Typhus in Buchenwald
Can the Story Be Told
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21987317 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ilana Löwy (0000-0001-6963-0578, Centre de Recherche Médicale et Sanitaire, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 4-19 |
| Publication date | 2020-10-09 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | ETHICS IN PROGRESS (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2084-9257 • E-ISSN: 2084-9257 |
| Publisher | Adam Mickiewicz University Poznan (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.14746/eip.2020.1.1 |
| OpenAlex | W3093209690 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 5 |
Ludwik Fleck is known today primarily as pioneer in the social study of scientific knowledge. However, during World War II he was a prisoner in Buchenwald, where he and other prisoners produced a typhus vaccine for the Nazis, and where he witnessed murderous experiments on human beings. After WW2, Fleck was accused by one of the prisoners who had participated in the vaccine production at Buchenwald of collaborating, either deliberately or due to lack of imagination, with the Nazi experiments. This article critically examines this accusation and its well-documented rebuttal by Fleck. It argues that while sometimes, especially when dealing with emotionally fraught issues, it may be difficult to establish what precisely took place at a given time and site, it is important to restore the original complexity and messiness of past events – in order to open spaces for understanding, reflexivity and compassion
Compassion · False accusation · Gulag · Nazism · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Bacillus and Francisella bacterial research · Climate Change Communication and Perception · History · Law · Psychology
| Citations per year | 0.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2024 - 2024 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |