During the Nazi regime (1933–1945), the anatomical institute at the University of Jena received 2,224 corpses, of which approximately 200 originated from executions. The available data clearly suggest that a large portion of these 200 executed persons must be considered victims of Nazi crimes. Approximately an equal number of bodies were delivered from state nursing homes and mental institutions in the state of Thuringia during the same time period. The available data suggest that it is highly likely that many of them were victims of decentralized “euthanasia” programs. The remains of many prisoners of nearby labor camps, mostly from Eastern Europe, are listed in the body register at the institute as well. A group of anatomists and historians has investigated the institute's association with Nazi crimes. Apart from documenting the association, the aim of the investigation is to clarify the whereabouts of the corpses. In particular, it must be ascertained that none of the specimens publicly displayed in the anatomical collection of the Friedrich Schiller University originated in the context of Nazi crimes. Anat Rec (Part B: New Anat) 285B:6–10, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

INTRODUCTION During the first half of the 20th century, the anatomical institute at the University of Jena obtained the majority of corpses for teaching and research from nearby nursing homes. In addition, some corpses, mostly newborns and children, were delivered from the local pathology department. More rarely, the corpses of executed prisoners, persons who had committed suicide, and accident victims found their way to the anatomical institute. Here we present the results of an investigation by a group of anatomists and historians, including medical and science historians, who studied how this pattern of supply changed in Jena during the Nazi regime (1933–1945). Jena is located in the state of Thuringia, which is located in the former German Democratic Republic, i.e., former East Germany. From 1932 to 1938, Hans Böker (1886–1939) headed the anatomical institute at the University of Jena. He was succeeded in 1938 by Rüdiger von Volkmann (1894–1990), with the massive support of Fritz Saukel (1894–1946), the Nazi administrator (Gauleiter) in the state of Thuringia. After the war, von Volkmann lost his position at the university due to his active support of the political goals of the Nationalist Socialist Party.

BODY REGISTER From 1933 to 1945, a total of 2,224 corpses were delivered to the institute (Fig. 1). The primary source of information for the present study has been the body register (Leichen‐Journal) of the anatomical institute for the years 1914–1949. In this register, the following information is documented for all incoming cadavers: date of delivery, sex, age, name, and location of death. In addition, the cause of any unnatural death (e.g., executed, hung, shot) is documented and a numeral code indicates prisoners or forced laborers, suicides, inmates of nursing homes, and children. Figure 1 Open in figure viewer PowerPoint Number of corpses delivered to the anatomical institute of the University of Jena and their social status or origin. Note that the number of bodies from prisoners increases slightly from 1938 to 1942 and then rises dramatically in the years from 1942 to 1944.

CORPSES FROM EXECUTIONS During the Nazi regime, the institute received the bodies of about 200 executed persons. Figure 2 illustrates the large increase during the last 4 years of the Nazi regime (1942–1945). For the majority of the executed, it was possible to find out by which court and for what crime they were sentenced to death. The majority of corpses were delivered from the state prison in Weimar, where convicts of the special Nazi courts in Weimar, Jena, Erfurt, and other Thuringian cities were executed. At these courts, the accused were stripped almost entirely of their right to defend themselves. The majority of the convicts were tried for minor crimes, such as petty theft and fraud. Convictions for major crimes were the exception. In 1943, the anatomical institute also received 41 corpses of special court convicts who were executed at the prison in Halle. Figure 2 Open in figure viewer PowerPoint Number of corpses delivered to the anatomical institute from executed persons and other prisoners. Prior to 1933, the anatomical institute in Jena received the bodies of executed prisoners from within the state of Thuringia, but there were very few of these. On 18 February 1939, a general decree dictated that the bodies of executed persons fell to the nearest university for the purposes of teaching and research. The corpses of persons executed in Weimar were ascribed to the Universities in Jena and Halle (Viebig, 2002). The majority of executions in the early 1930s were based on jury convictions for murder and other capital crimes. Later, the formation of special courts in more and more cities in the state of Thuringia correlated with a steadily increasing number of crimes for which capital punishment was prescribed. Using numerous decrees and laws, the Nazi regime tried to break all resistance against its political goals with the help of the judiciary system. Starting in 1939, capital punishment could be given as a sentence for even minor crimes and to persons without previous convictions (Viebig, 1998). Many executions for minor crimes were a direct consequence of the growing distress and desperate material need of average citizens. The following examples illustrate the development. At the beginning of 1942, 61‐year‐old Karl Sachs was entered as no. 6 in the body register of that year. Sachs was sentenced to death because he had acted against the “decree by the Führer to guarantee the collection of winter clothes for the front.” He was sentenced to death for keeping a sweater and a pair of socks for himself. On 5 January 1945, the remains of nine communist resistance fighters from Suhl and Sonneberg were brought to the institute. They had been convicted by the People's Court (Volksgerichtshof) and executed in Weimar. In 1938, the remains of Emil Bargatzki (born 1901) and Peter Forster (born 1911) were delivered to the institute. The two had fled together from the Buchenwald concentration camp in May 1938 after killing a guard. Following their capture and extradition, they were condemned to die and hung publicly at Buchenwald. Apart from these two inmates, the body register of the anatomical institute lists only the bodies of two executed members of the SS as originating from the Buchenwald camp between 1933 and 1945. In the body register, red pencil underlines the causes of death for all persons executed between 1933 and 1945. These markings were possibly made during an official investigation that was carried out shortly after the war, as suggested by the testimony of a former assistant who worked in the anatomical institute in the late 1940s. He testified in the summer of 2004 that the entries for the executed persons had already been marked in the body register after the war. He also stated that officials from the “control organs” had inspected the body register several times after the war and that a number of the bodies belonging to executed prisoners were subsequently removed from the collection. Moreover, it was noted that other death‐related documents, which are usually kept for each person in the institute's archives in addition to the body register, could not be found for most of the persons executed between 1933 and 1945. This suggests that these additional files had been removed from the institute's archives, possibly by the “control organs” after the war. Other files in the university archives contain only information on organizational matters, for example, how the supply of corpses was financed and how the transport to the institute was organized during the Nazi regime. They do not provide any clue as to whether moral questions were raised at the anatomical institute in view of the rapidly mounting number of bodies resulting from executions.

