Revisiting Hateful Science: The Nazi “Contribution” to the Journey of Antisemitism

While this volume of the Journal of Hate Studies is devoted to “The Science of Hate”—research and knowledge about hate’s origins and manifestations seen through the lens of the empirical sciences—this contribution is a cautionary reminder that, like all human projects, intellectual and other, the sciences, too, can be perverted by its practitioners in the service of hate itself. The case study is that of the Nazi Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, MD, (1896-1969), eugenicist and geneticist, and, specifically, his (1938) text “Racial Biology of the Jews.” Of particular note is the American “connection,” in supplying both supporting legitimation for the pseudo-science of eugenics and two contemporary examples showing that the ideas of von Verschuer and other members of the German scientific community are far from extinct and continue to play a role in far Right antisemitic movements. The accompanying photographs remind us that this work of hateful science was not confined to intellectual theorizing or laboratory work with lower-order animals, but was made real in the death camps under Nazi hegemony.


I. INTRODUCTION
That the Nazis contributed a new element to the journey of antisemitism 2 after more than 2,000 years of pre-Christian (and post-Christian Enlightenment) social-cultural antisemitism and Christian religious-theological antisemitism should, by the beginning of this 21st century, be both patently and transparently obvious. 3 Though the preferred terms now used are either "racial antisemitism" or "biological antisemitism"-equating the Judaism of the Jews with a physical manifestation, and what, perhaps, we should, in this context, negatively label "Jewness"-both are grounded in what we may call the "pseudo-science of eugenics" 4 applied to human communities and overlaying their hatred and annihilatory agenda of extermination with the false patina of scientific rationalism and reason. Thus, I would add yet a third synonymous phrase-that of "pseudo-scientific antisemitism"-and, in contradistinction to the rigorous demands of the scientific method, term such socio-political methodologies "hateful [pseudo]science." 5 For the Nazis, then, the so-called "bottom line" was to intellectually and scientifically legitimate not only their behaviors toward Jews, but also to validate those behaviors in accord with what must have been per- 50 JOURNAL OF HATE STUDIES [Vol. 7:47 lapse but rather make possible valuable mutual enrichment and stimulation." 13 In 1951, he was appointed Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Münster, where he went on to establish one of the largest genetics research centers in West Germany. He was also accorded membership during that period in the American Society of Human Genetics, the Italian Society of Genetics, the Anthropological Society of Vienna, and the Japanese Society for Human Genetics. He died as the result of an automobile accident in 1969; his many obituaries made no reference to his Nazi past.

