December 10: Prosecuting Nazi Doctors

The first of the Nuremberg war crimes tribunals got underway in earnest on this date in 1946, one day after the prosecution read the indictment against 23 medical doctors and health administrators. The accused were alleged to have helped conduct the Nazi “euthanasia” program, which murdered thousands of mentally or physically disabled people, and to have facilitated experiments on thousands of human beings in the concentration camps. These experiments included freezing, the use of poison gas, sterilization, and other tortures (the prosecution focused first on high-altitude air pressure experiments). Over the course of several months, the American judges heard testimony of 85 witnesses, reviewed almost 1,500 documents, and found 16 of the defendants guilty. Seven were sentenced to death and were executed on June 2, 1948. The tribunal led to the creation of the Nuremberg Code governing medical experimentation and human rights. “Mankind has not heretofore felt the need of a word to denominate the science of how to kill prisoners most rapidly and subjugated people in large numbers. This case and these defendants have created this gruesome question for the lexicographer. For the moment we will christen this macabre science ‘thanatology,’ the science of producing death.” —Brigadier General Telford Taylor, Chief of Counsel