Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Holocaust

  • The Doctors’ Trial and the Nuremberg Code

    Shabrina Jarrell Charleston, West Virginia, United States   “Dachau Concentration Camp workers.” Photo by Dale Cruse on Flickr. CC BY 2.0. Tracing back to the Hippocratic Oath, which dates to around 400 BC, the principle of autonomy has been fundamental to the concept of informed consent.1,2 The Oath, a pledge historically taken by physicians, outlines…

  • Winnie Ille Pu and Dr. Alexander Lenard

    Avi Ohry Tel Aviv, Israel   Alexander Lenard. Photo via Wikimedia. Public domain. Sandor (Alexander) Lenard1 was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1910 and died in Dona Irma, Santa Catarina, Brazil in 1972. He was a Jewish poet, author, physician, painter, musician, translator, language teacher, philosopher, and polyglot. A short outline of Lenard’s life events…

  • Who is “Dr. Filth”?

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden Bob Dylan’s song “Desolation Row” (1965) is full of recognizable names, both real (Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Einstein) and fictional (Cinderella, Romeo and Juliet). There is also a “Dr. Filth,” whose identity is a subject for discussion.1 He is introduced with the lyrics: Dr. Filth, he keeps his world/inside of a leather cup/But…

  • Risking it all to save strangers—remembering Gisella Perl

    Jacquline Musgrave Peoria, Arizona, United States   Dr. Gisella Perl after World War II. Source. Her hands were cracked and covered in mud and dirt as she delivered the baby, broke its little neck, closed its eyes, and buried it in a hole outside. No one would know about this baby, or the others who…

  • A writer and a doctor: What a physician’s account of Auschwitz can teach us about the ethics of story-telling in medicine

    Christine HennebergSan Francisco, California, United States In writing this work I am not aiming for any literary success. When I lived through these horrors, which were beyond all imagining, I was not a writer but a doctor. Today, in telling about them, I write not as a reporter but as a doctor.1 The opening “declaration”…