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The Jewish skull collection was an attempt by the Nazis to create an
anthropological Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...
display to showcase the alleged racial inferiority of the "
Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
race" and to emphasize the Jews' status as ''
Untermensch ''Untermensch'' (, ; plural: ''Untermenschen'') is a Nazi term for non- Aryan "inferior people" who were often referred to as "the masses from the East", that is Jews, Roma, and Slavs (mainly ethnic Poles, Serbs, and later also Russians). The ...
en'' ("sub-humans"), in contrast to the
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...
race, which the Nazis considered to be
Aryan Aryan or Arya (, Indo-Iranian *''arya'') is a term originally used as an ethnocultural self-designation by Indo-Iranians in ancient times, in contrast to the nearby outsiders known as 'non-Aryan' (*''an-arya''). In Ancient India, the term ' ...
''
Übermensch The (; "Overhuman") is a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. In his 1883 book ''Thus Spoke Zarathustra'' (german: Also sprach Zarathustra), Nietzsche has his character Zarathustra posit the as a goal for humanity to set for itse ...
en'' ("superhumans"). The collection was to be housed at the Anatomy Institute at the Reich University of Strasbourg in the annexed region of
Alsace Alsace (, ; ; Low Alemannic German/ gsw-FR, Elsàss ; german: Elsass ; la, Alsatia) is a cultural region and a territorial collectivity in eastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine next to Germany and Switzerland. In 2020, it had ...
, where the initial preparation of the corpses was performed. The collection was sanctioned by ''
Reichsführer-SS (, ) was a special title and rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945 for the commander of the (SS). ''Reichsführer-SS'' was a title from 1925 to 1933, and from 1934 to 1945 it was the highest rank of the SS. The longest-servi ...
''
Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
, and designed by and under the direction of
August Hirt August Hirt (28 April 1898 – 2 June 1945) was an anatomist with Swiss and German nationality who served as a chairman at the Reich University in Strasbourg during World War II. He performed experiments with mustard gas on inmates at the Natz ...
with
Rudolf Brandt Rudolf Hermann Brandt (2 June 1909 – 2 June 1948) was a German SS officer from 1933–45 and a civil servant. A lawyer by profession, Brandt was the Personal Administrative Officer to ''Reichsführer-SS'' (''Persönlicher Referent vom Reichsf ...
and
Wolfram Sievers Wolfram Sievers (10 July 1905 – 2 June 1948) was ''Reichsgeschäftsführer'', or managing director, of the Ahnenerbe from 1935 to 1945. Early life Sievers was born in 1905 in Hildesheim in the Province of Hanover (now in Lower Saxony), the son ...
, general manager of the ''
Ahnenerbe The Ahnenerbe (, ''ancestral heritage'') operated as a think tank in Nazi Germany between 1935 and 1945. Heinrich Himmler, the ''Reichsführer-SS'' from 1929 onwards, established it in July 1935 as an SS appendage devoted to the task of promot ...
'', being responsible for procuring and preparing the corpses. Work by
Hans-Joachim Lang Hans-Joachim Lang (born 6 August 1951) is a German journalist, historian, and Adjunct Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the Ludwig-Uhland Institute for Empirical Cultural Studies University of Tübingen. Dr. Lang researched and authored th ...
published in 2004 revealed the identities and family history of all the victims of this project, based on discovery of the prisoner numbers found at Natzweiler-Struthof in records of those vaccinated against typhus at
Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
. The list of names has been placed on a memorial at the cemetery where all were buried, at the facility used to murder them, and at the Anatomical Institute where the corpses were found in 1944.


