MEDICINE BEHIND
THE BARBED WIRE.
CONFERENCE
Polish Institute OF Evidence Based Medicine
Medicine Behind the Barbed Wire aims to educate the world’s medical community about the medical ethics and practice in the context of the Second World War, placing special emphasis on the behavior of physicians and other medical professionals imprisoned in Nazi German concentration camps, prisons, ghettoes and other places of detainment. The conference discusses malpractice and ethical violations of medical personnel to demonstrate their implications for contemporary medical practice and health care policies.
Keynote speech will be given by Leon Weintraub, who, after the war, became a doctor.
Presentations will cover such topics as “Physician leadership in Nazi euthanasia and sterilization campaigns,” “Hygiene Institut der Waffen-SS und Polizei Auschwitz O/S: What do we know about the main laboratory in KL Auschwitz,” “Teaching professional ethics against the backdrop of Nazi medicine: Potentials, challenges, best practice,” “Legal and ethical dilemmas of Nazi eugenic propaganda online in an age of disinformation,” and “Brain research on the victims of child euthanasia in Lower Silesia.”
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. Conference partners include the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, University of Colorado Center for Bioethics and Humanities, Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics and the International Chair in Bioethics (WMA Cooperation Center).
We invite you to the international conference Medical Review Auschwitz: Medicine Behind the Barbed Wire, which takes place on 15–17 September 2025 in Kraków, Poland.
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