October 21, 2012—several hundred Yeshiva University students, faculty, neighbors, and community members flocked to the Wilf Campus for the Seventh Annual Fuld Family Medical Ethics Conference (MES). The conference, co-hosted by YU’s Student Medical Ethics Society and the Center for the Jewish Future (CJF), was titled “Out of the Ashes: Jewish Approaches to Medical Dilemmas Born Out of the Holocaust,” and featured an impressive array of distinguished speakers who captivated both the minds and hearts of the over four hundred attendees.
MES Presidents, Yosefa Schoor, SCW ’14, and Mordechai Smith, YC’14, opened with a welcome address to the packed audience, articulating the need to “discuss the scientific, medical, and ethical repercussions of the Holocaust to … honor the past, address some of the unique challenges of our generation and learn how to move forward in light of the Holocaust.”=
The keynote address, titled “Medical Ethics in the Shadow of the Holocaust: The Nazi Doctors, Racial Hygiene, Murder and Genocide” was delivered by Dr. Michael Grodin, an award-winning physician, internationally recognized Holocaust scholar, and professor of bioethics, human rights, family medicine, and psychiatry at Boston University. He presented a series of chilling facts and photographs about the atrocities Nazi party physicians performed, among them parachute experiments, seawater trials, and skeleton collections. They weren’t acting unwillingly, affirming “the physicians had choices.” Grodin reported that he often hears contemporary physicians make the same defensive arguments, excusing questionable experimentation in the name of progressing science. Dr. Grodin also explored the topic of eugenics in the 1900s, shedding light on the racially motivated German Sterilization Laws like “compulsory sterilization”, “disinfection”, and “euthanasia” (all “euphemisms for murder,” he explained) were patterned after similar U.S. policies of the 1930s, even drawing parallels between racial eugenics and certain elements of contemporary American healthcare.
After a short break, Holocaust survivor Irene Hizme held the audience rapt with an account of her experience as a six-year-old subject of one of Joseph Mengele’s infamous twin experiments. She eloquently recalled how she and her brother Rene – who was present at the conference – spent their childhood at the hospital, undergoing experiment after experiment to satisfy Mengele’s fascination with twin research. “Sixty-seven years later,” she said, “the loneliness still overwhelms me. I cannot feel I belong anywhere. I only eat stale bread. Electrical things terrify me. Hospitals are out of the question, and doctors are my worst nightmare. Irene ended her message on a somber note to future medical school students: “Don’t let them leech the humanity out of you. Remember why you came here in the first place. Never forget the human soul.” When she concluded, the audience rose to its feet in a lengthy standing ovation.
Rabbi Dr. Moshe Tendler, Rosh Yeshiva and Professor of Jewish Medical Ethics at YU, complemented this plenary on human experimentation by reviewing the Torah sources for the prohibition of euthanasia and emphasizing the Torah obligation to make moral decisions even in the pursuit of medical advancements.
The audience proceeded to divide into smaller workshop-like sessions. Speakers included Rabbi Dr. Edward Reichman, associate professor of Emergency Medicine at Einstein College of Medicine; Dr. Harry Ostrer, director of Genetic and Genomic Testing at Montefiore Medical Center; and Dr. David Pelcovitz, world-renowned psychologist and professor at NYU School of Medicine. The speakers discussed a gamut of themes, including post-war survivor communication, the use of pseudo-scientific Nazi date for contemporary science, and Jewish attitudes towards special needs individuals as contrasted with Nazi discrimination against the handicapped.
The conference raised many questions and sparked intense reflection for those who attended. Shayna Liss, SCW 15’, said,“It’s crazy how physicians, who everyone looks up to, and who you would think usually want to help people, did something like this.” Shayna also enjoyed Dr. Grodin’s speech, commenting, “When he compared all the [racial hygiene laws] happening in Germany to what was happening in the United States it was scary.” Shlomo Gewirtz, a resident of the Upper West Side, walked away from the conference with the larger question, “How do we take what we learned today and apply it to our lives?” Maddie, SCW 16’, felt she had one answer: “What we all need to work on,” she explained, “is caring unconditionally for those who are less fortunate than us. It’s our obligation as Jews.”
Nelly Carlisle, a professor at Beth Israel School of Nursing, remarked that “it was great how Dr. Grodin put it all into the greater context of what was going on in the world, and it was eye-opening to see how America started all of this and Germany continued and they just took it to a higher level.” Facilities coordinator Simcha Weissman, YC ’14, declared that the Conference was “a tremendous hit…an amazing event,” and that “everyone…was blown away by seeing a live Mengele survivor.”
When asked about which speaker he thought was most powerful, Isaac Dreyfus, YC ’15, Biology major and Treasurer of the Medical Ethics Society, chose Irene Hizme. “Hearing how her experience still affects her life now…and having her brother here as well, having them both here, was very impactful.”
For the attendees of this year’s Medical Ethics Conference, many of whom have spent their lives learning about the various horrors of the Holocaust, the opportunity to place these atrocities in the context of halakha and ethics proved a truly eye-opening and inspiring experience.