The German Medical Association has apologized for sadistic experiments and other atrocious actions of doctors more than six decades ago under the Nazis.

In the statement adopted on Wednesday at the Bundesärztekammer (German Medical Association) meeting in Nuremberg, the association said that many doctors under the Nazis were "guilty, contrary to their mission to heal, of scores of human rights violations and we ask the forgiveness of their victims, living and deceased, and of their descendants."

The declaration also says that contrary to popular belief doctors were not ordered by political authorities to kill and to experiment on prisoners, instead the doctors had engaged in the Holocaust as leaders and enthusiastic Nazi supporters.

Besides conducting pseudo-scientific experiments on prisoners in Nazi concentration camps, German doctors played a large role in the Nazi's program of forced sterilization or euthanasia of the mentally ill or others deemed "unworthy of life."

The association noted that “outstanding representatives of renowned academic medical and research institutions were involved” in establishing and carrying out the mass execution of millions in the Holocaust.

They said "these crimes were not the actions of individual doctors but involved leading members of the medical community" and should serve as a warning for the future.