So That Others May Live: The Struggle of Jewish Doctors to Preserve Life in the Holocaust

Abstract

The Holocaust is at once a frequent subject of collegiate study and an infinitely multi-layered moment in history. In this paper, Nicholas Eckenrode succeeds in analyzing an element of Holocaust history whose obscurity has led most historians to miss its vital importance: the experiences of Jewish doctors caught up in the machinery of the Final Solution, desperately attempting to “preserve life” while surrounded by violent death. He addresses doctors’ roles in the ghettoes, their place inside and outside the hospitals of the death camps, and their roles as unwilling participants in Nazi science. This analysis demonstrates the technical and narrative breadth of historical writing, evoking human beings, human ideals, and their ability to endure in the direst of situations. –Arthur Dixon