A Funeral in Germany, So Very Long Overdue : Nazi victims: Human beings whose remains were exploited by doctors who knew no compassion must be remembered; one way is to document the abuses and crimes.

The prospect of a free, democratic and reunified Germany represents a triumphant moment for those who treasure democracy. A reunified Germany also brings to mind painful, tragic memories of a unified Germany that was totalitarian, fascist and racist--a nation responsible for the deaths of tens of millions. Optimism about Germany’s future depends in large measure on Germany’s willingness to fully acknowledge its tragic past. The West German government is now facing a stern test of its willingness to confront the nightmares of the past to reassure the world about its dreams for the future.

Incredibly, fragments of human tissue and bone from persons murdered in the Nazi genocide still remain in a number of German medical schools and scientific institutes. Nazi physicians and scientists, not content with the torture and killing of innocent men, women and children, mined their bodies for biological materials of scientific or medical interest. Until two years ago these materials were kept in anatomical collections at a number of locations in West Germany. Some specimens were used for teaching and research purposes in German medical schools and research centers.

The various institutions and universities now in possession of the anatomical specimens have, commendably, begun to remove them from their collections. A number have announced their intention to bury them. Burial is not enough. A funeral is long overdue.

The planned burial of the tissue specimens should be treated, not simply as a time for the sanitary disposal required for any biological materials, but, as a time for a solemn ceremony of commemoration. The governments of East and West Germany should ensure that the remains are buried at a single time with the appropriate participation of religious authorities and survivors of the Holocaust. In conjunction with the funeral, the governments should direct the medical and scientific institutes where the specimens have been kept to convene a symposium documenting the abuses and crimes that were carried out by German medicine and science during the Third Reich. A copy of the findings should be sent to every university library in the world that grants degrees in the biomedical sciences.

The day of the burial, and its subsequent anniversaries, should be observed with a moment of silence in every school for health professions worldwide. There should be representation at the burial by faculty and students in the health sciences and health organizations from around the world.

Why are a funeral and a symposium required to dispose of a small number of specimens of flesh and bone? The reason is not to embarrass German medicine or the governments of West or East Germany. The existence of the tissue specimens symbolize the vulnerability and potential failings of modern medicine and politics in all nations.

German medical and scientific institutions cannot and should not dissociate themselves from the evil symbolized by the specimens. Nor can science and medicine outside Germany be allowed to forget the complicity of the leading scientific nation of its time in genocide. A quiet, secretive burial is not what those who were murdered deserve. Nor is it what those who are alive, German and non-German, need in order to acknowledge the past before leaping into the future.

Five years after President Ronald Reagan visited Bitburg, when homage was paid at the grave of dead German warriors, the world must pay tribute to other war dead, human beings whose remains were exploited by a medicine that knew no compassion. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his colleagues in both East and West Germany must seize this moment. They should leave no doubt that Germany understands its history. As many cultures acknowledge, funerals serve both to remind us of what has been and to reaffirm our faith in what can be.