The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s traveling exhibition, Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race, will be on display at the William H. Hannon Library at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles from Sept. 19 through Nov. 24, 2010.
The exhibition examines how the Nazi leadership, in collaboration with individuals in professions traditionally charged with healing and the public good, used science to help legitimize persecution, murder and, ultimately, genocide.
“We are enthusiastic about the opportunity to bring a world-class exhibition to the university,” said Kristine Brancolini, dean of university libraries at LMU. “LMU is hosting a teachers forum in October on Holocaust education, and this exhibition is an excellent complement as well as a valuable resource for the community.”
An opening reception for the exhibition will be held on Sunday, Sept. 19, at 2 p.m. The reception will include a presentation titled Eugenics, Then and Now: The Continuing Attraction of Biological Utopias by Rabbi Elliot Dorff, rector and distinguished professor of philosophy at American Jewish University.
Eugenics theory sprang from turn-of-the-century scientific beliefs asserting that Charles Darwin’s theories of “survival of the fittest” could be applied to humans. Supporters, spanning the globe and political spectrum, believed that through careful controls on marriage and reproduction, a nation’s genetic health could be improved.
The Nazi regime was founded upon the conviction that “inferior” races and individuals had to be eliminated from German society so that the fittest “Aryans” could thrive. The Nazi state fully committed itself to implementing a uniquely racist and anti-Semitic variation of eugenics to “scientifically” build what it considered to be a “superior race.” By the end of World War II, six million Jews had been murdered.
Millions of others also became victims of persecution and murder through Nazi “racial hygiene” programs designed to cleanse Germany of “biological threats” to the nation’s “health,” including “foreign-blooded” Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), persons diagnosed as “hereditarily ill,” and homosexuals. In German-occupied territories, Poles and others belonging to ethnic groups deemed “inferior” were also murdered.
“Deadly Medicine explores the Holocaust’s roots in then-contemporary scientific and pseudo-scientific thought,” explains exhibition curator Susan Bachrach. “At the same time, it touches on complex ethical issues we face today, such as how societies acquire and use scientific knowledge and how they balance the rights of the individual with the needs of the larger community.”
The exhibition is co-hosted by the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts Jewish Studies Program, the LMU School of Education, and the William H. Hannon Library.
In addition to the exhibition, the School of Education and Jewish Studies program are partnering with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in hosting the 10th annual Southern California Teacher Forum on Holocaust Education Oct. 7-9. The three-day conference provides teachers with resources on content, methodologies and rationales for teaching the history of the Holocaust and contemporary issues associated with it.