After Franceʼs defeat and the signing of the armistice on 22 June 1940, the departments of Alsace and Moselle were effectively annexed to the territory of the Third Reich. This was quickly followed by a policy of bringing these departments into line and nazifying them, which led to the creation of a concentration camp on 1 May 1941, 50 kilometers from Strasbourg: the KL-Natzweiler. At the same time, Gauleiter Robert Wagner, working with the Reich Ministry of Education, prepared for the creation of a German university in Strasbourg: the Reichsuniversität Straßburg, which opened its doors on 23 November 1941. Its Medical Faculty was the material and ideological affirmation of a showcase university. Between 1942 and 1944, KL-Natzweiler became the site of human experiments carried out on prisoners by three professors from the Medizinische Fakultät and their collaborators. They used the prisoners in the camp for their research. However, the links between the Faculty of Medicine and the concentration camp were manifold, as demonstrated by the work of the historical commission for the history of the Reichsuniversität Strasbourg (2016–2022). This contribution provides an overview.
Bonah et al. (Thu,) studied this question.
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