Courtesy of Truman State University
Written by: Darby Kurtz
Health care providers are expected to follow the code of “do no harm.” During World War II, the medical community was faced with what happens when those who are trained to heal are weaponized on a massive scale to go against that code.
While doctors under the Nazi regime committed atrocities, the American medical community, like much of the United States, remained mostly silent due to a multitude of factors. A Poisoned Practice explores those factors through the lens of the American eugenics movement and in the news available to the Omaha medical community about the Holocaust during World War II. The exhibit also touches on the medical ethics implications of the Holocaust with the creation of the Nuremberg Code.
A Poisoned Practice is presented in partnership with the Calvin T. Ryan Library at the University of Nebraska at Kearney as a part of a grant funded traveling exhibition program from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) and the American Library Association.
Find this exhibit on Level 8, McGoogan Library, Wittson Hall or online.
Now on display through June 15th, 2026.