Category Archives: Nazi experiments

How the Nazis Justified Murdering Innocent Lives

The one thing that really intrigues me about the Holocaust and other horrific events throughout history is, how people justify killing and torturing fellow human beings. It will take an awful lot before I would hurt another human being, only when I would be physically threatened would I resort to physical defence.

The Nazis didn’t see the Jews, Roma Sinti, disabled and homosexuals as human beings, they were referred to as sub-humans. But still, when someone of flesh and blood stands before you how can you not think that this is another human being?. Below are some excerpts from documents and speeches which may give an indication of the Nazi psyche and how they were able to convince ‘ordinary’ people to kill others.

On October 6, 1943, Heinrich Himmler, one of the most prominent figures in the Nazi regime, delivered a speech in front of SS officers in Posen, Poland. In this speech, he outlined the Nazi ideology regarding the extermination of the Jewish people. One of the chilling quotes from this speech is:

“I am now referring to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. It’s one of those things that’s easily said: ‘The Jewish people are being exterminated,’ every party member will tell you, ‘perfectly clear, it’s part of our plans, we’re eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, a small matter.’ And then along they all come, all the 80 million upright Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. They say: all others are swine, but here is a first-class Jew.”

This quote encapsulates the horrifyingly casual manner in which Himmler and the Nazi leadership discussed and carried out the genocide of millions of Jewish people during the Holocaust. It reflects the dehumanization and systematic eradication of an entire population based on racial ideology.”

Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany, kept extensive diaries from 1924 until he died in 1945. These diaries provide valuable insights into the mindset, strategies, and activities of the Nazi regime during its rise to power and throughout World War II.

Goebbels was known for his fervent loyalty to Adolf Hitler and his dedication to spreading Nazi propaganda through various media channels. His diaries reflect his unwavering commitment to the Nazi cause and his role in shaping public opinion in Germany.

“The Jews are alike. Whether they live in a ghetto of the East or in the bankers’ palaces of the City or Wall Street, they will always pursue the same aims and without previous agreement even use the same means. One might well ask why are there any Jews in the world order? That would be exactly like asking why are there potato bugs? Nature is dominated by the law of struggle. There will always be parasites who will spur this struggle on and intensify the process of selection between the strong and the weak. The principle of struggle dominates also in human life. One must merely know the laws of this struggle to be able to face it. The intellectual does not have the natural means of resisting the Jewish peril because his instincts have been badly blunted. Because of this fact the nations with a high standard of civilization are exposed to this peril first and foremost. In nature life always takes measures against parasites; in the life of nations that is not always the case. From this fact the Jewish peril actually stems. There is therefore no other recourse left for modern nations except to exterminate the Jew…”

Letter from Willy Just to SS-Obersturmbannführer Walter Rauff, 5 June 1942

“RE: Technical alterations to the special vehicles already in operation and those in production.

Since December 1941, for example, 97,000 have been processed using three vans without any faults developing in the vehicles. The well-known explosion in Kulmhof (Chelmno) must be treated as a special case. It was caused by faulty practice. Special instructions have been given to the relevant offices in order to avoid such accidents. The instructions were such as to ensure a considerable increase in the degree of security.

Further operational experience hitherto indicates that the following technical alterations are appropriate….

2) The vans are normally loaded with 9-10 people per square meter. With the large Saurer special vans this is not possible because although they do not become overloaded their maneuverability is much impaired. A reduction in the load area appears desirable. It can be achieved by reducing the size of the van by c. 1 meter. The difficulty referred to cannot be overcome by reducing the size of the load. For a reduction in the numbers will necessitate a longer period of operation because the free spaces will have to be filled with CO. By contrast, a smaller load area which is completely full requires a much shorter period of operation since there are no free spaces….

3) The connecting hoses between the exhaust and the van frequently rust through because they are corroded inside by the liquids which fall on them. To prevent this the connecting piece must be moved so that the gas is fed from the top downwards. This will prevent liquids flowing in….