III. THE AMERICAN CONNECTION 14
On 13 May 1932, the prestigious Rockefeller Foundation, New York, funded a three-year grant to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute "for research on twins and effects on later generations of substances toxic for germ plasm." 15 This was during the time when von Verschuer was actively involved in the work of the Institute before leaving in 1935.
America's own involvement in the pseudo-science of eugenics (i.e. "selective breeding" to improve the human species) postdates the aftermath of the Civil War (1861-1865) when the influx of former slaves resettled beyond the South. And while racism was decidedly a factor in its early history, concerns about so-called "mental defectives" and "physical defectives" and their propagation and/or elimination attracted both scientists and non-scientists alike. By the time Hitler and his ilk achieved political power in the early 1930s, thirty states already had legislation according them the right to sterilize institutional persons from further reproduction, 16 and journals and societies regularly published articles and held conferences devoted to the topic. 17 For example, in 1904, the Carnegie Institution (later to become the Carnegie Foundation) established The Biological Experiment Station at Cold Springs Harbor, New York, and in 1910, Charles B. Davenport (1866-1944, its director, established the Eugenics Record Office to compile data on millions of Americans regarding their bloodlines in association with the Eugenics Research Society and in conjunction with the American Eugenics Society. 18 Thus, ground was already well-laid for the Nazis and their scientists to build upon this work and pervert it to murder not only Jews, but also Roma, Sinti, gay persons, so-called criminal elements and other "asocials," and their own institutionalized physically and mentally handicapped as well. Indeed, according to the booklet published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, entitled Handicapped: Victims of the Nazi Era, 1933Era, -1945, somewhere between 200,000 and 250,000 German nationals, both the physically and the mentally handicapped, were murdered \\server05\productn\G\GHS\7-1\GHS103.txt between the advent of the Second World War (1 September 1939) and its end (1 May 1945) under the euphemistically labeled "T-4 Program" and other such so-called "euthanasia" programs. 19 IV. RACIAL BIOLOGY OF THE JEWS In his brief "Translator's Introduction," Charles E. Weber's (See note #4) own antisemitism is transparent as he concludes with his own "alphabet of antisemitic woes": Finally, let me recommend to Jews themselves that they read and reflect on the Forschungen zur Judenfrage, for these studies contain many astute observations and much valuable historical information as seen through the eyes of outstanding non-Jewish scholars. The Jews' persistence in blind hatred of their host populations, their insensitivity to or even total disregard of the sufferings of their victims, their ruthless use of the media which they now largely control, their insidious but shortsighted attempts to destroy the mores of their host populations, their disregard of the lessons of history and their arrogant presumption of their own moral superiority can only render impossible a constructive, nonviolent solution to the Jewish Problem. 20 Ironically and sadly, what Weber has done is list for his readers-all in one paragraph-a catalogue of antisemitic myths all without substantive foundation and worthy of Pharaoh in the Book of Exodus; Haman in the Book of Esther; Houston Stewart Chamberlain , the "spiritual father of the Third Reich" 21 and author of the two-volume The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (German, Die Grundlagen des Neuzehnten Jahrhunderts, 1899); Alfred Rosenberg (1893Rosenberg ( -1946, ideologue and philosopher of Nazism and author of The Myth of the Twentieth Century (German, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts, 1930);andeven Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) himself. That a seemingly learned academic such as Weber could indeed believe such absurdities should remind us that intelligence and prejudice are not mutually exclusive categories, but, rather, given certain psychological and other orientations (e.g. sociological), can be perverted each in the service of the other.
Early on, von Verschuer establishes the tone of his article with the following comment: The communality of religion, the special education through the Talmud [emphasis added] and the idea of being a chosen people have maintained themselves with such force that during the course of history individuals and even groups of people [again unnamed] could be absorbed into Jewry by marriage and conversion without there being any change in the char- What is perniciously obvious behind this comment is the supposed "scientific" notion or idea that "Jewness" is such a dominant and dominating physical characteristic that neither individuals nor groups can affect or modify Jewish physicality. Rather, it is the other way around: that both individuals and groups are thus physically absorbed into the Jewish people, and whatever physically distinctive characteristics they bring into their marriages and/or conversions are negated and lost. 22 von Verschuer's intent in writing the article is further indicated by his comment: From this position of hereditary biological makeup, which has its foundation in laws of nature that are generally recognized today, it will be easier to arrive at a clear insight into the racial-biological problem of the Jewish question. . .Between a group of Germans and a group of Jews the differences can easily be observed because the distributive curve in many characteristics is a clearly different one. . .we are going to discuss the characteristics, one by one, by which the Jews are differentiated from the persons of German extraction. [pp. 138-139; emphasis added] Indeed, for the remainder of this relatively brief article, von Verschuer will do just that: discuss, primarily in summary fashion-"one by one"what the German scientific community has determined are the physical characteristics of Jews. His appended bibliography, to which Weber attaches great importance, lists thirty-six different sources, and includes among them some by Jewish authors 23 (one assumes to lend credibility to the supposedly objective scientific position of the writer and to disavow any negativity toward Jews), 24 the following texts: Fritz Arlt (1912Arlt ( -2004, Ethnobiological Investigations of the Jews of Leipzig (1938) (2) sexual maturity and menstruation; (3) growth ratios of the torso, legs, arms, hands, feet, calf, chest, posture; (4) head; (5) "almond eyes;" (6) lips; (7) "Jewish nose;" (8) ear; (9) skin; (10) hair and eye color; (11) form of head hair; (12) body hair cover and beard growth; (13) arm movement; (14) blood; (15) sensitivity to pain and mortality rates; (16) illnesses, especially tuberculosis and diabetes; (17) Gaucher's disease 30 and Niemann-Pick's disease; 31 (18) blindness and deaf-mutism, glaucoma and astigmatism; (19) nervous and mental disorders; (20) schizophrenia and mental disorders, manic depression, insanity, and other manic disorders; (21) congenital feeble-mindedness; (22) addictions to morphine and cocaine; and (23) so-called "racial characteristics." The following, in chart form for easier readability, summarizes von Verschuer's comments regarding Jewish physicality and the various diseases which he addresses in his article "Rassenbiologie der Juden": "The racial-biological problem of the Jewish question" "Disease" von Verschuer's Comment

General Sexual Maturity
Rather generally sexual maturity begins earlier in the case of the Jews.
Growth Ratios of the Body In relation to the length of the torso the length of the legs is not as great, frequently resulting in the impression of a squat build.

Legs
On the legs, which are frequently crooked, a weak calf musculature is often quite noticeable. The musculature and connective tissue exhibit a flabbiness which is caused in part by a lack of use and bodily exercise, but also in part by a hereditary tendency.

Head
The head of the Jew is of medium size. Eye(s) The "almond eye" characteristic of the oriental race is found. The inner corner of the eye is inclined to be round, while the outer corner is inclined to be pointed and turned up toward the outside. The upper lid is often described as thickened and of a heavy appearance.

