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Howard Alan Israel, "Nazi Anatomy Lessons: A Dissection of Evil" (Vallentine Mitchell, 2026)
00:47:42
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Dr. Howard Israel
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Rabbi Mark Katz
Hi, my name is Rabbi Mark Katz, and I'm one of the hosts of the New Books and Jewish Studies channel of the New Books Network podcast. I'm the author of the book Yohanan's Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life. And I'm here today with Dr. Howard Israel, the author of our focus for our episode, the book Nazi Anatomy, A Dissection of Evil. So welcome.
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Dr. Howard Israel
Thank you, Rabbi.
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Rabbi Mark Katz
So we usually let our guests introduce themselves. So tell us a little bit about yourself, your bio, your background, and then we'll get to why you wrote the book.
- [00:58]
Dr. Howard Israel
Okay. Well, I would say that in one sentence, I am the typical baby boomer American Jewish kid who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s. It was a time of, I guess, a lot of assimilation, a lot of denial of the horrors of the Holocaust from 10, 15 years ago prior to my birth. And I grew up, my religion was baseball. We actually lived a block away from Yankee Stadium and knew very little about Judaism except for a little bit from my Grandpa Max. And I grew up with the idea of, you know, I'd like to do something useful. And my sister and I were the first in our generation to go to college. And she went into music. I went into healthcare. I wanted to be a doctor. So in my quest to become a doctor, I got into Columbia University at the School of College of Dental Medicine. And then from there I went into academics, taught for a good 20, 40 years, and I'm still teaching. But that's the beginning. That's the start of this story.
- [02:46]
Rabbi Mark Katz
And so your book is very much a mix of a memoir, but also informative nonfiction. In fact, it's actually kind of heart detective story as well. And so I think probably the best way for us to have this conversation is for you to kind of take us through the full journey of what your book covers. So let's start just first, give us a sense of, you know, when someone becomes a doctor, what are the different anatomy atlases, the different tools that they use? And tell us a little bit about the focus of your book, which is the Perncoff Atlas, and why it was such a good, good, particularly good one for someone who was learning the anatomy that you were when you were first starting Sure.
- [03:31]
Dr. Howard Israel
I want you to understand that when I first entered Columbia, the dental school, your first course was eight weeks of anatomy, everything from head to toe. The students in the School of Dental Oral Surgery took the same course as the medical students. We were no different. So we had to know everything. And the shock and the awe of walking into that laboratory and seeing cadavers and the smell of formaldehyde, it was a huge shock. Not only was it a shock that you are actually looking at a cadaver, but that, you know, that couldn't possibly have been a human being. It looks like just a whole mass of tan and gray material that smelled horrendous. But you had to get past that and realize that you had to learn anatomy. The required textbook for my course was a book called Grant's Anatomy. And Grant's Anatomy was, I have to say, it was like a comic book compared to what I was looking at when we were doing the cadaver dissections. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't really feel comfortable with knowing this really important part of my training. So I go to the professor, the world famous professor, and I said, I'm struggling here. And the professor says, well, if you want an atlas, you really need to get this book called Perncoff's Anatomy. But, Howard, you will never get this book, because why? The professor, he says, it is so expensive that you would. A student cannot afford it. Now we're talking about the 1970s. We lived on a salary of my wife's salary of $7,000 a year. I was a student. This book was the equivalent in today's dollars of, like, 500 bucks. And I'm saying, you know, and I told my wife about it at that time, and we both agree this is not possible to purchase this book. So I struggled. I studied hard without Pernkoff's Anatomy. But as I developed in my education, I kind of knew I wanted to be an oral and maxillofacial surgeon. And being obsessive and compulsive, I realized I need the best. That being said, it was still too expensive. But lo and behold, my wife Mindy, like, just before I entered my oral and maxillofacial surgery training program, she got me the gift of Perncoff's Anatomy in the English language edition. I used that book throughout my residency. Anatomy is not something that you remember, but you need to know it every single case you do, and you need to review it. And it became my ritual to study from that book.
- [07:03]
Rabbi Mark Katz
So one day you're using that book, and a colleague Walks in, and this is kind of the beginning of your journey that you talk about in the book and looks at you holding Pernikoff and casually says, you know, this is a book created by Nazis. So tell me a little bit about what that moment was like and what the journey was that it set off for you.