Selection

The project was designed by August Hirt, who directed the phases that were performed before the end of the war ended the project prior to its completion. Originally the "specimens" to be used in the collection were to be Jewish commisars in the
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
captured on the Eastern front by the ''
Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previous ...
''. The 86 individuals ultimately chosen for the collection were obtained from among a pool of 115 Jewish inmates at
Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
in
Occupied Poland ' (Norwegian: ') is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is co-created with Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjærg. Season 2 premiered on 10 October 2 ...
. They were chosen for their perceived
stereotypical In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example ...
racial characteristics. The initial selections and preparations were carried out by ''SS-Hauptsturmführer''
Bruno Beger Bruno Beger (27 April 1911 – 12 October 2009) was a German racial anthropologist, ethnologist, and explorer who worked for the ''Ahnenerbe''. In that role he participated in Ernst Schäfer's 1938–39 journey to Tibet, helped the Race and Settl ...
and
Hans Fleischhacker Hans Fleischhacker (10 March 1912 – 30 January 1992) was a German anthropologist with the Ahnenerbe and a commander in the SS of Nazi Germany. He worked with Bruno Beger on some projects, making measurements of Jewish people. He was with Bege ...
, who arrived in Auschwitz in the first half of 1943 and finished the preliminary work by June 15, 1943. Due to a
typhus Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure. ...
epidemic An epidemic (from Ancient Greek, Greek ἐπί ''epi'' "upon or above" and δῆμος ''demos'' "people") is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of patients among a given population within an area in a short period of time. Epidemics ...
at Auschwitz, the candidates chosen for the skeleton collection were
quarantine A quarantine is a restriction on the movement of people, animals and goods which is intended to prevent the spread of disease or pests. It is often used in connection to disease and illness, preventing the movement of those who may have been ...
d in order to prevent them from becoming ill and ruining their value as anatomical specimens. In that time, the physical measurements were taken from the selected group of people. An excerpt from a letter written by Sievers in June 1943 reports on the preparation and the typhus epidemic: "Altogether 115 persons were worked on, 79 were Jews, 30 were Jewesses, 2 were Poles, and 4 were Asiatics. At the present time these prisoners are segregated by sex and are under
quarantine A quarantine is a restriction on the movement of people, animals and goods which is intended to prevent the spread of disease or pests. It is often used in connection to disease and illness, preventing the movement of those who may have been ...
in the two hospital buildings of Auschwitz." In February 1942, Sievers submitted to Himmler, through Rudolf Brandt, a report from which the following is an extract read at the Nuremberg Doctors Trial by General
Telford Taylor Telford Taylor (February 24, 1908 – May 23, 1998) was an American lawyer and professor. Taylor was known for his role as lead counsel in the prosecution of war criminals after World War II, his opposition to McCarthyism in the 1950s, and his o ...
, Chief Counsel for the prosecution at Nuremberg:


Preparation

Ultimately, 87 of the inmates were shipped to Natzweiler-Struthof. These people were kept for about two weeks in Block 13 of the camp so that they might eat well to improve their appearance for the desired casts of their corpses. The deaths of 86 of these inmates were, in the words of Hirt, "induced" in an improvised gassing facility at Natzweiler-Struthof, and their corpses were sent to Strasbourg — 57 men and 29 women. The gassing occurred on August 11, 13, 17, and 19, conducted by commandant
Josef Kramer Josef Kramer (10 November 1906 – 13 December 1945) was Hauptsturmführer and the Commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau (from 8 May 1944 to 25 November 1944) and of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (from December 1944 to its liberation on 15 Apr ...
, who directed the victims to undress, placed the poison in the ventilation, and watched the people fall to their deaths. One victim was shot for fighting to avoid being gassed and thus was not part of the collection. Josef Kramer, acting commandant of Natzweiler-Struthof (who became the commandant at Auschwitz and the last commandant of
Bergen Belsen Bergen-Belsen , or Belsen, was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp, in 1943, parts of it became a concentrat ...
), personally carried out the gassing of the victims, per his testimony at his post-war trial. It is believed that three men died in transport from Auschwitz to Natzweiler-Struthof. The next part of the process for this "collection" was to make anatomical casts of the bodies prior to reducing them to skeletons. With the approach of the Allies in 1944, there was concern over the possibility that the corpses could be discovered, as they had still not been
defleshed Defleshed is a Swedish death/thrash metal band. The group was formed by guitarist Lars Löfven, formerly of Convulsion and Inanimate. He was joined by ex-Crematorium bassist Gustaf Jorde shortly after recording a demo. In 1995 drummer Matte Modi ...
. In September 1944, Sievers telegrammed Brandt: "The collection can be defleshed and rendered unrecognizable. This, however, would mean that the whole work had been done for nothing – at least in part – and that this singular collection would be lost to science, since it would be impossible to make plaster casts afterwards." Some work had been done at the Anatomical Institute, but the project was never completed. The body casts were not made, and the corpses were not defleshed as skeletons. When the Allies arrived, they found the corpses, some complete and some beheaded, preserved by formalin.


