Transcript The Impact of the Prosecution of the Jewish Professors and

Doctors, Medical Professors and
Students in Belgium during WWII:
the connection of anti-Semitism
and anti-Masonry versus the
Resistance
dr. Yves Louis (pediatrician – Secretary-General of the Belgian
Association of Medical Trade Unions BVAS)
Marc Verschooris (lecturer Hogeschool Gent)
Anti-Semitism and Anti-Masonry
• Between two WW and even before
• Belgium

strong influence on extreme right wing movements
anti-Dreyfusards + French Pétainistes
Eugenism - Racism
• Well spread even in scientific surroundings

first insidious then in a more aggressive way
Doctors
• France: triumvirate

Céline (docteur Destouches)
Alexis Carrel
George Montandon (eugenist)

Brussels 1938, May 3rd
• Belgium: doctors (right wing) + strong
conservative and catholic attitude
Doctors - Belgium
• University of Ghent: professors – doctors in collaboration

Exclusion of Prof. Handovksy: involvement of Heymans
(Nobel Prize) & Daels
• Rex Movement: Ouwerx

only target: attack Jews and Freemasons
Jewish-Masonic Conspiracy
Wartime Order of Medicine

Germans prefer Frans Van Hoof (anti-Semite)
Anti in several ways
•
•
•
•
•
Anti-Masonry
Anti-Semitism
Anti-Communism
Anti-Socialism
Anti-Psychanalysis

supposed to be
Jewish so can also
harm the family
Ouwerx
• Anti-Freemasonry led
by Ouwerx
→ Epuration – Bezem
• Cagoulards (Hiding
Hood) → list of
presumed
Freemasons (1939)

will be published in La Libre
Belgique and Le Pays Réel
Ouwerx
• 1940: another booklet
(Précurseurs =
preceding)
• Already before WWII
he had published
Trois Impostures:
the Imianitoff Affair
the Freemasonry and
the Influence of
Communism in Medicine
The Jewish-Masonic conspiracy in
WWII
Doctor Imianitoff
Frédéric Imianitoff
→ Jewish + Freemason origin
→ Bachelor in Medicine
(England)
→ Founder of preventive
medicine
→ Secretary General of Belgian
Preventive Medicine and
Eugenism
→ with Rene Sand considered as
founder of Social Medicine

René Sand
• Sand 1877-1953
• 1900: doctor (ULB)
• 1919: involved in
development of social
medicine
• 1936: Secretary-General
of Public Health
• Imianitoff & Sand chased
as Freemasons
The Imianitoff Scandal
• In 1937 scandal will
burst out

Paul de Mont (Rex)
Edmond van Dieren (VNV)
• 1938-1939

more opponents e.g. Daels
(Ghent)
• 1939:

6 months prison for falsifying
not for practising medicine
Result of Imianitoff Affair
• All the hate is
gathered in the Affair,
all contradictions, all
antagonisms of that
moment
• Prof. Jacques De
Busscher (Psychiatry,
Ghent) and
Freemason
(Septentrion)
The Ambivalence
• Preventive Medecine
• The Eugenism
• The Corporatism
Preventive Medicine
• The Preventive Medicine of Imianitoff & Sand

considered als Communist and Collectivist
even Jewish-Communist Conspiracy
• Nazi-Germany + France of Pétain inspire Alexis Carrel to
introduce an hygienistic and preventive medicine

will led to extermination
• Note: preventive medicine is always depending on
political regime
Eugenism
• Positive eugenism = preventive medicine
• Negative eugenism = sterilisation, euthanasia…

The Nazi-eugenism was ready to kill → T4
Corporatism
• The Corporatism introduced by
Ouwerx was a fascist Order and the
opposite of
↕
• Democratic Doctor’s Syndicates
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
• Ouwerx refers to the Protocols but also to the Bern Trial
(1935) where Nazi’s try to prove the authenticity

In 1935, Russia is not a great help remembering the
falsifier Mathieu Golovinski who had left the Okhrana,
the Tsarist Secret Police and the country.
Doctors in The Resistance
Ghent University
• Political « Guard » of the University
- Historian Franz Petri (Kriegsverwaltungsrat)
- form a new German intellectual centre
→ political centre of collaboration
→ referring to von Bissing-University
- Volksforschung/Germanenkunde
→ only possible in Ghent (Petri)
→ urgent call for German guest professors
Ghent Faculty of Medicine
• Situation 1940
- Frans Daels ↔ Toulouse professors
- Daels & Speleers terrorize Faculty
→ opposition Francophone profs (Hautes Etudes)
• Leonardo Conti
- Reichsgesundheitsführer
- June 23, 1941: invitation by Faculty of Medicine
→ Daels & Speleers: meeting in Marburg
Leonardo Conti
(1900-1945)
Member SA (1923) en SS (1933) – anti-Semite
Leader of the National Socialist German Doctors’ League (NSDAP)
Leader of Main Office for the Public Health during Third Reich
T-4 Euthanasia Program
Public Hospital: De Bijloke Ghent
De Bijloke Gent
University of Brussels (ULB)
• Strong liberal-socialist character since 1834
• 1940: can continue after replacing 75 radical
professors by reliable Flemish colleagues
• Flemish activists  Flemish students at ULB
• Faculty of Medicine  great loss = antiJewish
University of Brussels (ULB)
• 4 German-minded profs  force closing of university on
Nov. 25th, 1941
 Antoon Jacob: sentenced to death in 1919
• 300 teaching personal + 3600 students
• Closed officially by Reeder on August 13th, 1942
University of Leuven
• Total Belgian students at University: 12.000
• 1941: 583 students from the ULB
Conclusion
• Anti-Semitism and Anti-Masonry existed long before
WWII
Conclusion 2: Nobel Prizes
• Hitler saw himself as the political Robert Koch
(Nobel Prize 1905 - who discovered
Mycobacterium tuberculosis): Judaism was a
Mycobacterium of social decomposition (July
1941)
• 1913: Nobel Prize Richet (La Sélection
Humaine)  elimination of disabled  scandal
• 1935: A. Carrell (Nobel Prize 1912) – L’homme
cet inconnu  world success till the fifties...
Conclusion 3: Thirties
• The eugenetic vision: the world can be seen as
a human body, difficult to heal what makes that
there’s one struggle, one revolt: one of a
pathological order
• The ennemy is no longer an antagonist as in the
classic conflict. Now it’s an animal, a
Mycobacterium. It’s something that should be
eliminated by all means.