Karla Childers
Head of bioethics at Johnson & Johnson, USA
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Karla G. Childers, BA, MSJ, MSBE
Vice President, Bioethics, Policy, External Engagement & Partnerships
Office of the Chief Medical Officer
Johnson & Johnson
Karla Childers joined Johnson & Johnson (J&J) in October 2013 in the Office of the Chief Medical Officer where her primary responsibility has been leading and coordinating various ethics-based, science and technology policy projects. In her current role, Ms. Childers leads enterprise bioethics and bioethics-based R&D policy, public/private partnerships and external engagement for the Office of the Chief Medical Officer (OCMO), including development of bioethics-based R&D policies and driving internal and external thought leadership in the field of bioethics and policy. Ms. Childers is the Chair of the J&J Bioethics Committee, which serves as an internal forum providing advice on bioethical questions within J&J. She is responsible for the management and conduct of that committee and relevant bioethics consultations. She serves as a bioethics subject matter expert for various internal and external science and technology policy work and coordinates the internal bioethics educational program sponsored by the Office of the Chief Medical Officer. She received her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Chemistry from Purdue University (IUPUI-Indianapolis Campus) and a Master of Science in Jurisprudence with a concentration in Health Law from Seton Hall Law School. She is also a graduate of Columbia University with a Master of Science in Bioethics. When not working, she enjoys cooking for friends and family and spending time outdoors with her husband, Andy, and two dogs, Jo Jo and Kelsey.
Herwig Czech
Medical University of Vienna, Austria
Katarzyna du Vall
Jagiellonian University, Kraków
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Katarzyna du Vall – PhD in legal sciences, a graduate of law at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Jagiellonian University and of political science at the Faculty of International and Political Studies of the Jagiellonian University. She completed her legal counsel training.
Assistant Professor at the Jagiellonian University (INPiSM UJ) and lecturer at the Jagiellonian University Medical College, where she has been teaching the subject ‘Medicine of the Third Reich’ for medical and dental students for over 10 years.
Filip Gańczak
Institute of National Remembrance, Poland
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Filip Gańczak (born 1981) holds a PhD in political science. He is an employee of the Institute of National Remembrance in Warsaw and editor of the Institute of National Remembrance Review. Major publications: »Polen geben wir nicht preis« Der Kampf der DDR-Führung gegen die Solidarność 1980/81 (Paderborn 2020), Jan Sehn und die Ahndung der Verbrechen von Auschwitz. Eine Biografie (Göttingen 2022, Chinese edition Beijing 2024). Winner of the Witold Pilecki International Book Award (2021).
Jay R. Malone
Washington University School of Medicine, USA
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Affiliations
Jay R. Malone, Dr
Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Washington University in St. Louis
Adjunct Associate Professor of Health Care Ethics, Saint Louis University
Jay R. Malone, MD, PhD is a pediatric critical care physician and clinical ethicist at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine, where he is currently the Medical Director of Ethics and chair of the medical ethics committee. He received his Ph.D. in Health Care Ethics at St. Louis University. His dissertation focused on the impact of invasive medical technologies on the suffering of children and families. Dr. Malone’s ongoing research focuses on the role of suffering in pediatric critical illness, and the impact of emotion on family communication around the dying process. He is also a medical faculty member with the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics.
Volker Roelcke
Institute of the History of Medicine, Giessen University, Germany
Mildred Solomon
Harvard Medical School, USA
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Mildred Z. Solomon, EdD is Professor (part-time) of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School where directs the school’s Fellowship in Bioethics at the HMS Center for Bioethics. In that role, she has mentored over 220 physicians, nurses, and health lawyers in the analysis of ethical issues arising in health and science policy and practice. She is also President Emerita of The Hastings Center, the world’s founding bioethics institute, where she was president from 2012-2023. Dr. Solomon’s own research has focused on the ethics of end-of-life care, organ transplantation, medical professionalism, responsible conduct of research, and evidence-based medicine. She has served on numerous committees, including the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services’ Advisory Committee on Organ Transplantation, and the Global Health Advisory Committee of the Open Society Foundations’ Public Health and Human Rights Program. Dr. Solomon is frequently cited in the mainstream media, including the <i>Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, New York Review of Books, The Daily Beast, Forbes, Science News, The Scientist</i> and other outlets. Before leading The Hastings Center, Dr. Solomon was Senior Director for Implementation Science at the Association of American Medical Colleges and before that, Vice President of Education Development Center, an independent research institute in Boston, MA. She holds a B.A from Smith College and a doctorate in educational research methods from Harvard University.