Lips
In most cases the lips are somewhat fleshy, often puffed up, and above all the outwardhanging lower-lip is noticeable, which is in conjunction with the high position of the furrow of the lower chin lip.

Nose
The "Jewish nose" has been described rather often. It is characterized by the fact that the tip of the nose is hook-shaped and bent downward and the sides of the nose are drawn upward. The sides of the nose are characterized by a special fleshiness, the cartilage of the tip of the nose is rather thick and the nasal septum sags downward.

Ear
The ear is often described as especially "fleshy," relatively large and jughandle-like.

Skin
The skin of the Jews is often lacking in a ruddy color and of a light yellow, dull color, which often appears especially light in contrast to the dark color of the hair.

Hair & Eyes
The color of the hair and of the eyes is darker on the average than in our case. Hair colors between brown and black and brown eyes are encountered most frequently.

Head Hair
The form of the head hair in the case of the Jews is less frequently straight and more frequently twisted in a spiral manner than is the case with German ethnic groups. The black head hair, which is twisted in a closely spiral manner and which is still occasionally encountered amongst Jews, is viewed as a result of an earlier Negroid admixture.
Body Hair & Beard Growth The body hair cover and the beard growth are often especially strong amongst Jews.

Blood Group
The Jews are differentiated from the German population only by a somewhat higher proportion of blood group B. Sensitivity to Pain The special need for physicians and the fear of disease on the part of Jews is confirmed by nearly all observers. The especially strong sensitivity to pain on the part of Jews has also been noted. 32

Tuberculosis
In the case of Jews, the mortality from tuberculosis is a lower one, the course of the disease is slower and more favorable, less frequently do there come about exsudative decomposition processes and more frequently there are found benign forms contained by the formation of connective tissue.

Diabetes
The frequency of diabetes in Jews is best known. For that reason diabetes has even been designated as the "Jewish disease" [sic].
Having diabetes and dying from it are about four times as frequent in the case of Jews as in non-Jews. The hereditary tendency to diabetes occurs more frequently amongst Jews than amongst non-Jews. Gaucher's Disease & Gaucher's disease and Niemann-Pick's Niemann-Pick's Disease disease, in the case of which the metabolism of fatty substances is impaired, occur with greater frequency in Jews. 33 Blood Vessel Diseases Diseases of the blood vessels, especially, arteriosclerosis, are said to occur more frequently in Jews. Spontaneous gangrene, a gangrene of the limbs resulting from disturbances of the vessels, is also especially common in Jews.

Cancer
No differences exist in the frequency of cancer.

Eye Diseases
The more frequent occurrence of glaucoma in Jews. Astigmatism is also reputed to be more frequent in Jews.
Nervous & Mental Diseases All investigators agree on a greater frequency of nervous and mental diseases in the case of the Jews. In the case of the Jews the cheerfully excited, manic conditions occurred more commonly. Most frequent were also sensory delusions, hypochondria, imaginations and symptoms of a sexual-erotic nature. Schizophrenia & Schizophrenia is strikingly more frequent Manic-depression among Jews. Since it is a matter of a hereditary disease in the case of schizophrenia which occurs rather independently of external influences, the more frequent occurrence of the disease in Jews must be viewed as a racial characteristic. 34 Manic-depressive insanity is also found to be more frequent amongst Jews, but the difference between Jews and non-Jews is not as great as in the case of schizophrenia.
In the case of manic disorders, which relatively frequently occur amongst Jews, the disturbance of thinking very often went as far as a case of disintegration.

Epilepsy & Alcoholism
The scarcity of epilepsy amongst the Jews. The likewise seldom occurrence of alcoholism in Jews.

Feeble-mindedness
Various observers assume a greater frequency of congenital feeble-mindedness in the case of the Jews in comparison with non-Jews. In particular, grave forms of feeble-mindedness appear to be more frequent in Jews.

Psychoanalysis
In is certainly no coincidence, but rather a result of a racial characteristic that psychoanalysis originates, in essence, with Jewish authors and that [Sigmund] Freud (1856-1939 has made sexuality and [Alfred] Adler (1870-1937) has made the drive for prestige and power the central aspect of their doctrines on neuroses. Hysterical phenomena are also supposed to be especially common in Jews.
Drug Addiction Addiction to morphine and cocaine is found more frequently amongst them than in the case of non-Jews.
Criminal Behavior A considerably lower incidence of crime is found amongst Jews in the case of bodily injury and larceny but they are sentenced far more than average for slander, fraud, and forgery.

Psychological Differences
The psychological differences between Germans and Jews are caused by a different hereditary makeup, i.e., by a different racial origin.

