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Holocaust and Genocide Studies 1988 3(1):21-36; doi:10.1093/hgs/3.1.21
© 1988 by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
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GENOCIDE AND PUBLIC HEALTH: GERMAN DOCTORS AND POLISH JEWS, 1939–41*

In memory of a friend and colleague in the field of Holocaust studies, Uwe Adam-Radewald, 1940–1987

CHRISTOPHER R. BROWNING

Pacific Lutheran University

German doctors in the General Government played an important role in providing the medical rationalization for ghettoization and mass murder. Their desire to prevent the spread of disease to Germans led them to favour providing adequate health care for Poles. The same self-interest engendered their persistent advocacy of ghettoization for Jews, who were believed to be natural carriers of spotted fever. When ghetto conditions created a self-fulfilling prophecy of wide-spread disease, the doctors advocated tighter sealing of the ghettos. By late 1941, this self-induced threat to public health made the doctors receptive to a mass murder solution.

*Archival materials for this study have been collected gradually during various research trips abroad. I am thus greatly indebted to numerous sources of support: the Institute for Advanced Studies on the campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; and Pacific Lutheran University. I am also grateful to Dr. Shmuel Krakowski who brought to my attention the key document that caught my interest in this topic, to Prof. Michael Kater and Dr. William Seidelmann for the initial stimulus and encouragement to undertake this study, and to Dr. William Rieke for Checking the accuracy of the manuscript's medical aspects.


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