Aftermath

Brandt and Sievers were indicted, tried, and convicted in the
Doctors' Trial The Doctors' Trial (officially ''United States of America v. Karl Brandt, et al.'') was the first of 12 trials for war crimes of high-ranking German officials and industrialists that the United States authorities held in their occupation zone ...
in
Nuremberg Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...
, and both were hanged in
Landsberg Prison Landsberg Prison is a penal facility in the town of Landsberg am Lech in the southwest of the German state of Bavaria, about west-southwest of Munich and south of Augsburg. It is best known as the prison where Adolf Hitler was held in 1924, a ...
on June 2, 1948. Josef Kramer was convicted of war crimes and hanged at
Hamelin Prison Hamelin Prison, also known as the ''Stockhof'', was a prison and penitentiary in Hamelin. The penal institution, which had a predecessor since 1698, existed from 1827 to 1980. It was located between the old town and the river Weser. The listed pri ...
by British executioner
Albert Pierrepoint Albert Pierrepoint (; 30 March 1905 – 10 July 1992) was an English hangman who executed between 435 and 600 people in a 25-year career that ended in 1956. His father Henry and uncle Thomas were official hangmen before him. Pierrepoint ...
on December 13, 1945. August Hirt, who conceived the project, was sentenced to death in absentia at the Military War Crimes Trial at Metz on 23 December 1953. It was unknown at the time that Hirt had shot himself in the head on June 2, 1945, near the town of
Schluchsee The Schluchsee is a reservoir lake in the district of Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald, southeast of the Titisee in the Black Forest near Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. Name In the Alemannic dialects of the region the name of the lake is the ''Schluec ...
, while hiding in the
Black Forest The Black Forest (german: Schwarzwald ) is a large forested mountain range in the state of Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany, bounded by the Rhine Valley to the west and south and close to the borders with France and Switzerland. It is t ...
. In 1974, Bruno Beger was convicted by a West German court as an accessory to 86 murders for his role in procuring the victims of the Jewish skeleton collection. He was sentenced to three years imprisonment, the minimum sentence, but did not serve any time in prison, since his sentence was later reduced to three years of probation. According to his family, Beger died in
Königstein im Taunus Königstein im Taunus () is a health spa and lies on the thickly wooded slopes of the Taunus in Hesse, Germany. The town is part of the Frankfurt Rhein-Main urban area. Owing to its advantageous location for both scenery and transport on the edg ...
on October 12, 2009. For many years, only a single victim was positively identified through the efforts of
Serge and Beate Klarsfeld Serge Klarsfeld (born 17 September 1935) is a Romanian-born French activist and Nazi hunter known for documenting the Holocaust in order to establish the record and to enable the prosecution of war criminals. Since the 1960s, he has made notab ...
: Menachem Taffel (prisoner no. 107969), a Polish born Jew who had been living in
Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
. In 2003,
Hans-Joachim Lang Hans-Joachim Lang (born 6 August 1951) is a German journalist, historian, and Adjunct Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the Ludwig-Uhland Institute for Empirical Cultural Studies University of Tübingen. Dr. Lang researched and authored th ...
, a German professor at the
University of Tübingen The University of Tübingen, officially the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen (german: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen; la, Universitas Eberhardina Carolina), is a public research university located in the city of Tübingen, Baden-Wü ...
, succeeded in identifying all the victims by comparing a list of inmate numbers of the 86 corpses at the Reichs University in Strasbourg, surreptitiously recorded by Hirt's French assistant Henri Henrypierre, with a list of numbers of inmates vaccinated at Auschwitz. The names and biographical information of the victims were published in the book ''Die Namen der Nummern'' (''The Names of the Numbers''). Rachel Gordon and Joachim Zepelin translated the Introduction to the book into English at the web site where the whole book is posted in German, including the biographies of the 86 people. Lang recounts in detail the story of how he determined the identities of the 86 victims gassed for Dr. August Hirt's project of the Jewish skeleton collection. Forty-six of these individuals were originally from
Thessaloniki Thessaloniki (; el, Θεσσαλονίκη, , also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece, with over one million inhabitants in its Thessaloniki metropolitan area, metropolitan area, and the capi ...
, Greece. The 86 were from eight countries in German-occupied Europe: Austria, Netherlands, France, Germany, Greece, Norway, Belgium, and Poland. In 1951, the remains of the 86 victims were re-interred in one location in the Cronenbourg-Strasbourg Jewish Cemetery. On December 11, 2005, memorial stones engraved with the names of the 86 victims were placed at the cemetery. One is at the site of the mass grave, the other along the wall of the cemetery. Another plaque honoring the victims was placed outside the Anatomy Institute at Strasbourg's University Hospital. On July 9, 2015, French doctor Raphael Toledano discovered at the Forensic Institute's Museum of Strasbourg several tissue samples hidden away, presumed to be from Menachem Taffel. These last remains were buried in the Jewish cemetery of Cronenbourg on September 6, 2015. As journalist and researcher Lang stated, once his long research was published on the identities of the 86 people killed under Hirt's orders, "The perpetrators should not be allowed to have the final word."