- [07:27]
Dr. Howard Israel
Oh, yeah. So the year was 1994. I had been using the book and teaching for over two decades, 20 years. My ritual as a teacher at Columbia was to have the book in front of me, my yellow line pad right next to me. And in preparation for the surgery that I was going to do the next day, I would study the anatomy in detail. And on my yellow line pad, I would write notes of exactly every step along the way. And as you turn the pages in the book, you can go through the layers of the dissection. Now, understand, at this point, I had a rising academic career. I was doing research, teaching, but patient care was the most important.
- [08:19]
Rabbi Mark Katz
And.
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Dr. Howard Israel
I was going to make sure that I need to be prepared. There was not going to be a mistake because I didn't know the anatomy or the variations. So typically, I would walk into the operating room of my yellow sheet. My residents would laugh at me. What is the professor? At that point, I was actually a clinical professor at Columbia, and I had a rising academic career. And the residents would laugh at me. What does the professor need a cheat sheet for? And I would always tell him, today I'm doing the operation a second time because I did it last night with my Pernkoff's book in front of me. So that day, My dear friend, Dr. Steven Sireb, just casual comment. He walks in, say, hi, what you doing? And he says, oh, you're studying from Perncoff. I heard he was a Nazi. The shock, the horror. I looked at the book, I looked at the picture I was looking at, and all of a sudden I'm saying, you know nothing. I know nothing about who Pernkoff was, who these. What the pictures were of. You know, who are these people? How did they wind up in a book? I knew nothing. And I felt an immense amount of guilt that, hey, you know, this was my. My most used book. I had a rising academic career. Was I benefiting from a Nazi? And then I look at the pictures and I think, where was that person from? That was a human being. They had a life. And the picture I had was a young person. So that was the. That was. I would say, 1994 changed my life because the amount of guilt I had about the possibility of what I was Using was enormous. Now, Understand this was 50 years after the end of the Holocaust. But I needed to find out what the source of this book was and what to do about it. Was another story. But at first I needed to find.
- [10:44]
Rabbi Mark Katz
Out, take us through a little bit who Pernkopf was and specifically what was going on in Vienna at the time with Jewish students. With the rise of Nazism at the time when the Perkhoff Atlas came up, came about.
- [11:02]
Dr. Howard Israel
So at that point in 1994, it was my obligation to find out anything and everything I could about Perncoff. So the first thing I did since I had an English language edition of the book, I went to the library of Columbia University and I went into the stacks and I found the German language editions of the book that was published in 1937, 1943 and 1952. I opened up the book and indeed saw the same anatomic drawings that I was studying from with Nazi icons in the signatures of the artists. So number one, my first education on this was, yeah, I guess his artists were Nazis. But then you asked the question, well, who was Parkhoff? So I studied everything I could about finding out about him. And interestingly, I found maybe two articles in the literature. There was an article by a rheumatologist at NYU. And this, this article, his name, the author was Dr. Gerald Weissman. And he had an article called Springtime for Perncoff. And he describes Perncoff. He was an ardent Nazi in the 1930s, and he was also an anatomy professor. So in the 1930s, he was the head of the anatomy institute of the University of Vienna. University of Vienna was a medical school that was the most prestigious medical school probably in the world. They had produced many, many, many Nobel laureates. They were leaders in all aspects of science. And in Perncoff's anatomy department, he taught not only anatomy, but he taught the concept of racial hygiene. And interestingly, there was another anatomist who was there even before Pernikoff. His name was Julius Tondler. He was Jewish, world famous. And so the anatomy department kind of split up the National Socialists. The Nazi students were in the anatomy department with Perncoff. And the Jewish students were in the anatomy department of Julius Tondler. This was at a time when National Socialism was rising and Jews were considered the cause of Germany's loss in World War I. And they became scapegoats. And riots would break out with the Nazi students going to the anatomy department of the Jewish tonler. And they would beat up the students. They would rampage through the anatomy labs of Todler and at that point Tondler was. At the end of his career, he left and Pernikov became the anatomist. And because being politically correct was essential as National Socialism increased after Hitler became the Chancellor in 1933 of Germany. To maintain an academic appointment and to be a, a teacher, you really had to have the same political ideology. So in 1938, Parkoff became the dean of the medical school of the University of the prestigious University of Vienna School of Medicine.