Marius Turda
Oxford Brookes University, UK
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Marius Turda, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, is Professor and Director of the Centre for Medical Humanities at Oxford Brookes University, having previously taught at UCL and University of Oxford. He has authored, co-authored and edited more than 20 books on the history of eugenics, race, and racism in East-Central Europe and beyond, including Bloomsbury’s A Cultural History of Race published in 6 volumesin 2021 (paperback 2025). His latest book is In Search of the Perfect Romanian: National Specificity, Racial Degeneration and Social Selection in Modern Romania (2024; illustrated ed. 2025; Eng. ed. forthcoming 2026). He has also curated four exhibitions on eugenics, racial anthropology and biopolitics, most notably the one entitled ‘We are not Alone’: Legacies of Eugenics. His most recent public engagement project is www.confront-eugenics.org.
Kamila Uzarczyk
Medical University of Wrocław, Poland
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Kamila Uzarczyk is assistant professor in the Department of Medical Humanities and Social Sciences in Medicine at the Medical University of Wrocław, Poland. She received her PhD from University of Wrocław in 2001 with a dissertation titled The Concpt of Race Hygiene and Implementation of Race Hygiene Legislation in German Province of Silesia (Toruń: Marszałek, 2002).
Research interests include history of social hygiene movement, history of eugenics and implementation of eugenic policies in interwar years, extermination of people with disabilities in the Third Reich, unethical medical experiments and brain research on “euthanasia” victims during WW II. She is a member of The Lancet commission on Medicine, Nazism and the Holocaust: Historical Evidence, Implications for Today, Teaching for Tomorrow.
Thorsten Wagner
Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics, USA
Leon Weintraub
Guest of Honor, survivor of Nazi German concentration camps, Sweden
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Leon Weintraub was born on 1 January 1926 in Lodz/Poland. After his father’s death in June 1927, his mother had to raise Leon and his four sisters on her own under difficult conditions. In June 1939 he finished sixth grade of public school and should begin at J. Piłsudski-Gymnazium on September 1, 1939.
Leon Weintraub remembers the invasion of the German Wehrmacht on 1 September 1939 very vividly, as shortly after the invasion a ghetto for the Jewish population of Lodz was set up. In Winter 1939, the Weintraub family had to move to the Ghetto-Litzmannstadt. 14-year old Leon had to start work at the ’Resort’ Metall I, first for galvanisation, later for plumbing and finally as an electrician. In 1944, the Germans started the liquidation of the Ghetto and deported the imprisoned to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Weintraub’s family was transported in August 19, 1944. At arrival Leon Weintraub was separated from the rest of his family.
After a couple of weeks Leon Weintraub managed to escape from Auschwitz. Unobserved by the guards, he joined a transport of prisoners to Gross-Rosen. The next camp was Dörnhau, a subcamp of Gross-Rosen, where he, under the pretend of “professional”, had to work as an electrician for the Organisation Todt, until February 1945. He was then – after the ’Death March’ transferred to KZ Flossenbürg and later deported to Offenburg, a subcamp of Natzweiler-Struthof. Finally, he was liberated by French Forces close to Donaueschingen in April 1945.
Due to his physical exhaustion, his weight had dropped to mearly 35 kg, he was diagnosed with typhoid fever and was hospitalised in Donaueschingen for several weeks. Afterwards he spend his convalescence in a French Military-Sanatory on the peninsula Reichenau, until September 1945.
By incident he learnt that three of his sisters had survived in Bergen-Belsen where he united with them in September1945.
On November 11, 1946 he started his studies at the Medical Faculty of the Georg August University in Göttingen.
In November 1950 he returned to Poland. His German wife, Käthe Hof, joined him in April 1951 together with their son Michal, born in January 1948. Two more sons were born: Robert in 1952 and Andrzej in 1954.
After he finished his studies in Warsaw he worked at the First Gyn & Obs Clinic in Warsaw and received his PhD in January 1966.
As a reaction to the growing anti-Semitism in Poland, Leon Weintraub lost his job as a senior physician at the hospital in Otwock in March 1969 and emigrated with his family to neutral Sweden in the September 1969.
Additional information:
His wife Katja died in Stockholm in December 1970. She studied slavic philology and her translation of Janusz Korczak´s books resulted in The Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (posthumously) in 1972.
Six years later Leon married Evamaria Loose, a researcher at SPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute). With her he has one daughter, Emilia, born in 1977.
