Hidden horror: Researcher discovers Nazi anatomist’s collection of human remains

It started with a letter, a brief reference to samples taken from the bodies of Holocaust victims used in Nazi medical research. Decades later, the jars and test tubes found behind a glass cupboard in a locked room testified to history’s horror.

Raphael Toledano, a researcher from Strasbourg who has spent more than a decade delving into the eastern French city’s Nazi past, stumbled upon the 1952 letter from Camille Simonin, the director of the forensic science school at the University of Strasbourg, detailing the storage of tissue samples taken from some of the 86 Jews gassed for the experiments of August Hirt, a notorious Nazi anatomy researcher.

The autopsy samples were intended to be used to prosecute Hirt, who directed the construction of a gas chamber built specifically to provide victims for experiments carried out at the facility. At the time, Germans had replaced the French staff, which largely decamped elsewhere.

Strasbourg was liberated by the Americans, Hirt ultimately committed suicide, and the remains ended up in the highly specialised forensic science museum at the university, which has since become one of France’s most prestigious medical schools.

Simonin’s letter was directed at a judge who planned to put Hirt on trial, asking if the samples could be of use. It’s not known how or whether the judge responded, said Jean-Sebastien Raul, the institute’s current director.