August 8, 2009 – February 14, 2010
South Carolina State Museum

“Our starting point is not the individual, and we do not subscribe to the view that one should feed the
hungry, give drink to the thirsty, or clothe the naked. … Our objectives are entirely different: we
must have a healthy people in order to prevail in the world.”

Joseph Goebbels
Nazi Minister of Propaganda, 1938

From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany's government led by Adolf Hitler promoted a nationalism that combined territorial expansion with claims of biological superiority—an "Aryan master race"—and virulent antisemitism. Driven by a racist ideology legitimized by German scientists, the Nazis attempted to eliminate all of Europe's Jews, ultimately killing six million in the Holocaust. Many others also became victims of persecution and murder in the Nazis' campaign to cleanse German society of individuals viewed as threats to the "health" of the nation.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s traveling exhibition, Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race, examines how the Nazi leadership, in collaboration with individuals in professions traditionally charged with healing and the public good, used science to help legitimize persecution, murder and, ultimately, genocide.

The exhibition contains historical photographs, artifacts and survivor testimony from the Holocaust, including explicit images of medical experimentation on children.

This version of Deadly Medicine is based on the acclaimed exhibition of the same name that originally opened at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., in April 2004. Two other successful traveling versions of the exhibition have been on display in Canada and Germany. An online version of the exhibition is available at www.ushmm.org/deadlymedicine.

Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race
August 8, 2009 to February 14, 2010
SC State Museum

Open: Tuesday - Saturday 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., Sundays 1- 5 p.m., Mondays - Memorial Day through Labor Day

Viewer Discretion Advised. This exhibiton is not suitable for young children.

Physicians played an important role as planners and implementers of Nazi racial hygiene policy. This presentation discusses how medical professionals worked to apply two significant aspects of Nazi policy: compulsory sterilization and the clandestine "Euthanasia" program, the Nazis’ first program of mass murder. Compulsory sterilization, through which 400,000 Germans were legally sterilized, was enforced through the German legal system and involved physicians in the roles of denouncers, jurists, and enforcers of sterilization policy. Likewise medical professionals instigated and carried out the so-called Nazi "euthanasia" program, which claimed the lives of 200,000 mentally and physically disabled patients and set an important precedent for the Holocaust.

3:30-4:30 p.m.    Lecture
4:30-5:00 p.m.    Tour of exhibition
5:00-6:00 p.m.    Reception