The Jewish collection was a chilling example of the Nazi belief that the Jewish people were inferior to the Aryan or Nordic races. August Hirt, chairman of the Reich University's anatomy department, created a collection of Jewish skeletons in order to 'scientifically' prove that the Aryans were a superior race. The disturbing collection included the remains of 115 people, made up of 79 Jewish men, 30 Jewish women, 4 Soviet prisoners of war, and 2 Poles. Each victim was brought into a medical chamber under the pretence of a physical examination, then gassed to death. Each body was sent to Hirt at the Strasbourg University Hospital, where he would remove the flesh for the skeleton collection. French troops later discovered the collection, which contained many unprocessed corpses that had their faces completely burnt off to avoid identification.
