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5th International Conference: Medical Review - Auschwitz: Medicine Behind the Barbed Wire". 23-25 September 2024

The 5th international conference Medical Review Auschwitz: Medicine Behind the Barbed Wire is dedicated to the pseudomedical experiments conducted on prisoners in German Nazi concentration camps, as well as the health consequences of imprisonment in the camp. The conference will take place on 23-25 September 2024 in Kraków, Poland.

“We can meet again in Kraków. It was here that the first issue of the journal Medical Review – Auschwitz was published in 1961, marking the beginning of disseminating pioneering research and scientific reflections worldwide on the medical, social, and bioethical consequences of and lessons from the Holocaust, the history of concentration camps, Nazi occupation, and World War II in general,” wrote members of the Organizing Committee.

The program covers such topics as “Investigations by the Institute of National Remembrance on medical experiments during World War II,” “Maternity Ward in Frauenlager in Birkenau,” “Teaching medicine and the Holocaust,” “Brain activity during extreme starvation,” “The SS doctor Hans Münch and his multiple injections on women prisoners in Block 10 Auschwitz.”

Registration form can be found at:  www.mp.pl/auschwitz/conference.

FULL PROGRAM OF THE CONFERENCE

“The aim of the conference is to educate the world’s medical community about medical ethics and practice in the context of World War II, looking into the behavior of physicians and other medical professionals imprisoned in German Nazi concentration camps, prisons, ghettoes, or other places of detainment, as well as bringing to light the malpractice and ethical violations of the Nazi German doctors, with the intention to demonstrate the implications of the history of medicine during that period for contemporary medical practice and health-care policy,” we read.

This year marks the 7th anniversary of the international project Medical Review Auschwitz, which includes not only the conference but also the dissemination of articles from the medical journal Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim (Medical Review – Auschwitz). The articles are being successively translated into English and made available on the project website www.mp.pl/auschwitz/journal, allowing the international community to access the unique scientific contributions of this Polish journal.

The conference is organized by the Polish Institute for Evidence Based Medicine in collaboration with the Kraków Medical Society, Institute of National Remembrance, and Jagiellonian University Medical College, Regional Medical Chamber in Krakow, in partnership with the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics (USA), University of Colorado Center for Bioethics and Humanities (USA), International Chair In Bioethics – WMA Cooperation Center (Israel), and Regional Medical Chamber in Katowice.