- [15:25]
Rabbi Mark Katz
So I know we've got a lot of steps between where you just spoke about and the question I'm about to ask, but I. I'd like to kind of. Rather than make our listeners wait, I'd like you to answer a question that I think is on a lot of people's minds, which is, are the pictures in the Perncoff Atlas dead Jews?
- [15:49]
Dr. Howard Israel
We found out through very detailed investigations that the great majority of the people in the Atlas were Austrian resistance fighters, Communists, people who had spread leaflets or would say something against the Nazis or homosexuals. There were some Jews. They weren't the most predominant number of source of cadavers. However, when we queried the University of Austria, when I use the word we, it was a partnership between me and Dr. Bill Seidelman, who was a world authority on this. And when we queried the University of Austria, University of Vienna in Austria, their faculty said, look, there were no Jewish concentration camp victims. No. So you think my moral compass is so low that if you tell me that they weren't Jewish concentration camp victims, that I would be okay with that they were victims. Most of the Jews had been deported, wound up in concentration camps, or the lucky ones escaped Austria during most of the time of this era. But there were some Jewish people in the anatomy institute at that time. So it's not like never. But they weren't the predominant source of material for Perncoff's book.
- [17:32]
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- [18:32]
Rabbi Mark Katz
Yeah, you have some pretty haunting stories in your book about some of the people who did make their way in that were not Jewish. Right. I remember in one story somebody who really just kind of questions the efficacy of the war and that somehow finds its way into like they end up getting killed and end up finding their way into the atlas.
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Dr. Howard Israel
Yes. Yeah. There are stories that are absolutely incredible. And one story that I think you're alluding to was a dentist who had a patient, a long term patient, who asked the dentist, so what do you think? What's happening? What's happening in the war? Do you think we're going to win? And, and the dentist, now this is a dentist that was in Berlin. It wasn't in Austria, but the example is the same. So the dentist gave an honest opinion. I think it was 1943. And he said, look, you know, I'm worried, you know, now we have a two front war. The offense has stalled against Russia. So I'm worried. And he sees the patient questioning him just with her facial expression. The dentist immediately recognizes that he better not say anything that potentially could be construed as anti Nazi or losing hope or faith in Hitler. So he immediately says, but Hitler is the greatest and he'll get us out of this. Well, it turns out that XI reported his questioning of the ability of the Nazis, wound up as speaking to the Gestapo. He gets arrested. The judge finds him guilty of crimes of not supporting the Nazis. And to make a long story short, he was sentenced to death and it was advertised all over Berlin. So this person per se did not necessarily wind up in Perakov's book because this was in Berlin, but the same story can be repeated. Anybody who didn't show confidence in the German army in Hitler's efforts was considered a traitor.
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Rabbi Mark Katz
And.
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Dr. Howard Israel
Sentenced with either prison or torture or horrible crimes. It was total loss of any democratic process whatsoever.
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Rabbi Mark Katz
Now, I know it took you a while to find all that information because there were roadblocks along the way. People weren't so willing to accept the narrative right from the start, or at least willing to admit that blame may lay in their institutions. So I'm wondering if you can kind of take us through some of those major roadblocks that you hit as you were trying to uncover this, and also, once you did, the roadblocks that you hit in trying to make sure that there might be, for example, a preface written to the book or an acknowledgement in the book that spoke about its history.
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Dr. Howard Israel
Well, the biggest roadblocks came from the University of Austria's anatomy faculty. There were some old time leftover faculty members from that era. And they kind of repeated, look, you got these two Jewish doctors from the West. You got Israel, and you got Seidl men, and they're making a big stink. And by the way, you know, they weren't Jewish concentration camp victims. So what more can we say? And there were other things, like, look at the cadavers. They don't look like they've been circumcised. Look at the cadavers. Their heads were shaved. So, you know, there was all kinds of resistance and lies. Essentially, these were lies that occurred. So that was the biggest resistance. We also got resistance from the publisher. The publisher said, hey, look, you know, the book is a classic, and we have no evidence that there were Jewish concentration camp victims. That was repeated numerous times. We also got a lot of denial from anatomists and physicians here in the US and worldwide. This is a great book. This is a wonderful book. It can help people. What are you digging up the past for? You know, what are you making trouble for? This is the classic masterpiece of anatomy. We separate the man from. From the work. And the work is wonderful. It is the best you can get. So that was the resistance that we had.
