stockholm (ap) | After Levin Dombrowsky’s body was dissected in an anatomy class, his skull was tagged “Jew” and added to a collection of human remains that scholars believe may have been used for racial research.
This week, 126 years after the 25-year-old immigrant hanged himself in his jail cell, Dombrowsky’s skull was buried at a Jewish cemetery in southern Sweden.
“We see symbolism in this, that this dark chapter in Swedish history — racial biology — is over,” said Helmer Fischbein, head of funeral services at the Jewish congregation in Malmo, Sweden’s third largest city.
Dombrowsky’s skull was one of hundreds collected by Lund University, at a time when European researchers traveled the world looking for skeletal remains that they measured and catalogued — often to illustrate the supposed superiority of their own race.
The university handed the skull over to Jewish leaders last week.
A Swedish newspaper traced Dombrowsky’s fate in a series of articles, from his arrival in Sweden from Filipow, in today’s Poland, to his suicide in 1879 while awaiting trial for theft in Lund.
As was customary with suicide victims, his body was handed over to science and dissected in front of anatomy students.
It’s not clear what happened to the body after that, but the skull was tagged “No. 88a, Cranium of Jew” and became part of the skull collection of the university’s anatomic institute.
Unlike Sweden’s other major university in Uppsala, Lund did not have an institute for racial biology. However, Lund University spokesperson Hans Modig said it was possible that the skull may subsequently have been used for racial studies.
Gunnar Broberg, a Lund University professor who researched racial ideas in Swedish science, said it was not clear exactly how scientists used the skull collection. But it was created “during a period when great weight was given to skull shapes, and humanity was divided accordingly,” he said.
The skulls were stored in an attic after scientists lost interest in such collections, and were handed over to the university’s museum when the anatomic institute closed in 1995.
In 2001, Dombrowsky’s skull was displayed in an exhibition that showed the racial thinking that once preoccupied Swedish researchers. Jewish leaders saw it and started pressing for it to be handed over for burial.
The skull was buried at Malmo’s Jewish cemetery in a ceremony attended by representatives of Sweden’s parliamentary parties.
The Swedish newspaper, which took interest in Dombrowsky’s life, found out his mother and brother also moved to Sweden, but neither the paper nor the Jewish congregation in Malmo were able to track down any living relatives.
The newspaper said Dombrowsky worked at a paper mill for several years before things started going wrong. In 1878, he served four months in prison for stealing cash, cloth and cigarettes from a Jewish merchant.
A year later he was arrested again for theft. He was found dead in his cell on the day of his trial.