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When nurses saw killing as part of caring
THE HORRORS of the Nazi regime are well documented, but a Yorkshire academic believes the role of nurses in the atrocities has not being fully explored until now.
Professor Linda Shields is leading a team of researchers from around the world to uncover exactly what was done by nurses in the euthanasia programmes and concentration camps of Germany during the 1930s.
Next week the Hull University professor will give a speech at the Royal College of Nursing's Annual Research conference on how the killings carried out by the medical profession have implications today.
Before the Second World War nurses in Nazi Germany were assisting in the deaths of what the state called "useless eaters" – children and adults with physical disabilities or learning difficulties, alcoholics and people suffering with conditions such as epilepsy or cerebral palsy.
Nurses also played a major part in experiments in camps which included rubbing glass and sawdust into open wounds and then treating people with sulphur drugs to see which ones worked best.
It was even part of the job of a home care nurse to report disabled people to the authorities for euthanasia programmes.
Tens of thousands of people are believed to have been killed in this way by doctors and nurses in Nazi Germany.
Prof Shields said: "It is important to understand that nurses were not forced into doing these things. There are records of nurses refusing to take part who were moved to other parts of the hospital but they were not punished for it.
"A lot of the nurses involved did it because they thought it was the right thing to do.
"They saw killing as being part of their caring role.
"This is what intrigues me. We need to understand why it happened.
"It is all right for us to say: 'I would never have done something like this' but we don't know what it was like to live in Nazi Germany. The propaganda was fierce, people were assaulted by it. It was used in every walk of life. Children were taught mathematics by being asked how much it would cost to keep a certain number of disabled children alive."
Prof Shields leads an international research group of nurses, midwives, historians and philosophers to understand how and why medical professionals were prepared to commit such atrocities. She will deliver a speech at the Royal College of Nursing conference in Liverpool on the subject on Wednesday.
She said: "Astonishingly because nurses in the Third Reich were predominantly female and perceived to have a caring role, they were discounted from any wrongdoing and their work has never really been questioned. As a profession we need to be careful this lapse in ethical conduct does not happen again."
She also believes that parallels can be drawn between the role of Nazi nursing and scientific developments toward creating designer babies.
Prof Shields added: "We know that some euthanasia is allowed in some parts of world which nurses are involved in. I think it is important for nurses to step back from their everyday life and consider the ways in which their counterparts in other parts of the world are working."
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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