A rabbi has said that it is ethical for medics to use a well-known anatomical book even though it was created by a Nazi doctor who dissected people executed by the Third Reich.

The Pernkopf Topographic Anatomy of Man, the 20-year labour of Austrian doctor Eduard Pernkopf, contains 800 detailed coloured drawings of the human body and is still in use today by medical professionals.

Pernkopf worked 18 hours a day dissecting corpses while a team of artists created the images. It is estimated that at least half of the illustrations in the atlas are of people executed by the Nazis – which included large numbers of Jews, gypsies and gay people.

But Rabbi Joseph Polak – a Holocaust survivor and professor of health law and ethics at Boston University – called the book a “moral enigma” in an interview with the BBC.

He said that while the artefact was derived from “real evil”, it had a unique ethical status because it could be “used in the service of good”.

Dr Sabine Hildebrandt, who teaches anatomy at Harvard Medical School, told the BBC: “Those of us who have learned to 'see' with it use it whenever we have questions,” and that some surgeons “find it to be a unique and irreplaceable source of information.”

Dr Pernkopf was an ardent Nazi who wore a Nazi uniform to work every day. His support earned him the role of dean of the medical school at the University of Vienna, where he was responsible for the sacking of all Jewish faculty members.

In 1939, a new Third Reich law ensured the bodies of all executed prisoners were immediately sent to the nearest department of anatomy for research and teaching purposes.

Sometimes the anatomy institute was so full, executions had to be postponed until they had made room for the fresh bodies.

Dr Pernkopf was arrested after the war and held at an Allied prison of war camp for three years before being released.

Following his release he returned to the university and continued his work on the atlas, publishing a third volume in 1952.