Rabbi Joseph Polak

Rabbi Polak’s contribution to the subject of medicine and the Holocaust:

The Vienna Protocol

Europe is littered with the remains of victims of the Nazi murders, uncovered in recent times, during construction and/or repairs of existing German buildings and campus grounds, or in fields and forests in Poland, Lithuania, and other countries. Sadly, in some of these places, the discovered remains are not treated with the reverence they deserve; certainly not when the remains are of Jewish victims. At a Conference in Yad Vashem in 2018, Rabbi Polak introduced a protocol for dealing with these remains, with the support of the Rector of the Medical University of Vienna, and then published in leading European medical journals, including Lancet and Surgery.

The Pernkopf Dilemma

One of the most effective and thorough atlases of human anatomy, exceptionally detailed and luminous, was published in 1937 by the then Dean of the Vienna Medical School, Eduard Pernkopf. An English version of the Atlas appeared in 1963, and surgeons to this day employ it for its extraordinary capacity for detail and clarity. In the 1980’s the Atlas was studied from a different perspective, and it emerged that some of the subjects for the illustrations were victims of the Third Reich. The question of the moral feasibility of surgeons employing this Atlas was addressed by Rabbi Polak and addressed in “The Vienna Protocol.”