich University of Strasbourg
in the Alsace
region of Occupied France, where the initial preparation of the corpses was performed.
The collection was sanctioned by Reichsführer of the SS Heinrich Himmler
, and under the direction of August Hirt
with Rudolf Brandt
and Wolfram Sievers
, general manager of the Ahnenerbe
, being responsible for procuring and preparing the corpses.
Originally the "specimens" to be used in the collection were to be Jewish commisars
in the Red Army
captured on the Eastern front
by the Wermacht
. The individuals ultimately chosen for the collection were obtained from among a pool of 115 Jewish inmates at Auschwitz concentration camp
in Occupied Poland. They were chosen for their perceived stereotypical racial characteristics. The initial selections and preparations were carried out by SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr. Bruno Beger
and Dr. Hans Fleischhacker
, who arrived in Auschwitz in the first half of 1943 and finished the preliminary work by June 15, 1943.
Due to a typhus
epidemic at Auschwitz, the candidates chosen for the skeleton collection were quarantined
in order to prevent them from becoming ill and ruining their value as anatomical specimens; from a letter written by Sievers in June 1943: "Altogether 115 persons were worked on, 79 were Jews, 30 were Jewesses, 2 were Poles, and 4 were Asiatics. At the present time these prisoners are segregated by sex and are under quarantine
in the two hospital buildings of Auschwitz."
Ultimately 87 of the inmates were shipped to Natzweiler-Struthof
, 46 of these individuals were originally from Thessaloniki, Greece
. The deaths 86 of these inmates was, in the words of Hirt, "induced" at a jury rigged gassing facility
at Natzweiler-Struthof
and their corpses; 57 men and 29 women, were sent to Strasbourg, one male victim was shot as he fought to keep from being gassed. Josef Kramer
, acting commandant of Natzweiler-Struthof (who would become the commandant at Auschwitz and the last commandant of Bergen Belsen
) personally carried out the gassing of 80 of these 86 victims. In 1944 with the approach of the allies, there was concern over the possibility of the corpses being discovered, at this point they had still not been defleshed. The first part of the process for this "collection" was to make anatomical casts of the bodies prior to reducing them to skeletons. In September, 1944 Sievers telegrammed Brandt: "The collection can be defleshed and rendered unrecognizable. This, however, would mean that the whole work had been done for nothing-at least in part-and that this singular collection would be lost to science, since it would be impossible to make plaster casts afterwards."
Brandt and Sievers would be indicted, tried and convicted in the Doctors' Trial
in Nuremberg
and both were hanged in Landsberg Prison
on June 2, 1948. Hirt committed suicide in Schonenbach
, Austria
, on June 2, 1945 with a gunshot to the head. Josef Kramer was convicted of war crimes and hanged in Hamelin prison
by noted British executioner Albert Pierrepoint
on December 13, 1945. In 1974 Bruno Berger was convicted by a West German
court as an accessory to 86 murders for his role in procuring the victims of the Jewish skeleton collection. He was sentenced to 3 years imprisonment, the minimum sentence, but did not serve any time in prison. According to his family, Beger died in Königstein im Taunus on October 12, 2009.
For many years only a single victim, Menachem Taffel (prisoner no. 107969) a Polish born Jew who had been living in Berlin
- was positively identified, through the efforts of Serge and Beate Klarsfeld
. In 2003 Dr. Hans-Joachim Lang, a German professor at the University of Tübingen succeeded in identifying all the victims, by comparing a list of inmate numbers of the 86 corpses at Strasbourg (surreptitiously recorded by Hirts' French assistant Henri Herypierre) with a list of numbers of inmates vaccinated at Auschwitz. The names and biographical information of the murder victims were published in the book Die Namen der Nummern (The Names of the Numbers).
In 1951 the remains of the 86 victims were reinterred in one location in the Cronenbourg-Strasbourg Jewish Cemetery. On Dec. 11, 2005, memorial stones engraved with the names of the 86 victims were placed at the cemetery. One is at the site of the mass grave, the other along the wall of the cemetery. Another plaque honoring the victims was placed outside the Anatomy Institute at Strasbourg's University Hospital.
