Editor's Comments

Journal of Biocommunication Special Issue on Legacies of Medicine in the Holocaust and the Pernkopf Atlas

Abstract

Welcome to the Journal of Biocommunication’s Special Issue 45-1. We have designated this publication as a JBC “Special Issue,” as it is devoted entirely to one topic. Our current Special Issue includes articles and commentaries all related to Eduard Pernkopf’s, Atlas of Topographical and Applied Human Anatomy. Our authors have provided in-depth discussions about the Pernkopf’s atlas’ dark history, the uncertain origin of cadavers used as references for the atlas, and medical crimes of the Third Reich. 

Seven of the articles are authored by some of the world’s leading historians and authorities on the subject of the Pernkopf atlas and the abuses of Nazi medicine. These authors presented papers at a Holocaust Education Week Symposium that was held on Nov. 10, 2019, at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada. This landmark Symposium was called, “The Vienna Protocol: Medicine’s Confrontation with Continuing Legacies of its Nazi Past.” The Symposium faculty included Susan Mackinnon, MD, Rabbi Joseph Polak, William E. Seidelman, MD, Sabine Hildebrandt, MD, Philip Berger, MD, Anne Agur, PhD, and Leila Lax, PhD, who also served as the Symposium coordinator and host.

Table of Contents image credit: Medical University of Vienna, MUW-AD-003250-5-ABB-81.