The World War Two soldier buried in Germany without his brain

The slices of Donnie’s brain and spinal cord were fixed in a solution and put on to glass microscope slides to be used for research into his condition.

His niece Libby says: “It’s difficult to say what it feels like.

“I think it’s pretty horrible, actually, to think about it.”

As well as Donnie, Prof Weindling and his team uncovered records of four other British prisoners of war who had their brains removed and held for research purposes during 1941.

They were Patrick O’Connell, Donald McPhail, Joseph Elston and William Lancaster.

Until very recently, none of the families of the men had any idea what had happened to their relatives.

They were among about 2,000 brains that were taken for research by the leading Berlin and Munich institutes during World War Two, including those of children killed during the Holocaust.

The victims also included Polish Jews and Catholics, those with mental illness, political prisoners, Belgian resistance fighters and French and Polish soldiers.

Other German institutes are also known to have harvested body parts for research.

Dr Hildebrandt says the output of research from the German institutes was vast, and researchers across the world were “envious” of the volume of work coming out of the country.