(Vienna, 17 November 2025) The Lancet Commission’s large-scale report on “Medicine, Nazism, and the Holocaust: historical evidence, implications for today, teaching for tomorrow” was presented at the Josephinum at MedUni Vienna in 2023 and is now available in a complete German and Spanish edition. The study documents the involvement of medical professionals in forced sterilisation, human experimentation and other crimes under the Nazi regime. At the same time, the report analyses structural continuities and the role of medical institutions during this period.
Medicine played an important and sinister role in National Socialism; the Holocaust and other mass crimes of the regime would have been hardly conceivable without the involvement of medical professionals. In order to bring this topic and the lessons to be learned from it to the attention of an international specialist audience, the renowned journal “The Lancet” convened a commission of 20 international researchers. Medical historian Herwig Czech from MedUni Vienna served as one of the co-chairs. On 9 November 2023, the Lancet Commission on Medicine, Nazism, and the Holocaust presented its comprehensive report at the Josephinum in Vienna and, a few days later, at the Charité in Berlin. The report is now available in two translations. Herwig Czech comments: “The great interest in our report since its first publication and, unfortunately, also the development of the political world situation have shown that dealing with the Nazi era and its effects and implications has lost none of its urgency, not only but especially for medicine. I am therefore delighted that we can now present our work in German and Spanish, which we hope will reach even more people.”
The report is based on a comprehensive evaluation of the scientific literature (878 publications cited) and examines the profound involvement of medicine in the crimes of National Socialism, drawing lessons for the present and the future. The commission shows that doctors, nurses and medical institutions were actively involved in forced sterilisation, human experimentation and killing programmes, and that these acts were supported by broad scientific and social consensus. The document analyses the ideological, institutional and professional ethical conditions that made such crimes possible and calls for this history to be permanently integrated into medical education and practice. The lesson to be learned is that medical practice without reflective ethical responsibility and critical awareness of social and political influences can promote inhumane developments – and that confronting this legacy forms the basis for a humane medicine of the future.
Links:
Major report on Nazi medical crimes published (9 November 2023)
The Lancet Commission on medicine, Nazism, and the Holocaust: historical evidence, implications for today, teaching for tomorrow