January 27, 1945
Myron Yaster MD
Today is holocaust memorial day. My parents, Jacob and Sally Yaster, of blessed memory, were liberated from the Nazi death camp Auschwitz today, January 27, in 1945. Among the many revealed horrors were the atrocities perpetrated by doctors. “Physicians voluntarily joined the Nazi party and, without any pressure, took part in forced sterilization in hospitals between 1933 and 1939, in forced human experiments at Auschwitz and other camps, and in programs to kill individuals diagnosed as unworthy of life”. In my wildest imagination, I never thought that racism, anti-semitism, and fascism would ever raise its ugly head in the world, or our beloved America, again. Unfortunately, the experience of the last few years has proven otherwise.
Health care practitioners need to be aware that the vulnerabilities and temptations in our profession that existed in Nazi Germany are still present today. Rather than summarizing more of this article in the PAAD, I’d urge all of you to read it. Myron Yaster MD
https://www.statnews.com/2022/01/27/doctors-complicit-holocaust-atrocities/
Yasher Koach Myron Yaster. My father was placed on a train in Munich, the Kindertransport, and sent to England at 14 years of age not knowing if he’d ever see his parents again. My mother and her mother abandoned the family’s hospital, Sanatorium Vitae, in Lvov Poland when the air raids and bombing started and never saw her father or 7 uncles and all their families again.
W. Weiss MD
Chief of Pediatric Anesthesiology
NYU Langone Hospital-Long Island