6) The lighting must be better protected against damage than hitherto….It has been suggested that lighting should be dispensed with since they are allegedly never used. However, experience shows that when the rear door is closed and therefore when it becomes dark, the cargo presses hard towards the door….It makes it difficult to latch the door. Furthermore, it has been observed that the noise always begins when the doors are shut presumably because of fear brought on by the darkness.”

Letters to Adolf Rosenberg, sent by Hinrich Lohse and Wilhelm Kube
15 November 1941
Reichskommissar for Ostland
IIa 4
Secret
To: Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories
RE: Execution of Jews

To: Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories
RE: Execution of Jews

. . .Will you please inform me whether your inquiry of 31 October should be interpreted as a directive to liquidate all the Jews in Ostland? Is this to be done regardless of age, sex, and economic requirements (for instance, the Wehrmacht’s demand for skilled workers in the armament industry)? Of course, the cleansing of Ostland of Jews is a most important task; its solution, however, must be in accord with the requirements of war production.

Reichskommissar for Ostland(Hinrich Lohse.

December.1941
Reichskommissar for Ostland
To: Higher SS and Police Leader

. . . I request most emphatically that the liquidation of Jews employed as skilled workers in armament plants and repair workshops of the Wehrmacht who cannot be replaced at present by local personnel be prevented. . .

. . . Provision is to be made as quickly as possible for the training of suitable local personnel as skilled workers. . .
Lohse
Reichskommissar for Ostland

6.December.1941
Minsk
Generalkommissar for Byelorussia
To: Reichskommissar for Ostland

I wish to ask you personally for an official directive for the conduct of the civilian administration towards the Jews deported from Germany to Byelorussia. Among these Jews are men who fought at the Front and have the Iron Cross, First and Second Class, war invalids, half-Aryans, even three-quarter Aryans. . .

. . .These Jews will probably freeze or starve to death in the coming weeks.
. . On my own responsibility, I will not give the SD any instructions with regard to the treatment of these people. . .

I am certainly a hard [man] and willing to help solve the Jewish question, but people who come from our own cultural sphere just are not the same as the brutish hordes in this place. Is the slaughter to be carried out by the Lithuanians and Letts, who are themselves rejected by the population here? I couldn’t do it. I beg you to give clear directives [in this matter,] with due consideration for the good name of our Reich and our Party, in order that the necessary action can be taken in the most humane manner.
Heil Hitler!
Wilhelm Kube”

SS-Oberführer Viktor Brack was a key figure in the Nazi regime, particularly known for his involvement in the T-4 Euthanasia Program. This program aimed to exterminate individuals deemed physically or mentally disabled, as well as those considered genetically “unfit,” in the pursuit of Nazi racial hygiene ideology. Brack played a significant role in coordinating the logistics of the program, which involved the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of people through methods such as gas chambers and lethal injections.

Given Brack’s position and activities within the Nazi hierarchy, any correspondence attributed to him would likely pertain to matters related to the administration and execution of the T-4 Program or other initiatives associated with Nazi eugenics policies.

Letter from SS-Oberfuehrer Brack to Reichsfuehrer-SS Himmler, June23, 1942

“Honorable Mr. Reichsfuehrer!

According to my impression, there were at least 2-3 million men and women well fit for work among the approx. 10 million European Jews. In consideration of the exceptional difficulties posed for us by the question of labour, I am of the opinion that these 2-3 million should in any case be taken out and kept alive. Of course, this can only be done if they are in the same time rendered incapable of production. I reported to you about a year ago that persons under my instructions have completed the necessary experiments for this purpose. I wish to bring up these facts again. The type of sterilization which is normally carried out on persons with genetic disease is out of the question in this case, as it takes too much time and is expensive. Castration by means of X-rays, however, is not only relatively cheap but can be carried out on many thousands in a very short time. I believe that it has become unimportant at the present time whether those affected will then in the course of a few weeks or months realize by the effects that they are castrated.
In the event, Mr Reichsfuehrer, that you decide to choose these means—in the interest of maintaining labour material—Reichsleiter Bouhler will be ready to provide the doctors and other personnel needed to carry out this work. He also instructed me to inform you that I should then order the required equipment as quickly as possible.

