NOVA Online | Holocaust on Trial | Should They Be Used? No (1)

The historian David Irving, who has been accused of being a Holocaust denier.

What if you knew that not publishing and/or using the data could strengthen the arguments of those who say the Holocaust never happened?

So-called Holocaust deniers maintain that the Holocaust itself never took place. Many who find such arguments absurd and detestable feel that failing to cite or use the Nazi data might only fan the flames of Holocaust denial. As such, most scholars, whether or not they advocate using the Nazi data, hold that the fact that the experiments happened should never be forgotten, lest such atrocities recur. Thus, Dr. Jay Katz of Yale Law School, who opposes use, would publish the data in full detail, then condemn them to oblivion [31], while Ronald Banner of the Jewish Ethical Medical Study Group in Philadelphia, who does not oppose citation of the data, nevertheless feels "chagrined that someone would refer to those experiments without mentioning something about the way the information was gained. It shows a lack of conscience. There are times that something, morally, stinks so bad that you have to hold your nose even while you refer to it." [32]

"It sends a chill down every normal human being's spine to think of the horrible things the Nazis did there, but I'm separating the results and the circumstances. Actually, if the U.S. doctor [Pozos] dedicated his study to the memory of those victims of the Nazis, it would serve as a nice way of reminding people about the horrible experiments."
Ephraim Zuroff, Israeli representative to the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles [33]

"I submit that we must put the Holocaust and the Nazi experiments directly under the floodlights and on center stage even if some of us and our past and present are partly illuminated by the glare. Instead of banning the Nazi data or assigning it to some archivist or custodial committee, I maintain that it be exhumed, printed, and disseminated to every medical school in the world along with the details of methodology and the names of the doctors who did it, whether or not they were indicted, acquitted, or hanged. ... Let the students and the residents and the young doctors know that this was not ancient history or an episode from a horror movie where the actors get up after filming and prepare for another role. It was real. It happened yesterday. ... They tried to burn the bodies and to suppress the data. We must not finish the job for them."
—Dr. Velvl W. Greene, professor of medical ethics at Ben Gurion University in Beersheba, Israel [34]

"The best argument I've heard for preserving the Nazi data is to keep evidence that those experiments were carried out. As long as the data are available, evidence that at least some people did some bad things in Nazi Germany cannot be denied."
—Howard M. Spiro, M.D., Department of Internal Medicine, Yale University [35]

Based on what you now know, do you think doctors and scientists should be able to use data from Nazi death-camp experiments?

Yes | No

References
31. Cohen, p. 13.
32. Moe, p. 7.
33. Associated Press. "Minnesota Scientist Plans to Publish Nazi Experiment on Freezing." The New York Times, 5/12/88, p. 28.
34. Greene, Velvl W. "Can Scientists Use Information Derived From the Concentration Camps? Ancient Answers to New Questions." In Caplan, pp. 169-70.
35. Spiro, Howard M., M.D. "Let Nazi Medical Data Remind Us of Evil" (Letter to the Editor). The New York Times 4/19/88, p. 30.

The Director's Story | Timeline of Nazi Abuses
Results of Death-Camp Experiments: Should They Be Used?
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