CORPSES FROM NURSING HOMES AND MENTAL ASYLUMS OF STADTRODA, BLANKENHAIN, AND BAD BLANKENBURG Figure 3 shows the number of corpses that came to the anatomical institute in Jena from the state nursing homes and mental institutions in the Thuringian cities of Stadtroda and Blankenhain. There is a marked increase of corpses delivered in the time between 1940 and 1942. Figure 3 Open in figure viewer PowerPoint Number of corpses delivered to the anatomical institute from the state nursing homes and mental institutions in Stadtroda und Blankenhain. Due to extensive research (Aly, 1994a; Rektor der Friedrich‐Schiller‐Universität, 2000; Zimmermann, 2000, Zimmermann, 2005; Renner and Zimmermann, 2003; Renner, 2004), there remains no doubt that the nursing homes and state mental institutions in Stadtroda and Blankenhain were involved in decentralized “euthanasia” crimes. The program's aim was to eradicate mentally handicapped persons. The institutions in Stadtroda supplied the anatomical institute in Jena with a total of 141 corpses. In the years 1940–1942 alone, 83 corpses were delivered. This increase correlates with the increase in the approximately double number of deaths that occurred during this time period in the institutions (Renner, 2004). For some of these patients, medical records were found in the archives of the Federal Republic of Germany in Berlin during the last decade. Previously, many of these medical records had been kept in the central archives of the ministry of state security of the former German Democratic Republic. Medical records were also found in the Thuringia state archives in Rudolstadt and in the hospital archives in Stadtroda. The following young boy is an example of a likely “euthanasia” victim. The remains of 3‐year‐old boy, Nils T., were brought to the anatomical institute in Jena on 16 July 1943. On 3 February 1942, Nils was admitted as a patient to the University Children's Hospital in Jena (diagnosis: mental retardation). One year later, on 11 February 1943, he was transferred to the Children's Special Ward in Stadtroda, which had been established to kill handicapped children. The central Commission for Collection of Scientific Data on Serious Inherited Diseases (Reichsausschuss zur wissenschaftlichen Erfassung von erb‐ und anlagebedingten schweren Leiden) that coordinated these killings from Berlin (Aly, 1994a) was notified of the transfer. Nils died 4 months later. His supposed cause of death was documented in the medical records as being “circulatory failure caused by diphtheria.” The institution in Blankenhain was dissolved in September 1940 when more than 200 patients were transferred to Sonnenstein/Pirna. Here they were murdered using gas, in the context of the centralized “euthanasia” program (“Aktion T4”). Ongoing research suggests that children were also killed at the Anna Luisen Foundation in Bad Blankenburg that was run by Protestant personnel (Diakonissen). Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that “euthanasia” victims were also among the five children whose remains were delivered to the anatomical institute from Bad Blankenburg.

