Exhibition launch: Science + Suffering: Victims and Perpetrators of Nazi Human Experimentation

Limited spaces are available to the general public to attend the launch of our newest exhibition, based on the ground-breaking research of Professor Paul Weindling. The exhibition examines medical experiments conducted on individuals during the Nazi period, and shows how medical practitioners seized opportunities offered by war and genocide to advance their scientific agendas and careers.

About the exhibition

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.

For more information, including details of our event series, please visit our dedicated Science + Suffering page.

The launch reception will include an introduction by Paul Weindling, Wellcome Trust Professor in the History of Medicine at Oxford Brookes University.

Image credit: Monika Zatka, prisoner 24208 in Auschwitz, was one of the first victims of Carl Clauberg’s medical experiments. © State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau in O?wi?cim

This exhibition is unsuitable for under 16s.