——————————

Dear Brack,
It is only today that I have the opportunity to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of June 23. I am positively interested in seeing sterilization by X-rays tried out at least once in one camp in a series of experiments.
By order of Reichsleiter Bouhler, I submit to you as an enclosure a work of Dr. Horst Schumann on the influence of X-rays on human genital glands.”

(This blog was originally posted on June 18, 2016, titled, “How they justified the killings.”




Sources

https://www.hoover.org/research/curse-goebbels-diaries

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32363846

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/exterminationist-mindset-heinrich-himmlers-october-1943-speeches

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/nazi-correspondence-regarding-gassing-vans

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/application-by-kube-generalkommissar-of-belorussia-to-lohse-concerning-the-condition-of-german-jews-in-minsk

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/memoranda-to-himmler

http://www.camps.bbk.ac.uk/documents/073-racial-experiments.html

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Holocaust Evidence

••••••••••••••••••••WARNING: CONTAINS SOME GRAPHIC IMAGES••••••••••••••••••••

It always amazes me that there are still people who don’t believe that the Holocaust ever happened. The Nazis were meticulous in keeping records and kept a lot of data from the camps. Even Nazis like Oskar Gröning couldn’t believe Holocaust deniers.

Starting the post with one of the opening statements of the Nuremberg Trials.

Aside from the records held by the Nazis, there were, and still are, of course also eyewitness accounts, and the Allied troops recorded what they encountered.

Following is some evidence that was compiled by Robert Wolfe for a poster exhibit in 1990. also some evidence found by the allied forces.

“The other day I visited a German internment camp. I never dreamed
that such cruelty, bestiality, and savagery could really exist in this world!
It was horrible.
—Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower to Mamie Eisenhower
Reims, April 15, 1945

I made the visit [to a German internment camp near Gotha, deliberately,
in order to be in position to give first¬hand evidence of these things if
ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations

I made the visit [to a German internment camp near Gotha, deliberately, in order to be in a position to give firsthand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’
—Eisenhower to Gen. George C. Marshall
April 15, 1945, Secret

When I found the first camp like that I think I never was so angry in my
life. I think people ought to know about such things. It explains some¬
thing of my attitude toward the German war criminal. I think the people at home ought to know what they are fighting for and the kind of person they are fighting.”
—Eisenhower to Pentagon Press Conference
June 18, 1945

in Mein Kampf, Hitler stated that his ultimate aim was the establishment of a new German empire, the Third Reich, which he envisioned as a contiguous, land-based state including all 80 million Germans and reaching from the Atlantic to the Urals.

The loss of Germany’s overseas colonies in World War I influenced Hitler’s view that German needs dictated expansion to the East. But more fundamentally the idea expressed an old belief common in Western thought: that to prosper and grow, a nation had to acquire more land and resources. Historically, many nations had sought to expand through conquest or colonization to provide for their growing populations. However, with the advent of industrialization and increasing commerce, rural agricultural life as the norm was progressively superseded in the urbanizing West, particularly in the 20th century. This trend was strongly opposed by the Nazis, who warmly embraced both the German peasant and rural ideal. In the face of a large population, highly developed industrialization, and increasing urbanization, the Nazi Party wanted to provide more Germans with the opportunity for farming. In one plan, for example, they aimed to resettle 8 million Germans in the East over a 30-year period. Rather than advocate limitation of population, redistribution of land within Germany, expansion of foreign trade, or domestic reform to make the new urban and industrial lifestyles more acceptable, the Nazis chose aggressive imperialism as their program. Their racism and planned aggrandizement in the East permitted them to avoid difficult political decisions at home. Racism and Hitler’s negative views on the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian empire led the Nazis to violently reject the possibility of coexistence with or assimilation of non-Aryans. Hitler rejected the possibility of transplanting Germanic colonists north, south, or west because these areas were densely populated by racially acceptable Europeans and the land in Scandinavia was too mountainous. Only eastward expansion into the vast agricultural plain that begins in central Poland and stretches through fertile Ukraine into European Russia would provide acceptable Nazi Lebensraum.