Racial Characteristics
The racial characteristics (physical and mental) of the Jews of the present day are probably explainable to a considerable extent on the basis of the origin of the Jews from the geographical area of the Near Eastern and Oriental races. The profound contrast between Arabs and Jews in Palestine also has a racial root! Jewry possesses a distinct racial nature which is found in no other groups of people and which therefore appears to justify our speaking of Jews as a race.
"Breeding" The Jews have "bred" their race themselves. In most cases the Jews have reproduced themselves by strong inbreeding. 35 From such data and the "scientific" investigations of his fellow scientists, both contemporary and previous (as evidenced by his bibliography), von Vershuer is thus able to make the following observation: On the whole, from the comparison of physical racial characteristics it is clear that the Jews living in Germany are quite distinct from the German population. Since it is a question of characteristics which are quite essentially genetically determined, the observed difference cannot be caused by external influences of any kind; the difference can only be explained by the different racial origin of the Germans on the one hand and of the Jews on the other hand. The characteristics which are considered typical of the present-day Jew and by which we can recognize him in his outward appearance, point to the Near Eastern and oriental-Mediterranean races. Hence the results of research on racial history and those of the racial-biological examination of the Jews of the present time are in keeping with each other. The racial types of the Near Eastern and oriental races, known as Ashkenazim and Sephardim are still found today amongst the European Jews. The Ashkenazi type is the predominant one amongst Jews in Germany. 36 (p. 142) As is the case with all such prejudicial stereotyping of groups other than the one to which one belongs and to which one remains committed, certain kernels of truth (e.g. preponderances of certain genetic diseases among certain sub-populations, certain occupations more appealing and open to certain groups because of historical and/or political and/or religious circumstances, etc.), taken to their most perverse and twisted ends, and overlaid with the false veneer and patina of so-called "scientific objectivity," the information or data thus derived is then used by those in power to disadvantage those without access to it, and, taken to the extreme, to prac-\\server05\productn\G\GHS\7-1\GHS103.txt tice genocidal destruction of minority groups as was the reality for the Jews and others between 1939 and 1945.
V. VON VERSCHUER'S CONCLUSIONS Interestingly enough, von Vershuer concludes with a discussion of socalled "environmental circumstances" (i.e. the ongoing debate of nature vs. nurture) and cites four specifics which "appear to me to be of special importance to the determination of the direction of the selective process:" 1. For over 2,000 years Jews have been living far from the nature attachments to a certain region. 37 2. The Jews prefer to be active in the commercial occupations, 38 not as a result of an external compulsion but as a result of an inner nature; that has frequently been demonstrated. [Emphasis not in original, but obviously von Verschuer elects nature over nurture here.-SLJ] 3. As a result of their Talmud education, the Jews were kept at a purely formal, logical intellectual activity. [A somewhat surprising comment from one scientifically trained and supposedly research-oriented.
-SLJ] 4. A specific religious-ethnic idea of being a chosen people has constantly given Jewry an intellectual exclusivity, which reinforced the isolation from other peoples and favored the preservation of their own racial peculiarity. 39 von Verschuer finally concludes his article by stating that "the danger which Jewry meant for the German population was a double one": 1. By excessive racially foreign influence the preservation of the character of our people was threatened. The complete racial separation of Germans and Jews was an absolute necessity for that reason. 2. The excessive intellectually Jewish foreign influence sought to introduce principles of living and selection which were favorable for the preservation of Jewry, but would have meant the decline of our people. For that reason the racial separation of Germans and Jews has the national separation as a requisite.
Thus, the antisemitism of the Nazis was given a scientific validation and the excesses which were to follow scientifically legitimated.