See also

*
Ahnenerbe The Ahnenerbe (, ''ancestral heritage'') operated as a think tank in Nazi Germany between 1935 and 1945. Heinrich Himmler, the ''Reichsführer-SS'' from 1929 onwards, established it in July 1935 as an SS appendage devoted to the task of promot ...
*
Bullenhuser Damm The Bullenhuser Damm School is located at ''92–94 Bullenhuser Damm'' in the Rothenburgsort section of Hamburg, Germany – the site of the Bullenhuser Damm Massacre, the murder of 20 children and their adult caretakers at the very end of W ...
*
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics was founded in 1927 in Berlin, Germany. The Rockefeller Foundation partially funded the actual building of the Institute and helped keep the Institute afloat during the Gr ...
*
Nazi human experimentation Nazi human experimentation was a series of human experimentation, medical experiments on large numbers of prisoners, including children, by Nazi Germany in its Nazi concentration camps, concentration camps in the early to mid 1940s, during Wo ...
* Research Materials: Max Planck Society Archive


References


External links

*
''The Names of the Numbers'' - A Project of Hans-Joachim Lang. List of all 86 victims of the Jewish Skeleton Collection (in German - also in English, French, Greek, Hebrew, Dutch, Norwegian and Polish)Jewish Skeleton Collection, Harvard Law School - Nuremberg Trials ProjectNames and information on the 46 Greek-Jewish victims from Theassaloniki, Greecethe Struthof album - study of the gassing at Natzweiler-Struthof of 86 jews whose bodies were to constitute a collection of skeletonsThe Struthof-Natzweiler camp by Miloslav Bilik at The Holocaust History Project"The names of the 86" ("Le nom des 86"), documentary film directed by Emmanuel Heyd and Raphael Toledano (Dora films, 2014, Fr) - in French, English and German
* , documentary directed by Sonia Rolley, Axel and Trancrède Ramonet, duration 55 min. Production France 3 - Temps Noir, April 2013. {{The Holocaust Alsatian Jews Racial antisemitism Nazi human subject research University of Strasbourg Human trophy collecting