‘Go-to’ anatomy atlas featuring corpses of Nazi victims revamped by UCLA cardiologist
Inspired by his Jewish teachers, Indian-born physician Kalyanam Shivkumar wants Nazi-made anatomy atlas to become obsolete. But not everyone agrees ‘Pernkopf Atlas’ should be tossed
Reporter at The Times of Israel
For generations, a prominent anatomical atlas made using the corpses of executed Nazi prisoners has been a go-to source for doctors and medical students. But now, California-based cardiologist Kalyanam Shivkumar is on a mission to make the so-called Pernkopf Atlas obsolete.
Eduard Pernkopf was an Austrian-born physician who developed the seven-volume anatomical atlas, “Topographische Anatomie des Menschen,” over two decades. The atlas has been in use since the early 1940s, despite widespread knowledge that executed concentration camp prisoners were used by Pernkopf and his illustrators.
In total, 1,377 corpses of executed victims — including political prisoners, Jews, Roma, and others — made their way to Pernkopf’s dissection tables at the University of Vienna.
In contrast to the Pernkopf Atlas, Shivkumar’s emerging atlas features illustrations obtained through informed consent, including the medical school’s willed body donor program, he said.
“It’s taken me 10 years to do two volumes so far. But we are going to beat the Pernkopf Atlas thoroughly,” Shivkumar told The Times of Israel.
The first volume — “Atlas of Cardiac Anatomy” — is available online, published by UCLA’s medical ethics program, Amara Yad (The Immortal Hand). Through Artificial Intelligence and other technologies developed after World War II, the emerging atlas will far surpass the work of Pernkopf, said Shivkumar.
To create his lifelike anatomy atlas, Pernkopf worked with four Nazi artists to produce 800 illustrations of bones, muscles, tendons, tissue, and nerves. The brightly colored images were intended to evoke life, and many were festooned with Nazi symbols. These symbols were later obscured or removed by Pernkopf Atlas publishers.
“This project gave me a chance to fight back, to take my anger out against man’s inhumanity to man,” said Shivkumar. “We should have a completely clean resource that has no baggage, free of cost, to honor the victims,” he said.
Born in Chennai, India, Shivkumar directs the Center for Interventional Programs at UCLA Health System, as well as the UCLA Cardiac Arrhythmia Center. He started his total remake of the Pernkopf Atlas by focusing on the organ he knows best: the heart.
The finished atlas will include 40 open-access anatomical volumes, said Shivkumar, which will span the entire human body. Oxford University and the Indian Institute of Science are among the institutions involved in the project, and Shivkumar plans to donate the finished atlases to Yad Vashem in Israel, he said.
Shivkumar has long had a connection to Israel and Judaism, he said. Many of his teachers were Jewish, and Shivkumar believes India and Israel share similarities as modern incarnations of ancient cultures.
“I have had many patients who were Holocaust survivors,” said Shivkumar. “Some of them had no relatives left in the world. How could you not want to go into a room and cry after an encounter like that with people who have suffered and lost so much,” he said.
“This has been my way of healing myself. It’s my mitzvah, my corrective, and a thank-you to all of my Jewish teachers,” said Shivkumar.
‘A new foundation’
Pernkopf was an ardent Nazi and member of the SA, or Brown Shirts. By daytime, he was a medical school dean and rector at the University of Vienna.
After Germany annexed Austria, Pernkopf dismissed 77 percent of the university’s faculty, including all Jewish staff. He was the first Austrian medical school dean to purge his campus of Jews, a move he boasted about in speeches.
In the preface to his anatomy atlas, Pernkopf openly bragged about having “unlimited” access to corpses. On many days, the Nazi scientist spent 18 hours dissecting corpses, after which his wife typed Pernkopf’s shorthand notes.
Pernkopf died in 1960 while working on a third volume. Although the origin of corpses used for his atlas has been known for decades, no one stepped forward to create an authoritative modern alternative — until now.
“The atlas was regarded as a preeminent anatomical resource, a clinical necessity, and remained in use even after the sordid history had been exposed. No effort was made to surpass this work until now, even after the history was exposed in the 90s,” according to UCLA.
Not all physicians believe the Pernkopf Atlas needs to be confined to history’s dustbin, however. In Shivkumar’s assessment, people who call for the continued use of the Nazi-made atlas are “Pernkopf apologists.” However, some medical scholars beg to differ with Shivkumar, including German-born pediatrics physician Sabine Hildebrandt.
“On balance, it is justifiable to continue using Pernkopf’s book. To see the atlas as a masterwork of greatest aesthetic value or as the evil manifestation of a science only capable to be performed by Nazis seems to ascribe this book too much power,” wrote Hildebrandt, currently a professor at Boston Children’s Hospital.
“The [Pernkopf] atlas is neither a work of supernatural beauty nor of supernatural evil but the product of the very human mind of an obsessive perfectionist who would have pursued his work under any political circumstances,” wrote Hildebrandt.
According to Amara Yad, the atlases will “honor the subjects of Pernkopf’s atlases who were victims of Nazi terror by shifting the focus away from the images of their bodies and toward their enduring human dignity.”
“I hope the finished atlas will end up being a portal to knowledge. A new foundation upon which others may build. Because I can’t see beauty that comes from the older atlases that are fruit from a poisonous tree,” said Shivkumar.
