Menschheitsverbrechen Zwangsarbeit, die Anatomie Tübingen und das Gräberfeld X

Lecture and discussion with Prof. Dr. Benigna Schönhagen, University of Tübingen and Inge Möller, Zukunftswerkstatt Zuffenhausen. In the foyer of the Hotel Silber.

Cemetery X is a reflection of the various crimes committed during the Nazi tyranny in southwest Germany. From 1849 to 1963, the cemetery at Tübingen City Cemetery served as the burial site of the University of Tübingen's Institute of Anatomy. During the Nazi era, especially after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, it became a secret disposal site for victims of Nazi crimes of violence. Among the more than 1000 dead who were used by Tübingen anatomists between 1933 and 1945 for the training of future doctors and for research were many forced laborers and some female forced laborers. Most came from Eastern Europe, some also from Western countries.
They had either been executed without trial by the Gestapo or sentenced to death by a radicalized Nazi judiciary and executed in Stuttgart. Others had been inmates of work education camps or prisons and had perished during forced labor. Prisoners form a victim group that has hardly been considered to date.
The lecture focuses on the victims of forced labor among the various victim groups who came to the Tübingen Anatomy Department. It also traces the role of anatomists in the Nazi tyranny and outlines how they dealt with their involvement in the crimes after 1945.