CORPSES FROM PRISONERS AND FORCED LABORERS The body register also contains the names of men who died in Thuringian state and court prisons in Gräfentonna, Ichtershausen, and UntermaSfeld. A maximum was reached in 1943. For that year, 11 entries are listed in the body register. “Hung” is the given cause of death for many of these men. However, because these prisons did not carry out executions, suicide by hanging is the most likely cause of death in most cases. Following decade‐old traditions, bodies resulting from suicides were delivered to anatomical institutes (Viebig, 2002). In the mid‐1930s, the Nazi regime forbade relatives of political prisoners to bury the bodies of their dead. Such corpses were delivered to anatomical institutes only in exceptional cases, perhaps because they often bore signs of starvation, torture, or bodily violence. During the war, the number of dead who were not allowed to be buried by their relatives increased steadily. It also included Jews, Poles, and forced laborers from Eastern Europe. At first, political and racist motives determined such regulations. Later, the need to bury victims fast and inexpensively also played a role. Toward the end of the Nazi regime, an increasing number of corpses can be found in the body registry that were simply listed as “laborer from the East” or “Pole” with an apparent derogatory connotation. An example for such an entry is as follows: Body no. 40e, 1 June 1944, female, 3 years old, (origin:) Pathological Institute, Russian child It is nearly impossible to clarify the origin of these corpses because of the vast number of small and outlying labor camps that existed in the state of Thuringia. The names of the deceased are not always listed in the body registry and the names of the camps are never stated.

WHEREABOUTS OF CORPSES During the Nazi regime, corpses from the anatomical institute in Jena were cremated at the local crematory, as clearly indicated by the crematory's statistical records. However, the names of the executed persons are not listed in any of the official cremation records. Moreover, the question of whether or where the ashes were buried remains presently unsolved. It cannot be ruled out that the ashes were added to other graves, as was sometimes done in the postwar era. Only very few corpses were handed over to the relatives of the deceased. A note in the body register indicates that some bodies were destroyed during bombing raids at the end of the war. According to a former assistant of the institute, the unprepared heads of 10–12 executed persons were kept in large glass jars in the anatomical institute as late as 1948. Two years later, the heads were no longer present.

ANATOMICAL COLLECTION OF FRIEDRICH SCHILLER UNIVERSITY The body register indicates that special preparations were carried out for 12 executed persons delivered between 1933 and 1945. In nine cases, preparations were made specifically for the teaching collection of anatomical or histological specimens. Most of these persons were executed at a relatively young age (20–40 years). The institute's yearly reports from 1939 to 1942 indicate an enlargement in the collection of specimens for teaching purposes during this period. The anatomical collection at the Friedrich Schiller University dates back more than 200 years. The origin of all human specimens in this collection has been investigated since the early 1990s with the help of the collection's 22 catalogs (Fröber, 2003). The origin of most specimens has since been clarified, in particular for the historic part of the collection. The teaching material of the collection, however, contains mostly preparations from the 20th century. The catalogs from this period, however, do not allow for a complete reconstruction of the origin of all specimens because these catalogs do not systematically cross‐reference each other. So far, no indications were found in any of the catalogs that anatomical material used in the teaching collection was obtained in association with Nazi crimes. Therefore, it is considered presently unnecessary to separate or remove individual specimens from the collection. The recent rediscovery that the institute was associated with Nazi crimes has caused a renewed effort to complete the documentation of the origin of all younger specimens in the collection in order to ascertain that no preparations are present in the collection that were possibly obtained in an inhumane context (Bundesärztekammer, 2003). Unfortunately, a similar objective cannot be realized for the vast and completely anonymous collection of bones and histological slides, which are used for teaching medical students.

CONCLUSIONS The present study illustrates how quickly the dignity of the dead can be violated in anatomical institutes in a political system that disregards human rights. This danger increases when the head of the institute does not fulfill his or her moral responsibility in overseeing the supply of corpses, and/or if he or she is actively involved in inhumane acts or crimes (e.g., see Aly, 1994b; Aumüller and Grundmann, 2002). Events similar to the ones described here for Jena are also known for other universities of the Reich during this general time frame. The anatomical institutes at the universities of Tübingen (Schönhagen, 1992), Vienna (Malina, 1998; Spann, 1998; Angstetter, 2000; Hubbard, 2001), Halle (Viebig, 2002), and Marburg (Aumüller and Grundmann, 2002) have investigated and documented this part of their history. Since the distribution of corpses was regulated by nationwide decrees, other universities in Germany (and Austria) may have also been affected. Presently, only the corpses of persons enrolled in body donation programs are accepted at anatomical institutes in Germany. These programs stipulate that persons donate their bodies voluntarily during their lifetime and without financial compensation. This policy minimizes the risk that bodies come to anatomical institutes out of a criminal or inhumane context. The anatomical institute in Jena intends to create a place of commemoration for the victims of the Nazi regime whose bodies found their final fate at the institute.

Acknowledgements Apart from the authors, other members of the group who investigated the origin of corpses in Jena during the Nazi regime were: Olaf Breidbach and Uwe HoSfeld, both at the Institute of History of Medicine, Natural Science, and Technology, and Jürgen John, Institute of History, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena.