ABSTRACT
It is commonly believed that the Nazi medical personnel were punished at Nuremberg, but the Japanese escaped prosecution. Here I provide an example of a German medical researcher who remained intact after the war despite his involvement in Nazi experimentation. His name is Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer. This scientist was involved in medical atrocities in Auschwitz through his assistant and collaborator Dr. Josef Mengele, but he was neither charged nor sentenced like other Nazi physicians who went on trial in Nuremberg nor sought as a criminal like Mengele. Instead, he rose again to scientific and social prominence after the war. One major factor that facilitated his rehabilitation was his membership in the Confessing Church, a Christian group opposed to Hitler’s efforts to dominate the German Protestant Church. In this chapter, I offer a few glimpses of Verschuer’s relationship with the Confessing Church, particularly through his relationship with pastors Otto Fricke and Herbert Mochalsky. Second, I discuss how these relationships helped his postwar efforts at rehabilitation. Finally, I briefly compare Verschuer’s postwar career to those of the Japanese physicians of Unit 731.
