Eva Justin (23 August 1909 – 11 September 1966) was a German racial anthropologist and psychologist, and a prominent Nazi anthropologist.

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Early life

She was born in Dresden in 1909, the daughter of a railroad official Charles Justin and his wife Margarethe (née Ebinger). Justin served as an assistant to Nazi psychologist Robert Ritter in the "Rassenhygienische und Bevölkerungsbiologische Forschungsstelle" (The Research Unit for Racial Hygiene and Population Biology) founded by Ritter in 1936 at the University of Tübingen.

Justin originally trained as a nurse, and received her doctorate in anthropology in 1944. She also spoke Romani, thus earning the trust of Roma and Sinti people. Her doctoral dissertation, titled "Lebensschicksale artfremd erzogener Zigeunerkinder und ihrer Nachkommen" (English: "The Life History of Alien-raised Gypsy Children and Their Descendants"), was based on studies of "Gypsy Mischlinge" half-Romani children who were taken from their parents and raised in orphanages and foster homes without any contact with Romani culture.

Holocaust

Justin's dissertation was approved by the German ethnologist Richard Thurnwald. After the completion of her studies, the 41 children used in the study were deported to the "Gypsy Camp" at Auschwitz. Soon after their arrival Josef Mengele arrived at Auschwitz. Some of the children were subjected to his experiments and most were eventually killed in the gas chamber. In the mean time Eva Justin was awarded her Ph.D., on May 9.

In 1958, the Frankfurt district attorney initiated an investigation into her wartime actions, but the investigation was closed in 1960, after the district attorney had concluded her actions were subject to the statute of limitations.

After the war, she was employed as a child psychologist in the social services department of the municipality of Frankfurt am Main working again with Ritter, until shortly before her death from cancer in 1966 in Offenbach am Main, a city on the outskirts of Frankfurt.