Why Did So Many Doctors Become Nazis?

A medical student once asked me what was the most important lesson I wanted them to know. My answer was this: Between good and evil, there is no “safe space” to stand. There is no neutral void from which a physician can escape his ethical duties, referring it to another. 

This essay was written in December 2020 by Ashley K Fernandes for The Tablet.

This essay is written from the point of view of a physician, medical educator, and bioethicist who sees the deplorable fact of physician involvement in the Shoah as an opportunity to highlight enduring moral lessons for the medical professions. Medicine and law are intimately connected to one another, and, since the professionalization of medicine in the United States and Europe in the latter half of the 19th century, even more so. One discipline that connects both is moral philosophy; for both law and medicine involve reason…