The University of Vienna has officially acknowledged responsibility for dismissing over half of its medical faculty during the Nazi regime. All the doctors dismissed were of Jewish origin or had a Jewish spouse.
Between 1938 and 1945 more than 173 professors and consultants were dismissed from the faculty of medicine in Vienna--more than half of the permanent staff. The hardest hit were the departments of medicine, neurology, and dermatology. Those who survived the war made a new life elsewhere, some as prestigious academics in Britain and the United States.
A memorial bronze plaque was unveiled in the courtyard of the University of Vienna after a one day commemorative symposium, which preceded the opening ceremony of the world congress of gastroenterology last week. The plaque is "dedicated by the Faculty of Medicine to all teachers and students who were persecuted, exiled, or murdered during the Nazi regime for racial or political reasons."
The university's action was triggered by Dr Leslie Bernstein, the chairman of the ethics committee of the American Gastroenterology Association. In 1995 he expressed doubts about the world congress being held in Vienna in 1998. He wrote to Günter Krejs, the president of the world congress, to ask what the University of Vienna had done so far as an act of reconciliation and whether it had acknowledged its part in the oppression of Jews during the Nazi regime. Professor Krejs replied then that it would "try hard to make a public recognition of the dark days in the University of Vienna."