François Naville

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François Naville (1930)
François Naville, Helge Tramsen , Ferenc Orsós , Arno Saxén and a helper in Katyn (from left)
Signatures of the commission members on April 30, 1943

François Naville (born June 14, 1883 in Neuchâtel , † April 3, 1968 in Geneva ) was a Swiss doctor .

Life

Naville studied medicine in Geneva and Paris and graduated in 1907 with the state examination and in 1910 with a doctorate . He initially dealt with neurology and child psychiatry ; In 1912 he became a private lecturer in neurology. He later turned to clinical criminology, and in 1928 he became an associate professor for forensic medicine . In 1934 he was appointed full professor and became director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Geneva.

He gave (together with the psycho- pedagogue Alice Descœudres , 1877–1963) lectures in the fields of psychology, psychoanalysis, educational medicine and physiology at the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute in Geneva.

Naville was involved as a forensic doctor in solving the Katyn massacre . With the approval of the Swiss authorities and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), at the invitation of the German occupiers , he took part in the trip of an international medical commission to Katyn , which autopsied victims of the massacre there at the end of April 1943 . Naville told the German Lieutenant Colonel Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdorff , who supervised the exhumations in the Katyn forest, that he had no doubts about the Soviet perpetrators.

In 1946, the defense of Hermann Göring tried to win him over as a witness for the Katyn indictment at the Nuremberg trial , but Naville refused. He has nothing to add to his previous statements.

He faced severe attacks by the Labor Party after World War II because of his trip to Katyn . Their member of the Geneva Council , Jean Vincent , accused him of collaboration with the Nazi regime and called for his expulsion from the university. But both the university management and the presidium of the Geneva cantonal parliament defended him. Naville wrote a report on the work of the International Medical Commission in which he summarized all the indications for the Soviet perpetrators. The Geneva daily Tribune de Genève printed excerpts from the report.

When Naville attended a legal congress in Sanremo , Italy, in 1947 , a Polish participant on behalf of the communist leadership in Warsaw tried to persuade him to distance himself from the report of the International Medical Commission. But Naville did not respond, as is evident from documents from the Polish secret service UB . In 1952 he affirmed at a hearing by a committee of the US House of Representatives under the leadership of Democratic MP Ray J. Madden ( Madden Commission ) that the Polish officers in Katyn had been executed by the Soviet secret police NKVD .

In the 1960s, Naville was involved in the autopsy of Charles Zumbach , whose findings (victim and perpetrator with the same blood group 0) cast doubt on the guilt of the defendant Pierre Jaccoud.

Publications (selection)

  • Contribution à l'étude de l'aliénation mental dans l'armée suisse et dans les armées étrangères: étude clinique, statistique, et de prophylaxis. Kündig, Geneva 1910 (dissertation).
  • Etude anatomique du névraxe dans un cas d'idiotie familiale amaurotique de Sachs. Orell Füssli , Zurich 1917.
  • Résumé des publications de F. Naville, professeur ordinaire de médecine légale à l'Université de Genève. Imprimerie du Journal de Genève, Geneva 1938.
  • La réaction du floculation de Meinicke (MTR) en médecine légale. Schwabe, Basel 1941.

literature

  • Paul Stauffer: Switzerland and the tragedy of Katyn , in ders .: Poland-Jews-Swiss , 2004 ISBN 978-3-03823-109-7 .
  • K. Karbowski: Professeur François Naville (1883–1968) Son rôle dans l'enquête sur le massacre de Katyn. In: Bull Soc Sci Med Grand Duche Luxemb. 2004, pp. 41-61, PMID 15544002 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ University of Geneva: Exhibition: The gift of archives, the presents of the past. ( Memento from March 14, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Rudolf-Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff: Soldier in the downfall. Frankfurt am Main 1977, p. 142.
  3. ^ Henri de Montfort: Le Massacre de Katyn. Crime russian ou crime allemand? Paris 1966, p. 181.
  4. ↑ Claudia Weber : War of the perpetrators. The Katyn mass shootings. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2015, p. 394f.
  5. ^ Paul Stauffer, Switzerland and the Tragedy of Katyn, in: Poland - Jews - Swiss. Ed. Paul Stauffer. Zurich 2004, pp. 194–198.
  6. ↑ Tribune de Genève , January 20, 1947, p. 9.
  7. ^ Paweł Libera, Polska Ludowa wobec sprawy Katynia. Nieznane dokumenty Ministerstwa Sprawiedliwości (1947-1951), in: Komunizm. System - ludzie - dokumentacja. Rocznik naukowy , I.2012, pp. 212-214.
  8. ↑ The Katyn Forest Massacre. US Government Printing Office. Washington 1952, vol. V, 1602-1614.
  9. ↑ Sylvie Arsever : Affaire Jaccoud: l'ombre d'un doute? . In: Le Temps . July 9, 2007.
personal data
SURNAME Naville, François
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss doctor
DATE OF BIRTH June 14, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Neuchâtel
DATE OF DEATH 3rd April 1968
Place of death Geneva