- [24:07]
Rabbi Mark Katz
So what do you think finally changed their minds? Because there is an acknowledgment. Correct. At the beginning of Perncoff now.
- [24:17]
Dr. Howard Israel
Well, the hero of the story, in my opinion, was the Zen president of the University of Vienna. His name was Dr. Alfred Ebb and Bauer. He was, I think, medieval studies. That was his expertise. He was a very highly ethical individual. He realized that he was being lied to by his faculty. They said that the. The. All the records were lost in a bombing, air raid, whatever. Well, Dr. Ebb and Bauer said, look, we're gonna Right the wrong. We are going to do a thorough investigation. And he appointed a commission that was passed by the University of Vienna's Senate and they did a thorough two year investigation on the anatomy of institute between 1938 and 1945. And the questions were, number one, what were the source of the cadavers? Number two, were there still specimens at the University of Vienna? Now we're talking 1998. This is over 50 years after World War II. Were there still specimens from that era in use at the medical school? Those were the questions that were being asked. Were there still specimens, mortal remains that remained? And were these in fact Nazi victims? That was the investigation. And they uncovered the truth.
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Rabbi Mark Katz
And once they did, was it difficult to get them to agree to put that disclaimer on?
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Dr. Howard Israel
Not at all. Eben Bauer, as a matter of fact, Eben Bauer, as soon as he realized he was being lied to about the history of this book, he immediately held a press conference and he announced the University of Vienna and Austria announced, hey, this was a very evil person and there were Nazi victims and atrocities that occurred and that we are guilty of. And we have to acknowledge that and come clean. So this was in a press release. It was in a letter that went to medical school libraries throughout the world where this book was being used by surgeons and anatomists. And this letter was to be put inside the book for any potential user of the book to know the truth about the origin of this book. And then they ultimately had the results of their investigation which revealed they were indeed Nazi victims.
- [27:30]
Rabbi Mark Katz
So your book has a lot of twists and turns in it. And I'll refer our listeners to the book itself to find out how you, for example, got an article in the Times about this and how you convinced a prestigious medical journal to publish about it. I do want to drill down on one experience you had, which was your experience visiting Vienna. And I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about what it meant to you to be in Vienna and also the. The experience you had as you went for the walk through the city.
- [28:01]
Dr. Howard Israel
Yeah. So this whole journey has been, I guess the word is basharat. I don't know, it is mystical. So here it's now 2005. The investigation was completed in 1998. They found specimens, they buried them in 2002 to honor the victims. And now it's 2005 and I get asked to deliver a presentation about Perncoff and medical ethics at the International Conference of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons. And just by chance, this conference was being Held in Vienna. I'd never been to Vienna before now. I don't know. I'd never participated in the international conference. I virtually knew nobody there. And in between lectures I said, well, this is a nice, beautiful city. I think I should do a tour. And I wanted to do a jogging tour. That was quite random. The number of things that I saw which were mind boggling. I can't even count all of them. But I'll hit on the highlights. It's a random jogging tour. I don't have any plan to go anywhere. And sure enough, all of a sudden I find myself in front of the University of Vienna School of Medicine. There was really no security. It was a quiet day. I go into the lobby and there's a map of the campus. And I see on the wall where the synagogue is. And I'm saying to myself, what is a synagogue doing on the campus? So I jog over there and actually it was not a synagogue, but what it was, it was a newly constructed memorial to the Jews. This had been a Jewish prayer room in front of the hospital. And because when the Nazis took over they destroyed anything Jewish. And here they were reconstructing in 2005amemorial. And on the sidewalk in front of that memorial in three languages, German, English and Hebrew, an apology for what the Nazis did to the Jews during the Nazi era written on the sidewalk. Now I am standing there. I'm an oral and maxillofacial surgeon. I'm standing there and I'm looking in awe of this monument. And just to the left of me is the building for oral and maxillofacial surgery, which is my specialty. So these two things were right next to each other. So that was kind of. That was my first spooky experience. Then I continue on my jog and I find myself right in front of this enormous fortress like building. And I go to the front of it