Progressive Entanglements? Activity Profiles, Responsibilities and Interactions of Dentists at Auschwitz. The Example of 2nd SS Dentist Willi Schatz

The history of dentistry during the Third Reich is still a neglected chapter in medical history; especially with a view to the concentration camps. Beyond the theft of dental gold, we actually know very little about the number of camp dentists or even about their activities and how these changed in particular in the final phase of the war. By using as a case study the biography of Willi Schatz, 2nd SS dentist at Auschwitz from January 1944 till autumn 1944, this paper examines the tasks of SS camp dentists in Auschwitz. It points out to what extent the scope of action of the camp dentists changed under the impression of extraordinary events, and clarifies that using the example of the Ungarn Aktion, in which more than 300 000 deportees were immediately murdered. It illustrates that such situational dynamics were an essential driving force for the expansion of dentals tasks. Despite the fact that Schatz was acquitted during the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial (1963-5) for lack of evidence, we show that dentists were not only part of the selection personnel but also high profiteers of the accelerated extermination actions. It can be demonstrated that participation in the selection process - originally reserved for physicians - offered SS dentists access to further SS networks. The study is based on primary sources supplemented with relevant secondary literature, and combines a biographical with a praxeological approach

The Influence of Epidemics on the Concept of the Bogeyman: Images, Ideological Origins, and Interdependencies of the Anti-Vaccination Movement; The Example of the Political Agitator Paul Arthur Förster (1844-1925)

Epidemics have always deeply affected societies. They almost inevitably lead to negotiations of questions referring to identity, belonging, and foreignness. Furthermore, epidemics create bogeymen. The biographical study by Prof. Dr. Paul Arthur Förster, founder of the first German association of vaccination opponents and an enthusiastic "völkisch" and anti-Semitic agitator, stands here as a prototype for a multitude of vaccination opponents and should help us to understand what kind of influence epidemics have on the creation of bogeyman. In a second step, the question of bogeyman highlights the underlying aspects of the anti-vaccination movement. It directly leads to relating questions concerning ideological proximity of anti-vaccinism to the milieu critical of scientific medicine, with its numerous organizations of alternative medicine and its associations