A Time for Activism for Gun Safety

Dear Friends,

We are left transformed by the shocking events in Uvalde, Texas; yet another mass shooting. Again, a punch in the gut with the associative anguish, grief and frustration.

Interestingly, recently we received a notice regarding a conference (SEE BELOW). It reminded us of our Aunt Elsbeth’s response, immediately after she was freed from Auschwitz, where she was sterilized, as part of the medical experiments done in Block 10. While waiting in Amsterdam, for a ship to take her to New York, she wrote an 18-page summary of the Hell she went through. The plan was to share it with her family, The New York Times and magazines, etc. Eventually, it was picked up, in part, in the book, “Buried by The Times.” published in 2005.

Similarly, each of us is called to protest what has resulted in murdered children and adults because of easy gun access. We hope you feel moved to do something, anything that will contribute to pushing back against “Business as usual,” in order to make all people much more safe, wherever they are.

Harriet and Bill

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Invitation to the 4th international conference Medical Review Auschwitz: Medicine Behind the Barbed Wire

We would like to invite you to the 4th international conference Medical Review Auschwitz: Medicine Behind the Barbed Wire, which will take place on 19-21 September 2022 in Kraków, Poland.

After a one-year break (in 2020) and the 2021 conference taking place in the virtual space, the decisions forced upon us by the COVID-19 pandemic, this year we will meet again at the on-the-site event in Kraków. This is the place where the original journal Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim (Medical Review – Auschwitz) was conceived and had its first issue published in 1961, marking the start of pioneering research and academic discussion on the medical, social, and bioethical consequences and lessons of the Holocaust, concentration camp history, Nazi German occupation, and the Second World War in general.

Additionally, year 2022 marks the fifth anniversary of launching the Medical Review Auschwitz project, which includes the conference as well as revisiting the articles from Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim through its translation into English, making its invaluable scientific content available to the global audience in an open-access format (see https://www.mp.pl/auschwitz/journal).

The conference is organised by the Polish Institute for Evidence-Based Medicine, the Kraków Medical Society, and the medical publisher Medycyna Praktyczna, in collaboration with the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, Department of Bioethics and the Holocaust, the International Chair in Bioethics, the Maimonides Institute for Medicine, Ethics and the Holocaust, the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics, the University of Colorado Center for Bioethics and Humanities, the Jagiellonian University, the St. Maximilian Center in Harmęże, and the Polish Association for Spiritual Care in Medicine, under auspices of the American College of Physicians.

The aim of the conference is to educate the world’s medical community about the violations of medical ethics during the Second World War, with special focus on the behaviour of physicians and other medical professionals in Nazi medical institutions and concentration camps or other places of imprisonment, and the ethical implications of Nazi medicine for contemporary medical practice and healthcare policy.

Conference participants will also have the opportunity to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum (including places not accessible to the general public). We hope that this conference will make a significant contribution to further the understanding of the dark history of Nazi medicine in Nazi German concentration camps and help the international community draw a lesson for future generations.

We look forward to seeing you in Kraków in September 2022.

Piotr Gajewski MD PhD FACP
Chair of the Organising Committee