Featured Content
Tags
Find topics of interest and explore encyclopedia content related to those topics
Browse A-Z
Find articles, photos, maps, films, and more listed alphabetically
For Teachers
Recommended resources and topics if you have limited time to teach about the Holocaust
ID Cards
Explore the ID Cards to learn more about personal experiences during the Holocaust
Timeline of Events
Explore a timeline of events that occurred before, during, and after the Holocaust.
Must Reads
:
Benno Müller-Hill, professor of genetics at the University of Cologne and the author of Murderous Science, describes the Nazi "Euthanasia" Program, with oral history excerpts from Antje Kosemund, Paul Eggert, and Elvira Manthey. Antje Kosemund had a disabled younger sister who was admitted to Alsterdorf Institute, Hamburg, December 1933, at the age of three and was subsequently killed in 1944. Paul Eggert was a resident of the orphanage section of the Dortmund-Applerbeck institution from 1942-43 where he witnessed the euthanasia of fellow orphans. Elvira Manthey was taken with her sister from a large, impoverished family and placed in a children’s home, 1938.
[Photo credits: Getty Images, New York City; Yad Vashem, Jerusalem; Max-Planck-Institut für Psychiatrie (Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Psychiatrie), Historisches Archiv, Bildersammlung GDA, Munich; Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Germany; Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes, Vienna; Kriemhild Synder: Die Landesheilanstalt Uchtspringe und ihre Verstrickung in nationalsozialistische Verbrechen; HHStAW Abt. 461, Nr. 32442/12; Privat Collection L. Orth, APG Bonn.]
Irene Hizme and Rene Slotkin, Jewish twins born in 1937 in Czechoslovakia, were deported with their mother to Theresienstadt, then Auschwitz. They describe the medical experiments to which they were subjected. Benno Müller-Hill, professor of genetics, University of Cologne, comments on Nazi medical experiments. Simon Rosenkier, a Polish Jew who was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, describes medical experiments at Auschwitz.
Paul Eggert was categorized as "feeble-minded." At age 11, he was institutionalized and sterilized without his knowledge. Helga Gross attended a school for the deaf in Hamburg, Germany. She was sterilized in 1939, aged 16. At age 19, Dorothea Buck was diagnosed as schizophrenic and sterilized without her knowledge.
Benno Müller-Hill, professor of Genetics, University of Cologne, and author of Murderous Science, discusses genetics and eugenics.
Theresia Seible, Gypsy mother of twins born under Nazi doctors’ supervision, and Gypsy twin Rita Prigmore describe research on twins.
We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. View the list of all donors.