International Mock Trial on Human Rights

In an imagined courtroom, 32 students between 15 and 22 years old, from nine countries, interrogate the so-called father of Nazi Racial Hygiene, ardent Nazi Ernst Rüdin. A psychiatrist, geneticist, eugenicist, racist and antisemite, Rüdin was responsible for untold suffering and death.

Rüdin helped formulate the 1933 Nazi “Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases” that legalized the forced sterilization of some 400,000 Germans between 1934 and 1939. Rüdin helped to implement the so-called “T4 programme,” — the first mass murder committed under National Socialism. Rüdin was directly involved in the killing of children in order to conduct post-mortem research. Because of a loophole in the law, Rüdin was never prosecuted for his crimes. He died of natural causes in Munich in 1952.

On trial is the right for those most vulnerable to be protected from harm; the responsibility of leadership; and the place of ethics within the sciences.

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Watch the event live here.