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U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Exhibition "Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race"

University of Maryland Health Sciences & Human Services Library (HS/HSL)
University of Maryland Health Sciences & Human Services Library (HS/HSL)
  --
United States
All Day

Daily Times:
Monday - Thursday: 8:00am - 1:00pm
Friday: 8:00am - 8:00pm
Saturday: 8:00am - 6:00pm

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Exhibition “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race” is coming to the HS/HSL.

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.

The exhibition will open at the Library on February 28, 2014 and will be on display through April 30, 2014.

"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."

Eugenics theory sprang from turn-of-the-20th-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 on the conviction that "inferior" races, including the so-called Jewish race, 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.

This exhibition is made possible through the support of The David Berg Foundation, The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, The Lester Robbins and Sheila Johnson Robbins Traveling and Temporary Exhibitions Fund established in 1990, and The Dorot Foundation.

If you are interested in developing programming in coordination with this exhibit, please contact Aphrodite Bodycomb at 410.706.8853 or by email.