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
display to showcase the alleged racial inferiority of the "Jewish
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
race" and to emphasize the Jews status as untermenschen
Untermensch
Untermensch is a term that became infamous when the Nazi racial ideology used it to describe "inferior people", especially "the masses from the East," that is Jews, Gypsies, Poles along with other Slavic people like the Russians, Serbs, Belarussians and Ukrainians...
as opposed to the German
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
race which the Nazis considered to be Aryan
Aryan
Aryan is an English language loanword derived from Sanskrit ārya and denoting variously*In scholarly usage:**Indo-Iranian languages *in dated usage:**the Indo-European languages more generally and their speakers...
ubermenschen
Übermensch
The Übermensch is a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche posited the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself in his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra ....
. The collection was to be housed at the Anatomy Institute at the Reich University of Strasbourg
Reichsuniversität Straßburg
The Reichsuniversität Straßburg was founded 1941 by the National Socialists in Alsace while the regular University of Strasbourg had moved to Clermont-Ferrand since 1940. The purpose was to create a continuity to the German character of the German Imperial University of Strasbourg, that had been...
in the Alsace
Alsace
Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...
region of Occupied France, where the initial preparation of the corpses was performed.
The collection was sanctioned by Reichsführer of the SS Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
, and under the direction of August Hirt
August Hirt
August Hirt , an SS-Hauptsturmführer , served as a chairman at the Reich University in Strasbourg during World War II....
with Rudolf Brandt
Rudolf Brandt
Rudolf Brandt was a German SS officer during 1933-1945 and a civil servant.A lawyer by profession, Brandt was Personal Administrative Officer to the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, and a defendant at the Doctors' Trial at Nuremberg for his part in securing the 86 victims of the Jewish skeleton...
and Wolfram Sievers
Wolfram Sievers
Wolfram Sievers was Reichsgeschäftsführer, or managing director, of the Ahnenerbe from 1935 to 1945.-Early life:...
, general manager of the Ahnenerbe
Ahnenerbe
The Ahnenerbe was a Nazi German think tank that promoted itself as a "study society for Intellectual Ancient History." Founded on July 1, 1935, by Heinrich Himmler, Herman Wirth, and Richard Walther Darré, the Ahnenerbe's goal was to research the anthropological and cultural history of the Aryan...
, being responsible for procuring and preparing the corpses.
Originally the "specimens" to be used in the collection were to be Jewish commisars
Commissar
Commissar is the English transliteration of an official title used in Russia from the time of Peter the Great.The title was used during the Provisional Government for regional heads of administration, but it is mostly associated with a number of Cheka and military functions in Bolshevik and Soviet...
in the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
captured on the Eastern front
Eastern Front
Eastern Front may refer to one of the following:* Eastern Front * Eastern Front * Eastern Front * Eastern Front * Eastern Front * 1635: The Eastern Front...
by the Wermacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
. The individuals ultimately chosen for the collection were obtained from among a pool of 115 Jewish inmates at Auschwitz concentration camp
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
in Occupied Poland. They were chosen for their perceived stereotypical racial characteristics. The initial selections and preparations were carried out by SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr. Bruno Beger
Bruno Beger
Bruno Beger was a German Racial anthropologist who worked for the Ahnenerbe...
and Dr. Hans Fleischhacker
Hans Fleischhacker
Hans Fleischhacker was a German anthropologist with the Ahnenerbe and a Schutzstaffel Obersturmführer....
, who arrived in Auschwitz in the first half of 1943 and finished the preliminary work by June 15, 1943.
Due to a typhus
Typhus
Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...
epidemic at Auschwitz, the candidates chosen for the skeleton collection were quarantined
Quarantine
Quarantine is compulsory isolation, typically to contain the spread of something considered dangerous, often but not always disease. The word comes from the Italian quarantena, meaning forty-day period....
in order to prevent them from becoming ill and ruining their value as anatomical specimens; from a letter written by Sievers in June 1943: "Altogether 115 persons were worked on, 79 were Jews, 30 were Jewesses, 2 were Poles, and 4 were Asiatics. At the present time these prisoners are segregated by sex and are under quarantine
Quarantine
Quarantine is compulsory isolation, typically to contain the spread of something considered dangerous, often but not always disease. The word comes from the Italian quarantena, meaning forty-day period....
in the two hospital buildings of Auschwitz."
