Healing by Killing: Medicine during the Third Reich

Healing by Killing: Medicine during the Third Reich will describe the central and indispensable role of the German medical profession, the best in the world at the time, in the design and implementation of the Holocaust. German doctors had promoted racial hygiene (eugenics) for decades and welcomed Hitler’s political program of “Applied Biology” to rid the German stock of  presumably inferior genes transmitted by people with disabilities, Jews, blacks, homosexuals, and Gypsies. 

Gas chambers were designed by physicians to “euthanize” Germans with disabilities and this medicalized method of killing was adopted by the creators of the Final Solution, which explains the presence of Josef Mengele, MD, PhD, and many other physicians on the ramps at Auschwitz and elsewhere. This webinar will demonstrate that racialized medicine is dangerous for patients, especially for Jews and other vulnerable minorities.

This webinar will be led by Dr. Sheldon Rubenfield.

Dr. Sheldon Rubenfeld was in the private practice of thyroidology, endocrinology and internal medicine for 36 years. He was Clinical Professor of General Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine where he taught Jewish Medical Ethics and Reel Medicine: Bioethics at the Movies. He also taught Healing by Killing: Medicine during the Third Reich for 20 years until Baylor cancelled it in 2023.

Dr. Rubenfeld is the founder and executive director of the Center for Medicine after the Holocaust, or CMATH (medicineaftertheholocaust.org) and has led multiple trips for medical professionals to European medical sites relevant to the Holocaust. His books include Medicine After the Holocaust: From the Master Race to the Human Genome and Beyond; Human Subjects Research After the Holocaust; and Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia Before, During, and After the Holocaust.

Zoom link will be provided upon registration.