VI. TRANSLATING SCIENCE INTO REALITY
The SS (German, Schutzstaffel, "Protective Squadron"), created in 1923, were the elite of Nazism, recognized by their black uniforms, skull shield, daggers, and absolute loyalty to der Führer Adolf Hitler. In addition \\server05\productn\G\GHS\7-1\GHS103.txt to fighting alongside the German Army, particularly in the Eastern Front after the invasion of the Soviet Union ("Operation Barbarossa," 22 June 1941), the SS were primarily responsible for the removal of Jews from their homes, transportation to the death camps, and, ultimately, their extermination. The heinous nature of their brutality and cruelty is legendary. In a pamphlet entitled Glauben und Kampfen ("Faith and Struggle"), and intended to be read (and internalized) by those ethnic Germans coming from southeastern Europe, a subsection entitled "The Jewish Question" reads as follows. The text itself is a classic example of Nazi indoctrination of those most willing to accept its principles and translate them into a violent reality against their enemies.
The destructive influence of race-mixing with the Jews proved especially harmful in our folk 40 until the rise to power of National Socialism. These parasites of mankind [sic] have well understood to the present day how to prevent a complete merger with their host folks. Representing this is the statement of the English Jew [Benjamin] Disraeli (1804-1881Prime Minister, 1868& 1874-1880: "Every race must perish which subjects its blood to mixing without care." If in the year 1928 for every 100 pure Jewish marriages in Germany there were already 53 mixed marriages, then this proves how deeply this slow but steadfastly working poison had crept into our folk. Furthermore there existed the special danger that Jewry BY MEANS OF SPIRITUAL DECAY HAD BEGUN TO SYS-TEMATICALLY UNDERMINE THE RACIALLY CONSCIOUS ACTION AND THOUGHT OF OUR FOLK in order to raise itself politically and economically to predominance. Alongside this undermining, miscegenation [i.e. negatively understood as the interbreeding of different races] spread primarily in the intellectually leading groups of our folk. Jews made sincere feeling despicable and their propaganda aimed intentionally at the inner undermining and fragmentation of the folk body. The aftereffects of this destructive, decades-long infection are even today detectable in our folk. It requires intensive effort to eradicate the last traces of this pestilence and lead our entire folk back to the natural and only correct path of life. The solution to the Jewish question has today become a vital task beyond the borders of the Reich for the peoples of Europe. [Emphasis original] 41 The operative key word in this quotation, therefore, is "solution." The "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" (German, die Enlosüng der Judenfrage) for the SS was a question to be answered and a problem to be solved. The result: the murder of almost six million Jewish men, women and children, one million of whom were under the age of twelve and an additional one-half million under the age of eighteen. All this was validated by the government of Germany under Nazi leadership and legitimated by the academic and scientific communities. Indeed, the very language of this selec-

VII. A CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN EQUIVALENT
The American antisemite Eustace Mullins (b. 1923), long affiliated with the far Right in American politics, protégé of political activist, Modernist poet and himself overtly antisemitic Ezra Pound , is the author of the 1968 text ""The Biological Jews" (Stauton: Faith and Service Books of the Aryan League of America). 42 In that relatively brief text (28 single-spaced pages, small font), Mullins wrote: The activities of the hagfish, in sucking the blood of the still living fish until it dies, closely corresponds to the ancient Jewish religious rite of ritual murder, in which the healthy gentile victim is strapped down onto a table, ritual cuts made into his flesh, and the flowing blood is drunk by celebrating Jews in one of the most important symbolic acts of their parasitic existence. The ceremony of blood-drinking continues until the gentile victim expires, in a social re-enactment of the physical activities of such parasites as the hagfish.
Further on, Mullins asserted that "diabetes is referred to in many medical dictionaries as 'the Jewish disease'" (Shades of von Vershuer!), but several pages later reiterated his theme of the parasitic physicality of Jews, writing: We know that the gentile can never expect any mercy from the Jew. The horrible practice of ritual murder is sufficient evidence of this. The ritual murder of gentile children by bleeding them to death and drinking their blood is the highest symbolic revelation of the theory of the biological parasite. . .This religious ceremony of drinking the blood of an innocent gentile child is basic to the Jew's entire concept of his existence as a parasite, living off the blood of the host. That is why he refuses to abandon this custom, even though it has brought him close to extinction many times. (Emphasis added) For Mullins, post-World War II anti-Nazi education on the part of Jewish teachers is indefensible and a reaction to what he understands as the positive agenda of National Socialism: The Jewish teachers recommend pornographic books to the children, discuss sexual perversions in detail, and frequently harangue their classes for hours about the evils of Nazism. . .At home, the gentile child watches television programs which are largely devoted to anti-Nazi Thus, here we see quite concretely an American iteration of the Nazi Social Darwinist paradigm: that the biological contest in the animal kingdom is played out not only in a German/Nazi context, but in an American one as well.
In a 1993 interview still available on YouTube, in response to the interviewer's question, "Do you believe Jews are parasites?" Mullins responded: Parasites? No, as I say, this was a theme I developed in 1968 in that one book. I've never referred to it again and in fact there is nothing about Jews in my last five books in the past twenty years simply because I moved into larger spheres, the world order. 43 Thus, one is forced to conclude that the Nazi concern and preoccupation with the physicality of the Jews as the enemies not only of Germany but of all humankind is alive and well both at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st.

