In democratic societies, the needs of public health sometimesrequire citizens to make sacrifices for the greater good, butin Nazi Germany, national or public health Volksgesundheit took complete precedence over individual health care.Physicians and medically trained academics, many of whom wereproponents of "racial hygiene," or eugenics, legitimized andhelped to implement Nazi policies aiming to "cleanse" Germansociety of people viewed as biologic threats to the nation'shealth. Racial-hygiene measures began with the mass sterilizationof the "genetically diseased" and ended with the near-annihilationof European Jewry.
From the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., where a special exhibition, "Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race," will be open through October 16, 2005. The exhibition examines the critical role German physicians, public health officials, and academic experts played in supporting and implementing the Nazis' program of racial eugenics, which culminated in the Holocaust.
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