and it says, it's the Wiener Landeschgrift. Which in translation means the local Viennese district court. The senatorial investigation confirmed the that this was not just a court. This is where any Nazi dissenter, a homosexual communist, maybe a Jew, if they were brought to that court, they were immediately sentenced to prison in the Wiener Landerschrigt. But most of them were sentenced to death. And in the basement of the Wiener Landerskircht was a guillotine. We also knew from the report that anybody who was guillotined in the Wiener Landerschrigt these were young people, they were fresh bodies and Pernkov had them Transported immediately to his anatomy institute. So I knew that history. Then I continued my jog. And two blocks away, where am I? I'm right in front of the Anatomy institute. And I walk in within two blocks. I walk in there, I go upstairs, I see the dissection rooms. I took a picture of the back of the anatomy institute because they had this huge chimney smokestack. And that also was eerie to me, just symbolically. And then right across the street from the anatomy institute was a bookshop, Urban and Schwarzenberg. This was the publisher, the original publisher of the Perncoff Atlas. So I started thinking to myself, if this was 1938 and. And I was doing my jog in 1938, and if they found out I was Jewish or if I just happened to say, hitler's not such a great guy, or whatever, I would be thrown into the wiener landscape by the Gestapo, and one day I'd be sentenced to death. My body would wind up in the basement with the guillotine and then immediately transported to the anatomy institute where my mortal remains would be dissected and then across the street wind up in a book by Urban and Schwarzenberg.
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Rabbi Mark Katz
In a way, the idea that you can't walk around Europe without kind of tripping over Nazi history, World War II history, Holocaust history, is profound. And the truth is, we don't know even where. Where subtle reminders are. I mean, one thing I was thinking about in your book, and you talk about this periodically, is you know, what other Nazi atrocities are. Things that are just kind of woven into the everyday. I'm thinking, for example, the fact that we use the word Asperger's all the time when we're talking about kids. And Asperger was a doctor who was part of the Nazi party and used very questionable practices when he was diagnosing kids. I'm curious, you know, what other Nazi atrocities came to light as you were researching for this book on Perncoff's Atlas.
- [34:44]
Dr. Howard Israel
Well, understand that my knowledge of the Holocaust was minuscule until 1994. Then I investigated the Perncoff book. And that's really where my education on the Holocaust began. And so a good portion of the story is my education on the Holocaust. And what I found out was horrendous. I found out that doctors, a medical profession that was meant to do, to heal, how doctors, it wasn't just a few crazy doctors who were deranged. It wasn't just Mengele and somebody else. This was the entire medical profession and the entire academic world. In Germany and in Austria, the Nazi Political ideology affected public health policy. And you had Nazi physicians who believed in racial hygiene. And they went ahead and it ultimately led to the Holocaust. So there are. Pernkov is just one example. But there are so many. There were so many examples of these bits and pieces of evidence. They are, as you had mentioned, Asperger. There's, hey, we flew to the moon, right? How did we get to the moon? It was from the rocket scientists of Germany during the Cold War. We kind of forgot about all the atrocities that these scientists did. V2 rockets were built on the backs of the slave laborers who eventually starved to death in making these V2 rockets. And you see this repeated in history over and over again. And it's not just the Nazi era and the remnants of it. This is something that has been occurring throughout history, before the Nazi era and even after the Nazi era. So there are a lot of remnants of this that continued to today of unethical behavior, where the ends justify the means.
- [37:18]
Rabbi Mark Katz
So your book not only deals with Perncoff, and it not only deals with Nazis. It actually raises really profound and fundamental questions about what we do with the products of reprehensible people. And I'm wondering if you can reflect a little bit on what you learned about just generally, whether we watch movies made by people who did really bad things, or we benefit from research or information from people who have done horrible things. I was struck, as I was reading your book, about the fact that I still kind of feel dirty about going to the bodies exhibit, which travels around and shows anatomy. But ultimately, those are political prisoners of China, at least from the way I understand it. Or at least some of the people. They're not just people who donated their body to the exhibit. And so I'm wondering, what did your research and what did your journey teach you about benefiting from the products and art of reprehensible people?
