Three measuring instruments (caliper) which were used in Nazi Germany for determining Jewish racial classification through on the measurement of the skull, chin, nose, and ears - according to the Nazi race theory. The shocking racial act from Hans Ginther's seminary. Nazi Germany, 1930s. Rare.
Three devices that were designed by the Nazi racial scientists and which were designed to measure the width of the skull, the width of the chin, the length of the nose, to determine the racial identity of the subject - Jewish- Semitic or other, according to the principles formulated by theoretician Hans Gunther. The anthropometric measurements were carried out by the Nazis in concentration camps, in the occupied territories, in villages in Germany, and in local laboratories. Beginning in 1934, the Nazis measured the heads of Germans in order to screen candidates for the ranks of the SS, and later the measurements were made to determine who was a Jew in cases where the tested subject appeared without identification cards, or there was no data about his biological ancestors. The measurements were the way in which the Nazis practically carried out their racist plan to rebuild Europe by removing the foreign racial elements they called the "destroyers of culture" who are not part of the German people according to their new definition "creators of culture". The measurement of heads was even done in German schools and it was intended to create in the students the spontaneous ambition "to look completely Nordic". The actual test was done according to a method developed by an SS officer anthropologist Bruno K. Schultz, and it included an examination of twenty-one physical indicators - among them: the shape of the head, the shape of the face, the bridge of the nose, the shape of the hair, the color of the hair, the color of the eyes, the color of the skin, etc. (which were proven to be a complete invention after the war that does not stand the test of reality) When each of them was given exact measurements, as well as the measurements between them according to which the racial origin of the subject was determined.
In the book "The School in the Third Reich" translated by Ze'ev Vardi (Tel Aviv 1997) in the chapter "Racism and Education to Death" some instructive facts are presented about Jews who studied in general schools in Nazi Germany in the 1930s - how as part of a class study they were asked to face this type of measurements. And also in Hans Christian Harten's book: Rassenhygiene als Erziehungsideologie des Dritten Berlin 2006 - there are many quotations from the Nazi textbooks in which the various charts for measuring the parts of the face appeared.
With the worsening of the anti-Semitic measures in Germany, there were Jews who managed to escape their racial affiliation by claiming that their legal father was not their biological father. In such cases, the subject, his father and mother were invited to the Anthropological Institute for a race test. The anthropologist would collect the physical indices of all the subjects - which include the structure of the face - the head, eyes, ears, lips, and chin, hair and eye color, blood type, and fingerprint pattern. At the end of the examination, the anthropologist assessed the likelihood that the legal father is the biological father or not. One of the most shocking cases in which the Nazi anthropologists used facial measurements and blood tests of Jews was the facial cluster recording of Jews, Gypsies, and Soviet prisoners of war in order to preserve and document them for future generations before their extinction. Indeed. In September 1939, anthropologists from the Natural History Museum in Vienna conducted a study that included measurements, photographs and the preparation of facial clusters of Jewish prisoners from Auschwitz for this purpose. The goal was to find common physical components and associate "negative" features with those components. The anthropologists who conducted the test identified in advance those subjects who had facial shapes that corresponded to the prevailing cultural stereotype in order to confirm the anti-Semitic perceptions that were the basis of these studies.
Along with determining the subject's racial classification, the very measurement had another purpose - to spread the Nazi race theory as an absolute science, since it is supposedly possible to arrive at the subject's racial origin based on precise measures, and also for the purpose of humiliating the subject that the fact that he is Jewish is "proven" from a scientific point of view. The purpose of the SS, which developed a method for racial screening and trained personnel for it, was an attempt to expand its power and authority and to claim exclusive ownership of decisions in the field of population management, an attempt to transfer the Nazi racial theory from "theory" to "practice", in order to exercise exclusive control over screening the population.
Literature: Andrew Zimmerman in his book Anti-Semitism as Skill.
And see also: Gert Peltner and his students, The School in the Third Reich: Racism and Education for Death, translated by Zeev Verdi, Tel Aviv 1997.
and also: Hans Heinze - Rasse und Erbe, Haalle 1934.
The instruments in Before us were secretly taken from a German racial laboratory in Berlin a Jewish boy on his father's side who worked in the same building under a false identity, and were hidden during the war at his nephew's house from Osterman family who lived on Lewenzoff Street, and were brought to Israel after the war.
Measuring instruments such as the ones before us appear in the permanent exhibition of the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem.
Length: 24 cm, 19 cm, 12 cm. Signs of rust. Good condition.