VIII. A SECOND EXAMPLE: THE ANTI-IMMIGRATION MOVEMENT-EUGENICS, ANTISEMITISM, AND FELLOW TRAVELERS
Eugenics remains alive and well in the reinvention of itself organizationally and in the organizations and players associated with the anti-immigrant or "nativist" movement of white Euro-Americans which definitionally excludes Native Americans (whom Canadians refer to as First Americans), its fears for the preservation of the white race and its [distinctive and, therefore, superior] culture, and its inclusion of seemingly respectable academics and their publications, thus giving it the same false patina of intellectual legitimacy as the hateful pseudo-science of Nazi "racial science." That the tangled web of organizations, players and publications adds a more than generous dollop of antisemitism to the mix is far too easily confirmed by even the most cursory of examinations and is briefly outlined in this section. 44 (The fact that some among the players are Jewish persons and, by and large, disaffected and disaffiliated from the organized American Jewish communities does not diminish this conclusion.) The premier American funding organization for eugenics-related research in the 1930s, with contacts with Germany, was the Pioneer Fund established in New York in 1937. According to its original charter, it was to pursue "race betterment" for those "deemed to be descended predomi- nately from white persons who settled in the original thirteen states prior to the adoption of the Constitution." Because such overtly racist language is no longer palatable, its website (www.pioneerfund.org) asserts: The Pioneer Fund, Inc. is a New York 501(c)(3) not-for-profit foundation established in 1937 to advance the scientific study of heredity and human differences. Named to honor the early pioneers who built America, our mandate is to support pioneering research in those fields. 45 Among the recipients of their grants are: convinced that the supposed higher birth rates among the black population coupled with lower intelligence would lead to a decline of civilization. Prior to his advocacy of eugenics, as a physicist, Shockley was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1956 for his co-invention of the transistor.
With the exception of Pearson, however, none of the above-named who could be classified as anti-black racist eugenicists, could, also, be classified as antisemites. However, almost to a person (aside from Shockley, who died earlier), they have all written for publications that continue to exhibit a blend of racist eugenics and antisemitism (e.g. American Renaissance and Occidental Quarterly, to name but two).
Shifting gears a bit, the "father" of the anti-immigration movement and recipient of Pioneer Funds is Dr. John Tanton, retired Michigan ophthalmologist and founder of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and NumbersUSA as well as The Social Contract Press, which published the English-language version of Frenchman Jean Raspail's controversial 1973 doom-and-gloom novel about the overwhelming of Western white civilization by immigrant hordes originating in India, The Camp of the Saints. Tanton continues to deny that he is either a racist or an antisemite on his website (www.johntanton.org), but maintains an association with and is fully supportive of both Jared Taylor (Westport: Praeger Publishers, 1998), and Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism (Westport: Praeger Publishers, 1998)-have been almost universally condemned for his arguments that Jewish intelligence is eugenically derived and serves to further competitive agendas and undermine Jews' host civilizations in the process. 46 Like numerous others, MacDonald, too, has spoken to racist and Holocaust denialist conferences and published with racist and antisemitic publications.
Turning to such publications themselves, one finds these same individuals who, collectively, continue to advocate an anti-immigration, racist, eugenicist, and antisemitic agenda. Here is a "short list:" The American Conservative (founded by American political journalist Pat Buchanan); American Renaissance; Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture; Citizen Informer; Frontpagemag.com; Journal of Indo-European Studies; Olin Foundation, Pioneer Fund, Rockford Institute, Scaife Foundations, and U.S. Inc. While not every organization included in this list is either racist and/or antisemitic, taken as a group but examined individually, their very interconnectedness involves addressing what may be perceived as an anti-Black and/or anti-Jewish agenda.
One cannot complete this catalog without mentioning Peter Brimelow, editor of the website VDARE.com, which regularly features the work of both racists and antisemites and his own 1996 book, Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster (New York: Harper & Row), wherein he addresses both legal and illegal immigration.
Lastly and newly arrived is the group Preserving Western Civilization, whose statement of purpose from its website (http:preservingwesternvic. com) reads: We believe that America's Judeo-Christian heritage and European identity must be defended. Today, our glorious Western civilization is under assault from many directions. Three such threats will be discussed at this conference (6-8 February 2009, Baltimore, MD). First, the massive influx to the United States and Europe of Third World immigrants who do not share our fundamental political and cultural values. Second, the threat from Islam, a militant ideology that is hostile to our society and, in principle, committed to destroying it. Third, because of the persistent disappointing performance of blacks (which many whites mistakenly blame on themselves) many whites have guilt feelings that undermine Western morale and deter us from dealing sensibly with the other threats.
PWC is the brainchild of astrophysicist Michael H. Hart and author of Understanding Human History (Washington: Summit Books, 2007), which J. Philippe Rushton claims provides "an erudite biological explanation of human history." Among the speakers at that conference were both Brimelow and Rushton. Serious investigation of these organizations, players, and publications will reveal a wealth of information regarding their common agendas and their interconnectedness. It is simply far too easy to dismiss as not antisemitic those whose seeming concerns are "only" with illegal immigrants-be they Latinos or Asians-or African Americans. Their joining together at conferences and their writing in common publications wherein eugenics is highly touted as addressing the myriad of problems afflicting Western civilization, and antisemitism is held up as a solution for addressing the root causes of these problems, continues to sound far too reminiscent of the Nazi ideology and language associated with Nazi racial science. The work of von Vershuer and others continues to bear poisonous fruit.

