OVERVIEW

6th Edition International Conference Medical Review Auschwitz: Medicine Behind the Barbed Wire is organized by Polish Institute of Evidence Based Medicine (PI-EBM) / Polski Instytut Evidence Based Medicine in collaboration with the Jagiellonian University Medical College, Institute of National Remembrance & Krakow Medical Society / Towarzystwo Lekarskie Krakowskie and will be held from Sep 15 - 17, 2025 at Krakow, Malopolskie, Poland.

Description:
Medical Review Auschwitz: Medicine Behind the Barbed Wire is an annual international conference designed to educate the world’s medical community about medical ethics and practice in the context of the Second World War. It deals with medical, psychological and social consequences of persecution by physicians and other medical personnel in the Nazi German concentration camps as well as heroic efforts to provide medical aid by imprisoned members of the medical profession. Historical accounts are also used to discuss ethical implications of Nazi medicine for contemporary medical practice.

Learning Objectives:
The aim of Medical Review Auschwitz: Medicine Behind the Barbed Wire is 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.

By attending this event participants will be able to:

Critically reflect about the prominent role of health professionals in Nazi eugenics, mass murder of the disabled, criminal medical experimentation on human subjects and the genocide during the Second World War.
Identify the legacy of health professionals’ involvement in the Holocaust for contemporary thinking about genetics, beginning and end-of-life care, medical and economic policies as well as public health programs.
Explore the cultural, social, economic and political factors that gave rise to the rise of thinking based in eugenics and racism that was sanctioned by health professionals and ultimately lead to genocide, and navigate similar factors in the modern world so that the basic codes of medical practice based in human rights are not overthrown in the future.
Contemplate the ongoing clinical and ethical implications for the profession of medicine, patient care and research involving human participants.

Timings	Program
	Day 01: 15 September 2025 (Monday)
	Preconference visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum

	A special guided tour including areas not available to the public, including Block 10 with introduction by Prof. Hans-Joachim Lang. Limited number of places available.

6:00	Departure from Kraków
9:00–12:30	Guided tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum
14:30–16:00	“Negatives of memory. Labyrinths” — artwork exhibition by Marian Kotodziej, Auschwitz survivor
ca. 18:00	Return to Kraków

	Conference
	Day 02: 16 September 2025 (Tuesday)

8:00	Registration

9:00–9:30	Opening

	Welcome address
	Piotr Gajewski (Poland)
	Keynote speech: Cogito ergo sum (Descartes)
	Leon Weintraub (Sweden) – Guest of Honor, survivor of Nazi German concentration camps

	Session I
9:30-10:10	Opening lecture: Physician leadership in Nazi euthanasia and sterilization campaigns: How did it go so wrong? What can we learn?
	Mildred Solomon (Harvard Medical School, USA)

10:10-10:30	Nazi medical crimes: Escalation of racist ideology, economic rationality, or crimes of opportunity?
	Thorsten Wagner (Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics, USA)

10:30-10:50	Nazi medical crimes, professional interests, and economy: The origins of the Declaration of Helsinki
	Volker Roelcke (Institute of the History of Medicine, Giessen University, Germany)

10:50-11:10	Research as a tool to protect vulnerable populations: Lessons learned from the Declaration of Helsinki
	Karla Childers (Head of bioethics at Johnson & Johnson, USA)


11:10-11:30	Panel discussion

11:30-11:50	Refreshment break

	Session II
11:50-12:10	Electroconvulsive therapy in Auschwitz: Medical innovation and human experimentation
	Herwig Czech (Medical University of Vienna, Austria)

12:10-12:30	“…This would serve for the benefit of the whole family…”. Brain research on the victims of child euthanasia in Lower Silesia
	Kamila Uzarczyk (Medical University of Wroclaw, Poland)

12:30-12:50	Hygiene Institut der Waffen-SS und Polizei Auschwitz O/S: What do we know about the main laboratory in KL Auschwitz
	Teresa Wontor-Cichy (State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oswiecim, Poland)

12:50-13:10	From Jan Sehn to the Institute of National Remembrance: Criminal medicine in Auschwitz Concentration Camp in historical research and prosecution proceedings
	Filip Ganczak (Institute of National Remembrance, Poland)

13:10-13:30	Panel discussion

13:30-14:00	Lunch break

	Session III
14:00-14:20	On dealing with guilt: The difficult path of confronting the Nazi euthanasia crimes from 1945 to the present day
	Michael von Cranach (Germany)

14:20-14:40	Confronting eugenics and scientific racism
	Marius Turda (Oxford Brookes University, UK)

14:40-15:00	Suffering and the moral orientation of presence
	Jay R. Malone (Washington University School of Medicine, USA)

15:00-15:20	Legal and ethical dilemmas of Nazi eugenic propaganda online in an age of disinformation
	Katarzyna du Vall (Jagiellonian University, Kraków)

15:20-15:40	Teaching professional ethics against the backdrop of Nazi medicine: Potentials, challenges, best practice
	Thorsten Wagner (Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics, USA)

15:40-16:00	Panel discussion

	Workshops
	Day 3: 17 September 2025 (Wednesday)
	The workshops will be announced soon.