The Failed Attempt to Prove Jewish Inferiority by a Skeleton Collection

Answers Research Journal 13 (2020): 331–335. www.answersingenesis.org/arj/v13/jewish_inferiority_skeleton.pdf The Failed Attempt to Prove Jewish Inferiority by a Skeleton Collection Jerry Bergman, Genesis Apologetics, PO Box 1326, Folsom, California 95763-1326. Abstract This is a review of the history of an attempt to prove Jewish racial inferiority by selecting Jews who fit the racial stereotype, then murdering them, and processing the bodies for display in a German university museum. In the end, the researchers were unable to find any evidence of Jewish racial inferiority as predicted by the anthropology and medical academic community of the time. The cost in terms of lives and suffering included over 100 innocent people who were murdered to prove a theory that turned out to be not only wrong but based on an erroneous secular philosophy, namely Darwinism. This display was one result of the rejection of the Genesis account that teaches all men are descendants of our first parents, Adam and Eve; thus all humans are of one race (the human race) and one kind (mankind). Keywords: Introduction to the Jewish Skeleton Collection History, Holocaust, Racism, Nazism, Darwin-based racism, Auschwitz, Social Darwinism, Ernst Haeckel, de Gobineau Introduction as taught by eugenicists, civilizations decline and A claim by some historians is that the Jewish fall when the superior race is generically mixed with Holocaust was caused purely by anti-Semitism. In inferior races, such as the Jews. Another professor fact, as has been well-documented, Darwinian-based who was very influential in the Nazi racial belief was racism was a central factor in causing the Holocaust the greatest avowed follower of Darwin in the world (Bergman 2010, 2012; Müller-Hill 1998; Weikart of German science, Ernst Haeckel, . clearly saw 1998, 2004, 2009). One of many examples of evidence humanity in terms of a hierarchy of superior and for this fact is the extensive, detailed study of Jewish inferior races, and the white Aryan race, particularly skeletons undertaken by Nazi collaborators in an the Germans, was at the top, the ‘Semitic’ Jews attempt to scientifically prove the racial inferiority inferior. (Beller 2015, 60) of the bodies of Jews. Exactly what the scientists In the Germanic countries at this time, were looking for is unknown, but it is clear that the “Darwinian rhetoric was widely accepted within skeleton collection was driven by the belief that Jews medical circles and a discussion about race also were biologically inferior humans. Some common ensued among eugenically inclined members of characteristics listed supporting this ill-founded the . medical community.” Social Darwinism “had notion included especially facial traits of the nose, become ‘the way to translate political discourse into mouth, chin, forehead, and eye and hair color, as well biological language’” (Uzarczyk 2007, 287). Also, at as body-build. This belief in Jewish inferiority led to this time, “Jewish racial status became a matter of the proposal that a careful study of Jewish skeletons heated discussion among anthropologists” (Uzarczyk and body organs would provide scientific support 2007, 287). One of the leading works supporting the for this view. This goal led to selecting appropriate belief that the Aryan race was superior included examples of Jews that fit the racist stereotype as the German translation of Gobineau’s work noted outlined by various anthropology references. After above. The 1897 German translation Versuch über the subjects were identified, they were murdered, die Ungleichheit der Menschenrassen was by Ludwig their bodies were studied, some organ(s) removed for Schemann “one of the most important racial theorists further study, and then all of the flesh was removed of imperial and Weimar Germany” (Levy 2005, 640). with the goal of placing their skeletons in German Gobineau had a close relationship with Richard museums to document German racial theories. Wagner, a man Hitler admired greatly and whose ideas he emulated (Mosse 1978, 56). Motivations for the Skeleton Collection One of the most important works motivating the Support by the Professoriate Jewish-body inferiority belief was French writer The Nazi race professors were so confident of their Arthur de Gobineau, who argued that there are major Darwinian view of race that they planned to set up a differences between human races and the Aryan public display of Jewish skeletons to help convince the race was superior (Gobineau 1966). Furthermore, public at large of their claims about Jewish biological ISSN: 1937-9056 Copyright © 2020 Answers in Genesis, Inc. All content is owned by Answers in Genesis (“AiG”) unless otherwise indicated. 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Another pressing reason for the collection morally and physically inferior as argued by Nott was the belief that since Jews were “a race on the and others even before Darwin published his Origins brink of total extermination,” the Nazis felt Jewish book (Nott 1856). As Herf writes, skeletons and organs needed to be preserved for Culminating in the caricatures that filled the pages future scientific research on inferior races (Weindling of Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer, they depicted a 2015, 154). stereotyped Jewish body held to be physically inferior The plethora of skeletons of Jews murdered to in every way to an idealized vision of the beautiful obtain the collection was only one of many attempts Aryan body. They viewed Jews’ alleged physical by the Nazis to prove Jews were Üntermenschen ugliness as innate evidence of moral inferiority. (sub-humans/inferior people), in contrast to the (Herf 2018) Aryan Germans, which the Nazis considered The collection was originally to be housed where Übermenschen (super-humans/superior people). The the initial preparation of the corpses was completed, race scientists also collected anatomical samples for namely, at the Anatomy Institute of the University study in their attempts to document Jewish inferiority of Strasbourg. The collection, sanctioned by the (Toledano 2016, 128). The program was sponsored SS Reichsführer, Heinrich Himmler himself, was by the German “think tank” called the Ahnenerbe under the direction of Professor Hirt and Dr. Rudolf office to carry out various scientific studies on race, Brandt. Dr. Wolfram Sievers was responsible for especially members of what the leading scientists procuring and preparing the corpses to be used in the then determined were inferior races, including Jews, inferior-human skeleton display. The collection was Slavs, Negroes, and Gypsies (Lifton 1986, 286). part of the racial work of several eminent German anthropologists at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. The Professor August Hirt and the The Kaiser Wilhelm Society was supported by many Anthropological Skeleton Display eminent German scientists, including The Nazi’s anthropological skeleton display Otto Hahn, Albert Einstein, Max Planck, and Werner was also created and designed to help justify Nazi Heisenberg, scientific giants active at a time when programs against Jews. Involved in this project were Germany was a scientifically dominant nation. That the nation’s leading anthropologists, scientists and era came to an abrupt end when Hitler rose to power medical professionals, all of whom supported the belief and the Nazis ousted many of the best scientists in the “innate superiority of the ‘Aryan’ folk” (Messing because they were Jewish. (Pääbo 2014, 80) 1976, 326). The leader of the project, Professor This scientific institute soon became a central August Hirt (1898–1945), held professorships at part of the Nazi war machine and its racist pursuits. several major German Universities. Dr. Hirt and Furthermore, “through its Institute for Anthropology, his mentor, Professor Phillip Ellinger, published Human Heredity, and Eugenics,” eight articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals the Kaiser Wilhelm Society was actively involved in (Toledano 2017). This pair of scientists also invented racial science and the crimes that grew out of that. one of the most important microscopic developments In that institute, based in Berlin, people like Josef of the last century, the fluorescent microscope system Mengele were scientific assistants while performing (Toledano 2016, 131). Since Professor Ellinger was experiments on inmates at Auschwitz death camp, Jewish, he was forced to resign from the University many of them children. Whereas Mengele was when the Nazis came to power. sentenced for his crimes after the war (although he Professor Toledano writes about one tragic fallout had escaped to South America), his

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