Victims of Biomedical Research under National Socialism

Childhood and Youth

Photo of a spacious street corner in Paris from 1910 — Corner of Rue de Miromesnil and Place Beauvau in Paris, 1910 (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons / Paris Musées - Musée Carnavalet)

Paul Hemsi was born to a Jewish family in Paris on 12 February 1905. His father, Léon Koen Hemsi (1873–1924), was a jeweller and diamond dealer. He came to France from Smyrna in the Ottoman Empire (now İzmir in Turkey) and, in 1902, married the Paris-born Marthe Marguerite née Lévy (1883–1971).
Paul Hemsi’s mother ran the family-owned antique store “Marquis Miromesnil” at 7 Rue de Miromesnil in Paris. He had a younger sister, Janine, who was born in 1919 and later married Léon Isaac Lanzenberg.
Paul Hemsi went to school at Lycée Chaptal in Paris. His sister remembered him as a good pupil and a very studious, kind and altruistic person of a gentle character. He could speak English and had travelled to Italy and England. He had a passion for horses and horse racing and enjoyed sports, playing bridge, and attending the theatre. He was interested in political affairs as well as culture and arts.

Persecution and Death

Portrait photo showing Paul Hemsi in uniform, smoking a cigarette. — Paul Hemsi (location, date and photographer unknown, private photo, published with the permission from his family)

Paul Hemsi worked as a jeweller in the family business, but when the Second World War broke out in September 1939, he enrolled in the French Army and joined the Sanitary Section of the 19th Algerian Tirailleurs Regiment with the rank of sergeant.
In May 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and northern France. German armies soon broke through Allied defences and pushed deep into France, forcing the French government to surrender on 22 June 1940. When the armistice became effective three days later, Sergeant Paul Hemsi was captured as a prisoner of war (POW) in Biffontaine, a village in the Vosges department in northeastern France.
He was taken by the Germans to Stalag VII-A, a POW camp in Moosburg an der Isar near Munich, where he was registered as a Roman Catholic. He apparently concealed his religion to protect himself from antisemitic persecution. Unfortunately, a few months after his capture, Paul Hemsi fell ill with coronary sclerosis, as noted in his medical records. He was transferred to the infirmary of Stalag VII-A, where he died on 10 October 1940 at the age of just 35 – according to sources, from a heart attack. His illness and death were probably not directly caused by persecution, but perpetrators sources must be treated with caution.
Paul Hemsi’s body was buried in the Communal Cemetery in Moosburg an der Isar, and in July 1941, military authorities in the non-occupied zone of France posthumously awarded him a “Mort pour la France” mention, an honour given to people who were killed or died in service of France during the war.
Meanwhile, Paul Hemsi’s family survived persecution by the Nazis. His mother, sister, brother-in-law, and niece initially took refuge in Marseilles, but following the mass roundup of Jewish families in January 1943, they escaped to Dolomieu, a village in the Isère department in southeastern France, where they were saved by Aristide Audi (1919–2011), a local grocery store owner and Resistance member. He and his wife Yvonne Audi, née Chataignier (1919–2003), were later awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Institute.
After the war, Paul Hemsi’s remains were exhumed by French authorities and handed over to the family, who reburied them at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Postmortem Use of Specimens

Photo of a memorial stone for victims of unethical medical research under national socialism — Memorial stone of the Max Plank Society at the Waldfriedhof Munich, 2014 (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons / Gras-Ober)

What neither the family nor the French authorities knew at the time was that, following Paul Hemsi’s death in German captivity, his body was dissected by a German military pathologist who removed his brain and sent it to Professor Willibald Scholz (1889–1971) from the Brain Pathology Department of the German Institute for Psychiatric Research (Kaiser Wilhelm Institute) in Munich.
On 8 November 1940, 14 tissue sections were extracted from Paul Hemsi’s brain for the purpose of a histological examination. According to the neuropathological report, a mild cerebral arteriosclerosis and minor changes due to heart disease were detected in his brain.
After the war, the specimens were retained as objects of scientific interest by the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry. After a review of the institute’s brain tissue collection in 1989/1990, all 14 specimens derived from the brain of Paul Hemsi were buried in a collective grave at the Waldfriedhof (forest cemetery) in Munich.