Ethics seminars: Physician complicity in the Holocaust: Historical review and reflections on emergency medicine in the 21st century, part II

Part I of this seminar in ethics reviewed the participation of German physicians and the German medical establishment in carrying out Nazi policies and listed eight moral failures that could be attributed to doctors during the dark period of history known as the Holocaust. The collective acts that occurred during this period have, arguably, become a benchmark for abject ethical collapse on the part of mankind. Part II contemplates a variety of contemporary issues through the prism of the Holocaust. This article reviews and categorizes ethical pitfalls encountered by physicians during the Nazi era and examines them in relationship to several current issues. It also focuses on ethical concerns and challenges that confront contemporary emergency practitioners, some of which have parallels, though certainly not direct comparators, in the Nazi era.