Description
Book SynopsisThe volume presents a collection of texts describing contemporary research findings into the documentation of the Sektion Rassen und-Volsktumsforschung of the Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit (IDO)—a Nazi-led institution that was established in occupied Poland during World War II.
The research project was carried out by anthropologists from the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology together with representatives of other disciplines: historians, sociologists, and physical anthropologists from Jagiellonian University. The studies and papers are based on an analysis of a vast body of documents and photographs. It is first of all a vast collection of sources connected with research carried out by Sektion Rassen-und Volkstumsforschung IDO, kept at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. The authors refer as well to previously unknown documents discovered during queries conducted over the last few years. The available sources provide greater insight into the activities of the Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit as well as make it possible to verify the existing information concerning the character of research carried out by Sektion Rassen-und Volkstumsforschung.
The book contains a rich number of illustrations: Photographs, medical and anthropological questionnaires, psychological tests, and questionnaires containing sociological and ethnographic information not only help visualize, but in a significant way complement the text of the publication.
Trade ReviewAfter reading this voluminous and, contrary to what the title might suggest, engaging study, I have no doubt that it is a great scientific achievement. Firstly, the authors managed to develop an approach to the otherwise sensitive subject of the IDO heritage that enables a cool, albeit not entirely distanced way of looking at the history of a certain institution, as well as at the entanglement of many people in its activity. The fact that the institution was established in dark times, and, in addition, by Hans Frank, should not a priori put it in the context of regular Nazi propaganda and degenerated science. The authors managed to separate what in the IDO output was based on objective research from what could never be defined as scientific. Secondly, the high level of competence of the papers in this tome makes one confident about the applied methods of presentation and interpretation of the available material, which, moreover, is still subject to further verification. This publication is not yet the final outcome of several years of research and queries, but a stop-over, an important one, on the way to further work, which is signaled throughout the book. So it is an example of work in progress. -- Wojciech Józef Burszta, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw
