Hans-Joachim Lang
Hans-Joachim Lang (born 6 August 1951) is a German journalist, historian, and Adjunct Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the Ludwig-Uhland Institute for Empirical Cultural Studies University of Tübingen.[1] Dr. Lang researched and authored the award-winning book Die Namen der Nummern (The Names of the Numbers), published in 2004, which identified all of the victims murdered in the gas chamber of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp for Nazi anatomist August Hirt as part of his plan to create a pseudo-scientific Jewish skeleton collectionduring World War II.
Lang received a doctorate in German Studies and Political Science from the University of Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg in 1980, where he studied under the French sociologist Freddy Raphael. In 1982, he became the editor of the scientific section of the newspaper Schwäbisches Tagblatt in Tübingen.[2] He joined the faculty at his alma mater, University of Tübingen, as an Adjunct Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the Ludwig-Uhland Institute for Empirical Cultural Studies.[1]
In 1989, Lang and co-author and journalist Wolfgang Moser turned down the Fritz-Sänger-Preis für mutigen Journalismus (Fritz Sanger Prize for Courageous Journalism) because of Sanger's work for the Nazi press agency under Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels from 1933 to 1945.[3]
Lang conducted this research in his free time over 20 years, when he was working as a science journalist.[4] In 2017, he is an Honorary Professor and no longer a journalist. He remarks in an interview the changes in France over the time of his research. Initially, many institutions, but not all, did not respond to his request for information, "institutions in France didn't like to cooperate," but 11 years later this changed: "Dr Hans-Joachim Lang identified the victims in 2004. Eleven years later Dr. Raphael Toledano, French researcher, found together with the director of the Institute for Forensic Medicine three small glass containers, in which tiny bits of leftovers from a human stomach and five small pieces of skin were preserved, which can be attributed to Menachem Taffel, one of the 86 victims."[4] These changes in France did not inhibit his research, first published in 2004,[4] and allowed the later events and published material to clarify the nature of what the German University did when it was part of the German Reich during the Second World War. These changes in France are manifest in the documentary films made in 2013-2014 in France, and the added material posted at Lang's website since his book was published.
In June 1943, the anthropologists SS-Hauptsturmführer Bruno Beger from Munich and Hans Fleischhacker from Tübingen selected 86 Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz acting on behalf of the SS research organization "Ahnenerbe", which supported a plan of anatomy professor August Hirt to create a Jewish anatomical skeleton specimen collection.[5] During the German occupation of France, Hirt had been appointed head of the Anatomical Institute at the Reichsuniversität Straßburg (Reichs University of Strasbourg) in 1941.[6]
Twenty-nine women and 57 men from 8 countries were selected from Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz by Beger and Fleischbacker and brought to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp, where skull x-rays and blood groups were recorded. On 11th, 13, 17 and 19 August 1943, the camp commander murdered 86 people in the gas chamber built outside the camp by the SS exclusively for poison gas experiments by medical professors on prisoners.[6] The victims were transported by the SS from Natzweiler to the Reichsuniversität Straßburg. With the approach of the Allied troops, these bodies, preserved in formalin, were hidden in the basement of the Anatomy Institute, where they were discovered. On 23 November 1944, Strasbourg was liberated by the U.S. Seventh Army under the command of Gen. Alexander Patch. Three weeks later the French military tribunal began its investigation.[7]