Ultimately 87 of the inmates were shipped to Natzweiler-Struthof
Natzweiler-Struthof
Natzweiler-Struthof was a German concentration camp located in the Vosges Mountains close to the Alsatian village of Natzwiller in France, and the town of Schirmeck, about 50 km south west from the city of Strasbourg....
, 46 of these individuals were originally from Thessaloniki, Greece
Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki , historically also known as Thessalonica, Salonika or Salonica, is the second-largest city in Greece and the capital of the region of Central Macedonia as well as the capital of the Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace...
. The deaths 86 of these inmates was, in the words of Hirt, "induced" at a jury rigged gassing facility
Gas chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide; carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been used...
at Natzweiler-Struthof
Natzweiler-Struthof
Natzweiler-Struthof was a German concentration camp located in the Vosges Mountains close to the Alsatian village of Natzwiller in France, and the town of Schirmeck, about 50 km south west from the city of Strasbourg....
and their corpses; 57 men and 29 women, were sent to Strasbourg, one male victim was shot as he fought to keep from being gassed. Josef Kramer
Josef Kramer
Josef Kramer was the Commandant of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Dubbed "The Beast of Belsen" by camp inmates; he was a notorious Nazi war criminal, directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people...
, acting commandant of Natzweiler-Struthof (who would become the commandant at Auschwitz and the last commandant of Bergen Belsen
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
Bergen-Belsen was a Nazi concentration camp in Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle...
) personally carried out the gassing of 80 of these 86 victims. In 1944 with the approach of the allies, there was concern over the possibility of the corpses being discovered, at this point they had still not been defleshed. The first part of the process for this "collection" was to make anatomical casts of the bodies prior to reducing them to skeletons. In September, 1944 Sievers telegrammed Brandt: "The collection can be defleshed and rendered unrecognizable. This, however, would mean that the whole work had been done for nothing-at least in part-and that this singular collection would be lost to science, since it would be impossible to make plaster casts afterwards."
 Eastern Front (World War II) The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945... now presents us with the opportunity to overcome this deficiency. By procuring the skulls of the Jewish-Bolshevik Bolshevik The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903.... Commissar Commissar Commissar is the English transliteration of an official title used in Russia from the time of Peter the Great.The title was used during the Provisional Government for regional heads of administration, but it is mostly associated with a number of Cheka and military functions in Bolshevik and Soviet... s, who represent the prototype of the repulsive, but characteristic subhuman, we have the chance now to obtain a palpable, scientific document. "The best, practical method for obtaining and collecting this skull material could be handled by directing the Wehrmacht to turn over alive all captured Jewish-Bolshevik Commissars to the Field Police Feldgendarmerie The Feldgendarmerie were the uniformed military police units of the armies of the German Empire from the mid 19th Century until the conclusion of World War II.- Early history :... . They in turn are to be given special directives to inform a certain office at regular intervals of the number and place of detention of these captured Jews and to give them special close attention and care until a special delegate arrives. This special delegate, who will be in charge of securing the 'material' has the job of taking a series of previously established photographs, anthropological measurements, and in addition has to determine, as far as possible, the background, date of birth, and other personal data of the prisoner. Following the subsequently induced death of the Jew, whose head should not be damaged, the delegate will separate the head from the body and will forward it to its proper point of destination in a hermetically Hermetic seal A hermetic seal is the quality of being airtight. In common usage, the term often implies being impervious to air or gas. When used technically, it is stated in conjunction with a specific test method and conditions of usage.-Etymology :... sealed tin can especially produced for this purpose and filled with a conserving fluid. "Having arrived at the laboratory, the comparison tests and anatomical research on the skull, as well as determination of the race membership of pathological features of the skull form, the form and size of the brain, etc., can proceed. The basis of these studies will be the photos, measurements, and other data supplied on the head, and finally the tests of the skull itself." |
Brandt and Sievers would be indicted, tried and convicted in the Doctors' Trial
Doctors' Trial
The Doctors' Trial was the first of 12 trials for war crimes that the United States authorities held in their occupation zone in Nuremberg, Germany after the end of World War II. These trials were held before U.S...
in Nuremberg
Nuremberg
Nuremberg[p] is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Situated on the Pegnitz river and the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal, it is located about north of Munich and is Franconia's largest city. The population is 505,664...
and both were hanged in Landsberg Prison
Landsberg Prison
Landsberg Prison is a penal facility located in the town of Landsberg am Lech in the southwest of the German state of Bavaria, about west of Munich and south of Augsburg....
on June 2, 1948. Hirt committed suicide in Schonenbach
Bizau
Bizau is a town in the Bregenzerwald, Vorarlberg, Austria, part of the district Bregenz. As of 2006 it has a population of 1,013.-External links:*http://www.bizau.at...