IX. CONCLUSION: LESSONS TO BE LEARNED?
A first and most obvious lesson to be learned is that we human beings, most especially, perhaps, we educated human beings, have the moral responsibility to remain continually vigilant that our acquired learning not be perverted in unjust causes, and that learning itself be continually subject to review. With regard to the sciences especially, those who are its practitioners, whose work addresses the human community, have an overriding responsibility to insure that their work is subject to oversight, that experiments conducted involving human beings follow established protocols of consent, building, for example, upon those set forth in The Nuremberg Code established in the aftermath of the Second World War after the trials of medical personnel in Nuremberg, Germany, in the same locale where the Nazi leadership itself was brought to justice in 1945-1946. 47 A second lesson is to recognize that there are, indeed, differences among the various groups of human beings, be they skin pigmentation differences, predominant characteristics of height, hair, and eye color, subjectivity to various diseases, and so forth. But such physical differences in no way equate with moral or other notions of superiority or inferiority. Human physicality is what it is: a vast array of differences that make the human community the umbrella of possibilities that we are. All humanity is one species fully capable of reproduction of its own kind, regardless of our differences. All attempts at interjecting any value system whatsoever with regard to our physicality is an exercise in hate and prejudice and the stereotyping of various groups as "worthy" or "unworthy" of membership in the human species. It is important to remember that the Nazi slogan first applied to the physically and mentally defective and later to those deemed subject to annihilation and extermination (Jews, Sinti, Roma, gays, etc.) was Lebensunwertes Leben ("life unworthy of life").
A third lesson, building upon the second, concerns the moral responsi- bility the human community must continue to demand of itself with regard to those who are unable to demand such accountablity for themselveschildren, women in certain contexts and environments, the physically and mentally challenged, and, by extension, those without access to corridors of power, be they political, military, economic, educational, social, or religious. No one person or group is definitionally superior or inferior to any other person or group because fate or energy or talent or skill has accorded them opportunities seemingly denied others. Keeping the planet sustainable for all humanity requires that physical difference no longer be part of any nation-state or international thinking-"groupthink"-in confronting the challenges and the perils to which we are all subject. Equal access inherently possesses the distinct possibility of accepting creative solutions by anyone able to make such a contribution, and of no one being denied such an opportunity because of his or her or their physicality. The pseudo-science of eugenics and the false valuation by the Nazis of one group of human beings as superior to all other groups-and two groups as distinctly inferior (Jews and Sinti, Roma)-covered over by the seeming respectability of the scientific-academic community remains a stain on modern Western civilization. At this moment in history when articulators of clashing civilizations argue for and against, and the recent United States presidential election saw the vilest discourse directed not only toward the first African-American candidate (now President) but toward both women candidates for high office as well, revisiting this particular nightmare and its accompanying reality might serve all of us well as a cautionary reminder that, in the words of the Annual United Negro College Fund Appeal, "the [human] mind is a terrible thing to waste." NOTES 1. Though not directly a focus of this essay, within the world of Holocaust denialism, much continues to made of the so-called "Leuchter Reports" (4) by American "execution technology expert" Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (b. 1943) of Malden, MA, who initially presented himself as an engineer but was forced to legally cease and desist regarding this fraudulent credentialing claim. The subtitles of his reports are I. "The End of the Myth?" II. "Dachau, Mauthausen, Hartheim," III. "A Technical Report on the Execution Gas Chamber," and IV. "Technical Evaluation of Jean-Claude Pressac's Book Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chamber." Leuchter first came to public attention in 1988 when he was called as an expert witness at a fee of $35,000 at the Canadian trial of Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, who remains today in a German prison. Having visited both Auschwitz and Birkenau in preparation for his testimony and, according to his report, conducted experimental research including wall scrapings and chemical analyses, Leuchter concluded: After reviewing all of the material and inspecting all of the sites at Auschwtiz, Birkenau and Majdanek, your author finds the evidence as overwhelming.
There was [sic] no execution gas chambers at any of these locations. It is the \\server05\productn\G\GHS\7-1\GHS103.txt Accessed February 18, 2009.) Since the publication of this first report (and the three following), Leuchter remains something of a "golden boy" among Holocaust denialists, including the recent case of Bishop Robert Williamson who continues to deny the Holocaust and the number of Jewish deaths despite having had to publicly recant under pressure by the Vatican and Pope Benedict, as well as the unsuspecting who continue to find his materials online. However, his research methodologies have been thoroughly discredited within the scientific and engineering communities (e.g. Danny Keren and Jamie McCarthy, "The Leuchter Report" at www.nizkor.org and Richard J. Green and Jamie McCarthy, "Chemistry Is Not the Science: Rudolf, Rhetoric & Reduction," at www.holocaust-history.org. Both accessed February 19, 2009), and, today, Leuchter maintains himself by lecturing at various Holocaust denial conferences.
