Hirnforschung und nationalsozialistische Verbrechen

The connections between the Nazi policies of persecution and extermination and scientific collections were for a long time left out of view. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research in Berlin-Buch and the German Research Institute for Psychiatry in Munich acquired thousands of brain specimens during the Nazi era in order to research them. The collections built up at that time passed to the Max Planck Institutes for Brain Research and for Psychiatry after the end of the war. The people whose brains served science for decades without their consent were largely victims of the Nazi 'euthanasia' programme, the systematic murder of people with disabilities or mental illnesses. Further specimens came from Jewish and non-Jewish victims of German occupation in Poland, from prisoners of war, forced labourers and victims of Nazi justice.