Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Nazi

  • Viktor Frankl: The meaning of a life

    Anne JacobsonOak Park, Illinois, United States Not long before the Dachau concentration camp was liberated in April 1945, Viktor Emil Frankl was seriously ill with typhus and writing feverishly on stolen scraps of paper, determined to keep himself and his ideas alive. Faced with the prospect of his own death and helpless as a physician…

  • Knock, or The Triumph of Medicine

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “The man who feels well is actually sick and doesn’t know it.”—Dr. Knock Jules Romains (1885–1972), author of the play Knock, or the Triumph of Medicine, was a novelist, poet, essayist, playwright, and short story writer. He was considered one of the best writers of his generation.1 This paper presents a detailed…

  • Nazi doctors and medical eponyms

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden The tradition in medicine has been to name a pathological condition after the person who first described it in the medical literature. Thus we have Addison’s disease, Down’s syndrome, and several hundred others. The tendency now is to eliminate the possessive,1 giving Addison disease and Down syndrome. Presently, “new” diseases are named…

  • Philip Roth’s Nemesis: a lesson for today

    James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States As we grapple with the impact of the current pandemic caused by the coronavirus, Covid–19, we may wish to seek understanding in works of non-fiction such as The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry or the writings of authors from…

  • Call me Sylvester!

    T. KilleenCleveland, Ohio, United States I could hear him as he rounded the corner from the lobby. He seemed to know almost everyone in the office; they cooed over him and he fawned at each and every one of them. My day was already busy with a full office schedule, a lecture to the residents…

  • The journey into the blue

    Annette TuffsHeidelberg, Germany “And when I came back – I did not return. You are never the same person you were, when you left.” Thus wrote Alfred Döblin (1878–1957) in 1946, in the newspaper Badische Zeitung in Freiburg,1 a few months after ending his forced absence of twelve years in France and California. The German…

  • Westerbork Hospital—a blessing in disguise

    Annabelle S. SlingerlandLeiden, the Netherlands This year Westerbork Hospital in the east of the Netherlands celebrates its seventieth anniversary, not of its birth but of its closure. Despite its well-deserved reputation for medical care, it was part of Polizeiliches Durchgangslager Westerbork, a Nazi concentration camp that held persons selected for transport to the death camps. The…

  • Neuroscientist refugees from Nazi Germany find haven in Illinois

    Lawrence ZeidmanChicago, Illinois, United States Introduction The purge of thousands of “non-Aryan” physicians, including many neuroscientists, began within the first few months of the Nazi takeover of Germany in January 1933. At that time, roughly 9,000 “non- Aryan” (full Jews, baptized Jews, part-Jews, and other minorities), and politically dissident doctors lived in Germany,1 comprising 15-17%…