History of Sorts

Somebody once told me, “Evil acts can only be committed by men.” I disputed that notion. History has many examples of women who are just as evil—if not even more evil than men.

Anyone who knows me knows how important eye health is to me. In 2011, I lost my right eye, and in 2015, I nearly lost the left one. For the best part of a year, I was basically blind. When I see something about eye health or care—it immediately catches my attention.

Karin Magnussen was a German biologist, teacher and researcher at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics department during the Third Reich. She is known for her 1936 publication, Race and Population Policy Tools, and her studies of heterochromia iridium (different-coloured eyes) using iris specimens supplied by Josef Mengele from Auschwitz Concentration Camp victims.

Mengele sent blood samples from about 200 patients of various races to the Berlin Institute. Karin Magnussen received human parts (such as eyes taken from a deceased Sinti family) from the notorious concentration camp—Auschwitz.

This is from a colleague—she received the information that more twins and family members with Heterochromic irises would be found in the Sinti family in Mechau from northern Germany. Karin Magnussen had adrenaline eye drops administered to inmates from Auschwitz Concentration Camp. The Sinti family had a high prevalence of heterochromia iridium and was forced to participate in this study. Members of this family, as well as other victims, were later killed, had their eyes enucleated and sent to Magnussen for examination. Magnussen articulated the findings of these events in a manuscript that has never been published.

No fewer than 40 pairs of eyes were received by Magnussen from Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Hungarian prisoner pathologist Miklós Nyiszli noted after the autopsy of the Sinti twins that they had been killed, not due to illness but because of a chloroform injection to the heart. Nyiszli had to prepare their eyes and send them to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.

Mengele was not an ophthalmologist, but he did work in close collaboration and complicity with Karin Magnussen and Otmar Von Verschuer at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. The eye colour protocol objective was to demonstrate hereditary differences in iris structure determined by race and ostensibly to cure heterochromia. Mengele sent heterochromous Gypsy eyes to Magnussen, extracted from the bodies of inmates who died (or he killed). Mengele injected adrenaline into the children’s eyes in an attempt to change eye colour and to study environmental influences. Magnussen was fully aware of Mengele’s methods.

Magnussen worked in Berlin for at least until the spring of 1945. After the end of World War II, she moved to Bremen and continued to complete her research. She was published in 1949 and later de-nazified in Bremen.

In 1950, Magnussen taught at a girls high school in Bremen. She worked as a study counsellor and official, including teaching biology. She was considered a popular teacher who prepared engaging biology lessons. Her pupils could examine, for example, living and dead rabbits from their breeding. Until 1964, she published essays in scientific journals. She retired in August 1970. Even in old age, she justified the Nazi racial ideology. She noted in 1980, in a conversation with the geneticist Benno Müller-Hill, that the Nuremberg Laws were not fair enough. She also denied until the last minute that Mengele would have killed children for their scientific studies. She was entangled by her cooperation with Mengele, the supply of human materials, and mired deep in concentration camp crimes that she claimed to know nothing about.

In 1990, Magnussen moved into a nursing home and died in February 1997 in Bremen.

Sources

https://www.dw.com/en/skeletons-in-the-closet-of-german-science/a-1587766

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32387532/

http://www.estherlederberg.com/Eugenics%20(Anecdotes)/Karin%20Magnussen.html