The Wake

Illustration by Srijon Chowdhury

The photos are the toughest part to get through. Reading about the German eugenics movement in the early part of the 20th century is one thing; seeing the visual documentation of the experiments and plans to eradicate those with unfit genes is another.

Through May 4, the Science Museum of Minnesota is hosting an exhibit from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race tells the story of the Nazi eugenics movement of the 1930s and 1940s.

Meticulously recorded and collected, photos of the subjects of Nazi medical experimentation reveal the astonishing dehumanization of the eugenics movement. The victims, many of them children, stare blankly back at the viewer, stripped of their humanity and reduced to a series of measurements, classifications, and ultimately – a strand of DNA deemed unfit to reproduce itself in society.

It is medicine at its most perverse and twisted, sacrificing the lives of the helpless for the supposed betterment of society. It is the study of genetics taken to an obsessed extreme, using unproven assumptions to justify the importance of an individual’s family tree over anything else. In other words, it is science at its absolute worst – and simultaneously not science at all.

“It deals with very challenging subject matter – the misuse of science,” says Joanne Jones-Rizzi, the Science Museum’s Program Director for Peoples and Cultures and the project leader for Deadly Medicine. “It looks at the eugenics movement from 1933 to 1944, which was not limited to Germany; there was a eugenics movement in the U.S. as well.”

Through a collection of artifacts, photography, and video footage of survivor testimony and eyewitness accounts, the exhibit explores the Holocaust’s roots in the Nazi conviction that “inferior” races and individuals must be eliminated from German society so that the “fittest” could survive. In collaboration with anthropologists, geneticists and doctors, Nazi leadership used science to help legitimize persecution, murder, and ultimately genocide in pursuit of building a superior Germany.

Deadly Medicine also covers American reactions to eugenics concepts and early eugenics projects in Germany. Shockingly, the reception of these ideas in the U.S. varied immensely and some groups were very receptive to the Nazi strategies for solving societal problems. “I think that’s an important lesson to be learned,” Jones-Rizza says.

To achieve a racially pure society, the Nazis first sought to eliminate the physically and mentally impaired. Many of those euthanized were children. Later, Jews and Gypsies were targeted for destruction. As time passed, their focus shifted from managing a population through sterilization to completely eliminating people they considered to be biological threats.

“This is the worst-case scenario,” Jones-Rizza says. “People ask, ‘how can that happen?’ and it’s an example of how something seemingly quite benign can go unquestioned and things can get out of hand.”

For a museum that Minnesotans more typically associate with child-friendly hands-on experiments, Deadly Medicine is a significant shift in tone compared to most of the permanent exhibits, which is unsurprising given the extreme gravity of the subject matter. However, Jones-Rizza says, it may not be such a departure for the Science Museum after all.

“I think people tend to think of the Science Museum as a place to have fun and learn too,” she says. “But we feel we can also have more serious exhibitions. We want to present topics that encourage thought, reflection, and discourse. It’s a very thought-provoking exhibit and, in a sense, follows in the footsteps of the RACE: Are We So Different? exhibit that was here last year,” she says.

Ultimately, the goal is to encourage discussion and dialogue among attendants, which is furthered by a lecture series in connection with the exhibit.

“I think there’s a lot of entry points and levels of interest,” Jones-Rizza says. “We try to bring additional voices who could offer perspectives on the topic of eugenics and how it extends beyond that specific time period.”

Thus far, the reception has been positive, she says. The exhibit is crowded with people who read every bit of information and silently try to comprehend the scientific motivations behind such inhumane behavior. Frequently, the only sounds are those of parents quietly trying to explain the subject matter to their children.

“I’ve recommended that parents preview the exhibit and we have an advisory outside of it, but parents should decide for themselves [if the exhibit is appropriate for their children],” she says.

Deadly Medicine is organized and circulated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, presented locally in partnership with the University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, whose director, the late Dr. Steve Feinstein, was instrumental in getting the exhibit to Minnesota. Dr. Feinstein passed away just last week, but his work on this exhibit is evident to those he worked with.

“The exhibit is here because of Steve Feinstein,” Jones-Rizza says. “Steve had always wanted to bring the exhibit here. He became very interested in it and started pursuing it.”

Eventually it was determined that the Science Museum might be a better home for the exhibit than the U – especially because of the greater space available there – and the collaboration began. “Steve reached out to us and it became a collaborative effort,” Jones-Rizza says. “But I think it’s important to credit Steve with having the vision to bring it here.”

Deadly Medicine will run daily through May 4, 2008. Admission is included in regular Science Museum exhibit gallery admission ($11 for adults, $8.50 for kids ages 4 to 12 and seniors). Combination exhibit gallery/Omnitheater admission is also available. A free audio tour of the exhibition is available for download to an MP3 player at www.smm.org/deadlymedicine, as well as accessible by cell phone.