Victims of Biomedical Research under National Socialism
Between 1933 and 1945, under National Socialist rule, countless individuals became victims of coerced and unethical biomedical research. They were stripped of their rights, anonymized, and dehumanized – reduced to numbers, file references, and "cases." These practices were part of a system that bureaucratized crimes and profoundly disrupted personal lives – even to the point of their eradication.
Purpose of This Website
This website serves as a place of remembrance, research, and historical reflection. At its core is a database that provides essential information about thousands of individuals who were disenfranchised, harmed, and murdered in the context of coerced research.
Basis of the Database
The database is built on extensive groundwork by Professor Paul Weindling ML (Oxford Brookes University) and his research team. Further information can be found here. It is supplemented by findings from a research project on "Brain Research at Institutes of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in the Context of National Socialist Injustices: Brain Specimens in Institutes of the Max Planck Society and the Identification of the Victims," which was funded by the Max Planck Society between 2017 and 2024, followed by a finalization phase scheduled to run until June 2026. More details about this project are available here.
Functions, Access, and Limitations of the Database
The database serves two main purposes: as a digital memorial, it provides relatives and the public with access to the names and life details of numerous victims. Additionally, it functions as a research tool for scholars and journalists, supporting further investigation and analysis. Importantly, the database is conceived as a reference resource – it compiles and links information from archival materials and secondary literature, serving as a starting point for historical research rather than its endpoint. A deeper understanding of context and causality requires engagement with conventional scholarly literature.
The complete database contains highly sensitive information, including medical histories and data on remaining human tissue samples. Further access is therefore limited to individuals with a verifiable legitimate interest, such as researchers, journalists, or family members. Information on how to request research access is available here.
It is important to note that there is a discrepancy in the total number of victims listed in the public and restricted-access versions of the database. The publicly available version includes only profiles of individuals whose status as victims – based on the criteria established in the course of the research – could be confirmed as certain or highly probable by the research teams. The restricted-access version also contains profiles of individuals for whom the available evidence was insufficient to confirm their victim status at the time of the investigation.
There are several reasons why verification was not always possible: Many documents were deliberately destroyed toward the end of the war to conceal evidence of crimes, and much of the surviving archival material is fragmentary or incomplete. In some cases, testimonies from compensation claims or oral histories could not be conclusively verified, particularly when they could not be corroborated by independent sources.
Biographical Perspectives
A key focus has been the reconstruction of individual life stories. Selected biographical accounts offer insight into the personal fates of victims and help to reveal the extent of the injustice beyond mere statistics. These portraits can be found here.
Crime Locations
While the primary focus was on the victims, the sites and contexts of the crimes have also been documented where possible. An interactive map, linked to institutional profiles, visualizes known locations of crimes committed in connection with coerced biomedical research under National Socialism. Access the map here.
Biomedical Research
Further information is available here to help understand the scale of unethical biomedical research under National Socialism, including experiments, coerced studies, and other forms of abuse carried out across numerous institutions and facilities.
While this offers important context, the database does not claim to be exhaustive. Given the fragmented nature of the source material, complete coverage is not a realistic objective. Not all relevant archival records or secondary literature could be included, and it is likely that some experiments remain undocumented or unrecognized.
In addition to the well-documented experiments, further cases likely occurred but could not be conclusively verified. These include procedures described in survivors' compensation claims, which often lack sufficient corroborating evidence. Such accounts strongly suggest that additional experiments took place – some likely improvised or never formally recorded, others deliberately concealed through the destruction of records by the perpetrators.
The Many Forms of Perpetration
Individual responsibility for these crimes is not obscured – without active participation, such atrocities could not have been possible. However, documenting this information was not the focus of this database project.
While some perpetrators in various roles – including scientists, financiers, medical staff, and other employees – have been recorded, this has been done unsystematically. The available data is fragmentary and non-representative. Nevertheless, it offers valuable insight into the diverse forms of involvement: from direct perpetrators to accomplices, profiteers, enablers, bystanders, and beneficiaries within scientific, medical, and institutional contexts.
Due to the complexity of this issue, details on perpetrators are only accessible to those with a provable legitimate interest.
Important Notes
Please note that both the database and other content on this website include information about the fates of victims of National Socialist persecution. Some material may be distressing. If you are affected by any of the content, we encourage you to seek appropriate support.
If you are a relative of someone named in the database, or of a person portrayed in one of the biographies, and have concerns about the publication of personal information, please use the contact form, available here, to get in touch.
The database is the result of collaborative work by numerous researchers over an extended period. Given the complexity and volume of the data, occasional inaccuracies cannot be entirely ruled out. If you identify information that requires correction, we kindly ask you to report it via the contact form.
Some texts on this website were translated from German into English with the assistance of ChatGPT.
This website reflects the status as of May 2025 and will not be updated beyond this date.
Brain Research Project
During the era of National Socialism, researchers at the Kaiser Wilhelm Society – the predecessor of today's Max Planck Society – collected brain specimens from victims of "euthanasia" and other forms of persecution. Many of these samples remained in scientific use long after 1945. A mass burial took place in 1990, but findings in the 2000s revealed that the process of confronting this history was far from complete. Between 2017 and 2024, a research project investigated the origin, use, and postwar legacy of these specimens and worked to recover the identities of the victims (with a follow-up project concluding in June 2026). The goal was to provide a thorough historical analysis and establish the foundations for a contemporary and ethically grounded culture of remembrance.
Project Description and DatabaseNS Biomedical Research Victims
The research project, led by Professor Paul Weindling (Oxford Brookes University), identified and reconstructed the biographies of numerous individuals subjected to coercive biomedical research under National Socialism. Drawing on secondary literature and diverse archival sources – including compensation files, oral histories, and institutional records – the project restored identity and dignity to victims who were dehumanized as "human material." It revealed patterns of repeated victimization and significantly revised previous underestimations of victim numbers. The resulting database serves as a foundation for ethical reflection, remembrance, and historical understanding. By documenting the human suffering caused by unethical research practices, the project contributes to ongoing debates about the legacy of biomedical research conducted in coercive contexts and the responsibilities of scientific institutions today.
Project Description and DatabaseBiographies
In the context of coerced biomedical research under National Socialism, countless individuals were deprived of their freedom, identity, and ultimately their lives. Reduced to file numbers, they were dehumanized – yet each record reflects a person with dignity, agency, memories, and the desire for a future. Biographies of victims are presented here, including those subjected to brain research at Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes. Among them are individuals murdered in the so-called “euthanasia” programs, forced labourers, prisoners of war, individuals persecuted as Jews, and people incarcerated in concentration camps. These life stories – some fragmentary, others more detailed – offer insight into lives shaped by profound injustice and serve as a reminder of those who must not be forgotten.
BiographiesInteractive Map
Numerous institutions were involved in crimes related to biomedical research during National Socialism. The interactive map shows the scope and geographic spread of these crimes. It includes places where the crimes were directly committed, as well as other sites that were part of the wider National Socialist persecution system, like hospitals, prisons, and camps. The map does not offer a complete picture but rather reflects the limitations of the underlying data. Nevertheless, it serves as an accessible entry point to explore the institutional involvement in coerced biomedical research during the National Socialist era.
Interactive Map