CZECH, HERWIG
In medicine, it is an honor to have a disease named after the physician who fought against it. Hans Asperger was known until recently by his eponym -Asperger's Syndrome- and by an impeccable biography that he himself had helped to build. The child psychiatrist had managed to go down in history as an anti-Nazi hero, defending the dignity of his patients against the social stigma of mental illness and the death sentence it entailed in National Socialist Vienna... until research like that of Herwig Czech came to light. In this revealing study, historian Czech reveals the real Asperger: a man who adapted to the Third Reich and maintained an ambivalent attitude in a world where words like «special treatment», «final solution» or, less obliquely, «euthanasia» euphemistically covered up real atrocities.
