Epidemics and Genocide in Eastern Europe, 1890–1945

Abstract

How did typhus come to be viewed as a ‘Jewish disease’ and what was the connection between the anti-typhus measures during the First World War and the Nazi gas chambers and other genocidal medical practices in the Second World War? This book provides valuable new insight into the history of German medicine in its reaction to the international fight against typhus and the perceived threat of epidemics from the East in the early part of the 20th century. It examines how German bacteriology became increasingly racialised, and how it sought to eradicate the disease by eradication of the perceived carriers. Delousing became a key feature of Nazi preventive medicine during the Holocaust, and gassing a favoured means of eradication of typhus.

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