Remains of female political prisoners executed by NAZIs and used for medical research buried

The remains of more than 300 female political prisoners who were executed by the Nazis and used for medical research were buried in a Berlin cemetery on Monday.

In the capital’s Dorotheenstadt cemetery, where many Nazi victims are buried, descendants of the victims watched as a pallbearer lowered a box containing their microscopic remains into the ground.

DW reports that anatomy professor Hermann Stieve, an expert on the female reproductive system, dissected their bodies to conduct medical research into the effects of stress on the female body before and during World War II.

Stieve wasn’t a member of the Nazi party but was complicit in their crimes, said Johannes Tuchel, director of the German Resistance Memorial Center, who was involved in the investigation into the remains and organizing their burial. Stieve arranged to receive some of the bodies only 30 minutes after their execution at Ploetzensee prison.

Stieve died of a stroke in 1952. His descendants found the prisoners’ microscopic remains on glass plates and gave them to the Brandenburg Medical School in 2016.

via DW