IAC :: Remember the past, be responsible for the future

Stauffenbergstraße 13/14
10785 Berlin
Germany

fon: ++ 49 (030) 26 39 26 81
Telefax: ++ 49 (030) 26 39 26 83

URI: https://www.auschwitz.info/

Service navigation:
 
language navigation:
 
language navigation:
 
 
 
 
 

Press Information published by the International Auschwitz Committee

09.06.2021

Grounds of the Free University in Berlin possible Holocaust crime scene?

 
 
The former garden of the former Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Human Genetics, Anthropology and Eugenics is now a car park. Human bones were found in this area that most likely belonged to prisoners murdered in Auschwitz. Photo: Bernd Oertwig

The former garden of the former Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Human Genetics, Anthropology and Eugenics is now a car park. Human bones were found in this area that most likely belonged to prisoners murdered in Auschwitz. Photo: Bernd Oertwig

 

 

 

Based on the latest research by the Berlin historian Götz Aly (see Berliner Zeitung, 6.6.2021), Auschwitz survivors are outraged at the lack of willingness and insensitivity on the part of the Free University in Berlin (FU) to investigate and clarify the nature of the human remains discovered in 2014 in the grounds of the FU at Garystrasse 39.

During a visit at the Auschwitz Memorial Christoph Heubner, the Executive Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee said:

"For Auschwitz survivors it is absolutely clear that there is a Holocaust crime scene in the grounds of the Free University in Berlin. All the traces of human remains found in this area of the FU point to Auschwitz and to one of the most inhuman chapters in the history of German scientific research: The murderous cooperation between the Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele and the medical professor, twin research specialist and racial hygienist Otmar von Verschuer at the former Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Human Genetics, Anthropology and Eugenics am Kaiser Wilhelm, which is now located in the grounds of Berlin’s Free University.

In Auschwitz Mengele experimented especially with Jewish men, women and children, killed them and then sent the preserved dissected human parts to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute ‘for research purposes’ in collaboration with Verschuer. Consequently, it is obvious that more remains of Jewish people are still lying in those particular grounds, and that these people were in all probability the victims of crimes committed in Auschwitz which are not time-barred. It is unbearable for Auschwitz survivors, knowing that parts of the bodies of their relatives are still buried in Berlin, or that they have been disposed of in unspeakable, undignified ways.

Auschwitz survivors are now urgently asking why no further excavations have been initiated and why the Berlin public prosecutor’s office and the politically responsible persons have so far failed to take action to gain the cooperation of the authorities at the Free University? It is high time that the university authorities take action to clear up this murky past which is still heavily overshadowing the university’s reputation. The time has come to end the repression of facts and the efforts to whitewash history.

In times of renewed anti-Semitic hatred, this kind of stonewalling, particularly from the academic sphere, is nothing less than disgraceful and disrespectful in the eyes of Holocaust survivors."

 
 
 

For further Information

Christoph Heubner

Executive Vice President
International Auschwitz Committee
Phone ++ 49 (0)30 26 39 26 81