The "Leuchter story" is an additional example of the misused and failed attempt of seemingly rational persons with their own hateful agenda to pervert even limited scientific and technical know-how in the cause of antisemitism.
2. More and more, the scholarly community has come to prefer this spelling for the phenomenon of hatred of the Jews and Judaism to that of anti-Semitism, taking a formerly linguistic term-"semitic"-and applying it to a socially-, culturally-, and ethnicallyconstructed community (i.e. the Semites-in this narrow case, the Jews), and falsely signifying its opposite. More importantly, however, there is no such entity as "Semitism," in linguistics or any other discipline.
3. Klau Hoedl of Germany, in a lecture before the Central European University in Hungary entitled "Physical Characteristics of the Jews," strongly suggests that "physical features played an important role in determining Jews well before the closing decades of the nineteenth century," and thus "well before the appearance of anti-Semitism" (http:// cio.ceu.hu/jewishstudies/pdf/01_hoedl.pdf). Accessed December 26, 2008. See, also, Jewish thinking and involvement in Sander L. Gilman (1996), "Smart Jews in Fin-de-siècle Vienna: 'Hybrids' and the Anxiety about Jewish Superior Intelligence-Hofmannsthal and Wittgenstein," Modernism/Modernity, 3(2), 45-58, wherein he argues that Jewish scientists accepted the notion of physical differences among the "races," and suggest that "this projection onto a subgroup of Jews is a classic move on the part of Jewish scientists dealing with the charges of difference in the fin de siècle" (p. 48  Galton (1822Galton ( -1911, and understood by him to mean "the study of all agencies under human control which can improve the racial quality of future generations." Cited in Edwin Black, The War Against the Weak, 2004, p. 18. 5. This is, in fact, the very point made by Eric Ehrenreich in his 2007 article "Otmar von Verschuer and the 'Scientific' Legitimization of Nazi Anti-Jewish Policy," Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 21(1), 55-72. For an extended discussion of this and other related issues, see also his The Nazi Ancestral Proof: Genealogy, Racial Science, and the Final Solution (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007).
6. The German title of the article was "Rassenbiologie der Juden" and it appeared in Volume III (1938) of the six-volume series (1937)(1938)(1939)(1940)(1941) , (1886-1969) may be regarded as one of the chief scientific spokesmen for the racial and eugenic policies of National Socialist Germany. He was a professor at the University of Frankfurt am Main and as of 1944 he was Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics and Eugenics. Several of his writings have a bearing on the question posed above. In the second volume of the series Forschungen zur Judenfrage (Hamburg, Hanseatische Verlangsantalt, 1937), he published an article on documentary research which can throw light on the biological aspects of the Jewish question (pages 216-222). On page 281 he writes: "Our national attitude toward the biological aspect of the Jewish question is thus fully independent of all observations which have to do with advantages or disadvantages of Jews and with their favorable or unfavorable characteristics." In Volume 3 of the series (1938) he published an article simply titled Rassenbiologie der Juden (Racial Biology of the Jews), pages 137-151. In this article he discusses in detail patterns of insanity, criminal behavior, and physical pathology in Jews. (A valuable bibliography is appended to this article.) In his discussion he points out not only weaknesses of Jews, but also their strength, such as lower incidences of epilepsy, alcoholism, cancer of the uterus, and tuberculosis, as well as their greater adaptability to urban life. In a handbook on genetically determined diseases, Leitfaden der Rassenhygiene (Principles of Eugenics), the second edition of which was published by the Georg Thieme Verlag in Leipzig in 1944, a brief discussion of the Jewish question is given on pages 136-141. He reiterates his position by stating that the goal of preservation and improvement of the national racial heritage is "not dependent on considerations of superiority or inferiority of a race which is foreign to us" and that every crossing of a foreign race into a nation "leads to the alteration of the biological basis of the character of this nation and its civilization." We might note, by the way, that laws against miscegenation and laws which provided for eugenic measures are by no means foreign to us Americans, since many of our states had such laws until they were eliminated after World War II, possibly as an overreaction to National Socialism.

What was the nature of German scholarly and scientific research on the Jewish question during the National Socialist period?
There is a vast body of research which was published during the National Socialist period. Some of it is of considerable, indeed, well nigh unique value because it is not written with self-serving objectives by Jews themselves and because much of it was written by outstanding scholars and scientists. One of the most important series of scientific studies in this area is the series,