Science + Suffering: Victims and Perpetrators of Nazi Human Experimentation

Medical experiments conducted on human beings during the Nazi period are often associated with notorious SS doctors and concentration camps. The experiments have been described as ‘pseudo-science’ and viewed as a precursor to the killing centres of the Holocaust.

Yet many respected German scientists, research institutes and funding bodies were intimately involved in coerced experiments and research. Medical practitioners seized opportunities offered by war and genocide to advance scientific agendas, without regard for the moral and ethical consequences of human exploitation.

Based on the ground-breaking research of Wellcome Trust Professor at Oxford Brookes University, Paul Weindling, this exhibition examines coerced experimentation in Nazi-dominated Europe. Through the portraits of victims and perpetrators, the exhibition explores the legacy of medical research under Nazism, and its impact on bioethics today.