- [38:20]
Dr. Howard Israel
It has been quite an education, and the ethical issues that are raised are quite significant. Initially, I couldn't reconcile using the book. I knew it would help my patients. But I felt dirty by opening up the book as a surgeon. And this struggle continued until 2017. And the question of what to do about human remains, what to do about the products of unethical research that can be used today. I mean, you can't erase the research. You can't erase the results. Of course, most of the studies from the Nazis were bogus and had no utility. But throughout history, and there are a few things that you could say, hey, if I use that research or that data, I could save A life, or I can improve the quality of life. So how do you balance that as a doctor? You could look at it one of two ways. One way is you say it came from evil. If I use it, I am perpetuating evil. It is dirty, and it just makes it more likely for evil to occur. That's one possibility. But you can also take the other coin. I'm doing an operation on this patient tomorrow. I'm doing an operation on your kid, and I'm telling you I'm going to be a better surgeon if I use that data. If I opened up that book, do you want me to use that book? It's a real ethical dilemma. Now, this came to the attention of Rabbi Joseph Pala, who is an incredible person. He was a child survivor of the Holocaust, became a very renowned rabbi in New England, and the question was brought to him. And in 2017, he came up with a rabbinic response to this question as to how to deal with human remains. And he goes through all of the Jewish laws about the importance of preserving the dignity and early burial. However, his conclusion in the Rabbinic Responsum was there is nothing higher than the priority of life. And so if you feel that you could preserve a life, improve a life, that is part of the responsum, and the responsum is called the Vienna Protocol. The main point he brings is you could, as an individual, you can make your own moral decision, whether the ends do not justify the means, do not justify the ends, or you could make the argument that I could save a life and use it. But if you're going to use it, you must, number one, acknowledge the source of the evil. You must memorialize the victims. You must inform the patients and the students and the nurses and the or all, everyone about where this came from, to use it, to learn from this history. And whether you're on one side of that ethical debate or the other is really an individual decision. And it kind of reminds me of the book Yohanan's Gamble that you authored. It offers a pragmatic approach to this kind of problem. So I have to say that after I knew that we were going to speak, I said, gee, this sounds just like what I learned from that book. So.
- [42:45]
Rabbi Mark Katz
Oh, thank you for the shout out.
- [42:47]
Dr. Howard Israel
It's okay.
- [42:48]
Rabbi Mark Katz
So, one final question. You've been on a real educational journey. If someone picked up your book and they got one important lesson out of your book that was going to sit with them for a while, what would that lesson be?
- [43:04]
Dr. Howard Israel
The lesson, I believe, is to continue to educate ourselves on this history. Realize the Holocaust, no question, Is beyond beliefs. But to learn from this history is our obligation to bear witness and learn from this history. Whether the history is from the Holocaust or from an Armenian genocide or from unethical behavior, we must learn from this history and how did it come to be? And we have to change our behavior today. We can't say this can never happen again. There's a book that, Tim Snyder's on tyranny, which talks about authoritarian regimes and the things that lead to these kinds of atrocities. And we're seeing a lot of horrors today that are very similar. So that is one lesson. And then the other lesson, in a more spiritual sense, is I'm saying to myself, years ago, I became very interested in astronomy and I started looking through the telescope and I'm thinking about the vastness of the universe and how we have been given the gift of life in this vast universe where we're a speck, we are an absolute speck. But we have been given this gift. This gift needs to be acknowledged and preserved and protected, and we can't throw it away. And as a doctor, I know this even more because we know everything about anatomy. We study well, if I have an operation, if I'm doing an operation on a fascist, their arteries bleed red and nerves give sensory input just like anybody else. We are all God's gift. And how could we say that? How could we justify such not valuing the life of each individual person? So that's the journey that I'm still on and still learning.
- [45:41]
Rabbi Mark Katz
Thank you. Well, it was wonderful to be on this journey with you both in the podcast and also reading your book again. I'm in conversation today with Dr. Howard Israel. His book for those who want to get it, is Nazi Anatomy A Dissection of Evil. Thank you to all those who have listened, and we'll see you next time.
- [46:00]
Dr. Howard Israel
Thank you.