Eye witness Testimony Shoa Fundation No. 26999, January1997.
Leon Weintraub received The Order of Merit, on ribbon, of the Federal Republic of Germany, in 2004.
On August 19, 2008, he celebrated, together with his family, the opening of The Place of Remembrance in Dobra, near Turek, where his mother was born.
Dr. Dorota Sula interviewed Leon Weintraub in Gross-Rosen on Mars 24, 2009.
His book, written together with Magda Jaros: ’Reconciliation with Evil’,
published at Kadmos, Berlin, in 2022. The Polish Edition of the book was puhblished by Bellona, Warsaw, in 2021.
The German version of the book, published by Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen, in 2022. The Swedish Edition, to be published by Korpen, Göteborg, mid-2025.
He became a Honorary Member of the Alumni of the Medical University in
Göttingen 2022 and was bestowed with the Paracelsus Medaille by the Bundesärztekammer in 2023.
He received the Order of Merit, first class, of Federal Republic of Germany, in
August 2024.
Source: Visual History Archive of the USA Shoah Foundation; in January 1997.
Interview-Code: 26999.
With some corrections and changes by Leon Weintraub in May 22, 2009 and in June 10, 2025.
Teresa Wontor-Cichy
State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oświęcim, Poland
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Teresa Wontor-Cichy is a historian, Ph.D., in the Research Centre of the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oświęcim. She started working at Auschwitz-Birkenau after receiving a Master’s degree in History from the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland in 1993. Her thesis topic was on social welfare in 16th-century Poland.
Her professional research is focused on Auschwitz and the Holocaust. She is the author of several historical books exploring the experiences of different prisoner groups, such as: Imprisoned for Their Faith. Jehovah’s Witnesses in KL Auschwitz and Duchowieństwo i życie religijne w Auschwitz (Clergy and Religious Practices in Auschwitz, published in Polish), Saint Maximillian Maria Kolbe. She is also an author of and historical consultant on numerous biographies published in German and Polish, including: Wilhelm Brasse’s Fotograf 3444: Auschwitz 1940-1945; Maria Anna Potocka’s Zofia Posmysz szrajberka 7566: Auschwitz 1942-1945; Henri Kichka, Byłem więźniem dziesięciu obozów 1940-1945; and, Natali Budzyńska’s Dzieci nie płakały. Historia mojego wuja Alfred Trzebinskiego, lekarza SS. Various works have also been published in English and German.
She has been invited to participate in lectures and to present her research at various international professional workshops and programs in Israel, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, Great Britain, France, Brazil, and the United States. She has attended lectures at Israel’s Yad Vashem Center (2005, 2008) and Lithuania’s Secretariat of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet occupation regimes (2012). She has also presented her work at conferences and universities, including Holocaust Remembrance (2006, 2009 Pennsylvania, USA) the Second European Meeting on Nazi Medicinecalled “Transgressing Borders” in Prague (2016), and the Galilee International Conference on Medicine in the Holocaust and Beyond in Israel (2017).
Ms. Wontor-Cichy further engages with the public in various ways. She is a lecturer on several aspects of Auschwitz camp history and developed online lectures on The Roma in Auschwitz, Medical Crime in Auschwitz Camp, and The Clergy and Religious Life in Auschwitz. She also presented the “ABCs of Christian, Polish–Jewish relations” at the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Kraków (2014). In addition, she was a guest lecturer accompanying an international, traveling art exhibition called “Forbidden Art,” which displays artifacts made by Auschwitz prisoners (Kansas 2014, Michigan 2016). Furthermore, she frequently guides visitors in regular tours and study programs as well as serves as a historical consultant for many documentary films about Auschwitz history.
Michael von Cranach
Germany
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Prof. Dr. med. Michael von Cranach
Honorary Professor Hochschule München
Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist
Born 1941 School Madrid/Spain
1959-1965 Medicine University Bonn/Germany
1968-1969 British Council Scholarship Institute of Psychiatry /London
1970-1980 Psychiatric Clinic University Munich
Director Bezirkskrankenhaus Kaufbeuren 1980-2006
Psychiatric practice in Munich 2006-
Member of the WG “Psychiatrie und Fürsorge im Nationalsozialismus”
Member of the “Gedenkinitiative München”
Research and Publications on:
-Diagnostic Process in Psychiatry
-Social Psychiatry, Reform and Evaluation of Services
-Ethics in Psychiatry
-Psychiatry and Nationalsocialism