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, on June 2, 1945 with a gunshot to the head. Josef Kramer was convicted of war crimes and hanged in Hamelin prison
Hamelin
Hamelin is a town on the river Weser in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Hamelin-Pyrmont and has a population of 58,696 ....
by noted British executioner Albert Pierrepoint
Albert Pierrepoint
Albert Pierrepoint is the most famous member of the family which provided three of the United Kingdom's official hangmen in the first half of the 20th century...
on December 13, 1945. In 1974 Bruno Berger was convicted by a West German
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
court as an accessory to 86 murders for his role in procuring the victims of the Jewish skeleton collection. He was sentenced to 3 years imprisonment, the minimum sentence, but did not serve any time in prison. According to his family, Beger died in Königstein im Taunus on October 12, 2009.
For many years only a single victim, Menachem Taffel (prisoner no. 107969) a Polish born Jew who had been living in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
- was positively identified, through the efforts of Serge and Beate Klarsfeld
Serge and Beate Klarsfeld
Serge and Beate Klarsfeld are activists known for engaging in Holocaust documentation and anti-Nazi activism...
. In 2003 Dr. Hans-Joachim Lang, a German professor at the University of Tübingen succeeded in identifying all the victims, by comparing a list of inmate numbers of the 86 corpses at Strasbourg (surreptitiously recorded by Hirts' French assistant Henri Herypierre) with a list of numbers of inmates vaccinated at Auschwitz. The names and biographical information of the murder victims were published in the book Die Namen der Nummern (The Names of the Numbers).
In 1951 the remains of the 86 victims were reinterred in one location in the Cronenbourg-Strasbourg Jewish Cemetery. On Dec. 11, 2005, memorial stones engraved with the names of the 86 victims were placed at the cemetery. One is at the site of the mass grave, the other along the wall of the cemetery. Another plaque honoring the victims was placed outside the Anatomy Institute at Strasbourg's University Hospital.
See also
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and EugenicsKaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and EugenicsThe Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics was founded in 1927. The Rockefeller Foundation supported both the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Psychiatry and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics...
- Research Materials: Max Planck Society ArchiveResearch Materials: Max Planck Society ArchiveAt the end of World War II, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society was renamed the Max Planck Society, and the institutes associated with the Kaiser Wilhelm Society were renamed "Max Planck" institutes. The records that were archived under the former Kaiser Wilhelm Society and its institutes were placed in the...
- Nazi human experimentationNazi human experimentationNazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on large numbers of prisoners by the Nazi German regime in its concentration camps mainly in the early 1940s, during World War II and the Holocaust. Prisoners were coerced into participating: they did not willingly volunteer and there...
External links
- Jewish Skeleton Collection, Harvard Law School - Nuremberg Trials Projecthttp://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/php/search.php?DI=1&FieldFlag=12&activity=12
- Names and information on the 46 Greek-Jewish victims from Theassaloniki,Greecehttp://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:8FQYLdBDeFQJ:www.kkjsm.org/archives/Translation%2520of%2520Names.pdf+Hans-Joachim+Lang&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESg42y0XWQC45dwcjwLsIMn60E2qR-gkWTP1aWySV0wXpYJl-MkjJXvg6C_J9j0l3LXqaP84af901jjR8mh0x-PzchxTBt-dNrbcpmaXvvwSGANhz-xfKqumCgwZlmr1VHQ2oD3i&sig=AHIEtbSaTQ4w4lKg-e2yJEbbKlgL9CW-aw
- THE STRUTHOF ALBUM -STUDY OF THE GASSING AT NATZWEILER-STRUTHOF OF 86 JEWS WHOSE BODIES WERE TO CONSTITUTE A COLLECTION OF SKELETONShttp://www.holocaust-history.org/klarsfeld/Struthof/T001.shtml
- THE STRUTHOF-NATZWEILER CAMP by Miloslav Bilik at The Holocaust History Projecthttp://www.holocaust-history.org/struthof/strut1e.shtml