Body donors make an incredibly courageous decision. That is one of the reasons why we wanted to build a memorial to them.

The memorial, whose ceremonial unveiling in November crowned a six‑year joint initiative of the Department of Anatomy at the MU Faculty of Medicine and the Medical Students’ Association, is meant to commemorate the importance of their undertaking and, at the same time, serve as a place of remembrance for the bereaved. A large number of supporters from the wider public also contributed financially to its construction, recalls David Neuman, the current president of the Brno Medical Students’ Association.

What role did the Medical Students’ Association play in the whole project?
The idea to build the memorial originated with Jakub Voldřich, the then-president of the Medical Students’ Association. Forces were joined with the Department of Anatomy and the MU Faculty of Medicine, and the journey towards the memorial could begin. We created a dedicated transparent bank account to which people sent financial donations. We organised several benefit concerts. Within the faculty, we launched the art competition “da MEDici”, which raised tens of thousands of crowns through an auction of artworks. In general, we tried to raise awareness of this worthy idea and, along with it, of the body donation programme.

Are students aware that it is precisely body donors who stand at the beginning of their professional path?
The Department of Anatomy, and specifically the dissecting rooms, represent an entirely new environment for students coming from secondary school, so it is not something that is taken for granted. Certainly not right away. Becoming fully aware of the significance of donation is a gradual process. On your first day in the dissection room, you go in with the feeling that you are supposed to know an enormous number of terms, and you remember only half of them, so your attention is directed more to the study side of things. You start with individual bones, which are not yet connected into “a single whole”. But as you progress in your studies, you begin working on entire body parts, and at that point, it starts to dawn on you what body donation really means and how tremendously courageous the donors' decision was.

How can a student coming from secondary school prepare for the ethical and human dimension of working with bodies in the dissection room?
The foundation is to realise that teaching using real human specimens is not a given, and to approach it with respect and humility. Most students have no problem with this; however, the atmosphere of the dissection rooms has a specific effect on them.

Based on your experience, including that of international students who do not have the option of anatomical dissections in their home countries, can you say how different your anatomy education would be if you did not have the opportunity to learn using donors’ bodies?
It would be radically different. You can learn from many textbooks, atlases, 3D atlases, digital tables and the like. Still, nothing can replace the real human body: the possibility of going through all of anatomy exactly as it actually looks, in the context of all the surrounding structures, bones, muscles, vessels or nerves. In this respect, real bodies are still unmatched, and I do not expect that to change.

What was the most difficult part of the project for you personally or for the association? On the other hand, how did the project enrich you?
The hardest part… it depends on how you look at it, but probably the overall time required for the project and the fundraising. We came to it as people who didn’t know it and took it under our wings. However, it didn’t take long at all before we developed a very personal relationship with it and cared for it as if it were our own. The memorial gave us great emotional and spiritual depth. Through it, we were able to personally meet the families of deceased donors and even talk with some of them. These are powerful moments we will remember for a long time.

How would you like the memorial to affect future generations of medical students? What message should it carry?
I would wish for it to remind us that behind every single body there is a specific person with their own life. That it becomes a symbol of respect and gratitude to the donors, that it reminds us of their courage and humanity, and that it be a legacy that will live on in each of us.