The main obstacle to this expansion was that the lands to the east were as heavily settled as those in Western Europe. Central and Eastern Europe was the home of over 200 million Slavs, a majority of Europe’s Gypsies, and 75 percent of Europe’s 8.5 million Jews. The fate of Eastern Europe’s inhabitants involved neither moral nor legal considerations because Nazi racial classification placed most of these people in subhuman alien outgroups Untermenschen which did not receive the same consideration as Aryans. In fact, these groups’ numbers, fertility, and supposed racial inferiority were seen as a direct threat to Aryans. The Nazis saw the survival of nations or races as a brutal social Darwinian struggle in which only “the fittest” survived or had a right to survive. Under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler, the Schutzstaffel (the SS) acquired responsibility for racial policies, resettlement, and colonization.

One of the primary documents used to calculate the number of deaths in the Nazi “euthanasia” program is this register (pictured above) discovered in a locked filing cabinet by US Army troops in 1945 at a killing site in Hartheim, Austria. The right page details by month the number of patients who were “disinfected” in 1940. The final column indicates that 35,224 persons had been put to death that year.

In a mass burial grave, the bodies of the dead children were found at a concentration camp at Nordhausen.

Civilians carry empty boxes up a hill to get the bodies of 120 victims killed by S. S. troops in a wooded area. They forced the townspeople to carry the bodies to the cemetery for proper burial. They spent two days building the boxes. Chaplains of the 3rd U. S. Army held short services for Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish victims.

Sources

https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/photographs?search=Holocaust&keywords%5B%5D=3527&title=&accession_number=&field_color=All&field_restrictions=All&photographer=&creator=&description=&people_names=&date%5Bmin%5D=&date%5Bmax%5D=&sort_by=field_date&sort_order=ASC

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documenting-numbers-of-victims-of-the-holocaust-and-nazi-persecution

https://www.loc.gov/item/93000410/

https://www.dla.mil/About-DLA/Images/igphoto/2002289758/


Siegfried Handloser—An Evil Man Who Was Given Compassion

On December 9, 1946, an American military tribunal opened criminal proceedings against 23 leading German physicians and administrators for their willing participation in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution was Telford Taylor, and the chief prosecutor was James M. McHaney. In his opening statement, Taylor summarized the crimes of the defendants.

“The defendants in this case are charged with murders, tortures, and other atrocities committed in the name of medical science. The victims of these crimes are numbered in the hundreds of thousands. A handful only are still alive; a few of the survivors will appear in this courtroom. But most of these miserable victims were slaughtered outright or died in the course of the tortures to which they were subjected. For the most part they are nameless dead. To their murderers, these wretched people were not individuals at all. They came in wholesale lots and were treated worse than animals.”

Siegfried Handloser was one of the men on trial. He was born in Konstanz. Since World War I, he has been in the German Army Medical Service. He entered the Kaiser Wilhelm Academy in Berlin in 1903. After passing the state examination in 1910, he was employed in various positions in the medical service from 1928-32. Eventually, he became a consultant in the Reichswehr Ministry.

Handloser was a Lieutenant General in the medical service and medical inspector in the Wehrmacht. He also served as chief of medical services of the armed forces. He was found guilty of participation in high altitude, freezing, malaria, mustard gas, sulfanilamide, seawater, epidemic jaundice, and spotted fever experiments on humans. He also conducted bone, muscle, and nerve regeneration and bone-transplantation experiments. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Handloser joined the committee of the German Society for Internal Medicine (DGIM-Deutsche Gesellschaft für Innere Medizin) in 1937. The German Society for Internal Medicine (DGIM) was founded in Wiesbaden in 1882 and, with over 30,000 members, still is one of the largest medical-scientific professional societies in Europe.

Handloser effectively became the Nazi delegate In 1938. He only got here because of his political role, not through scientific achievement. He had not previously been a member of the DGIM.

Handloser was promoted to the position of Army Group physician of the Nazi Army Group Command 3. In October 1939, and was named honorary professor.

Handloser’s career took him to Army Group Command 3 in Vienna in 1938. He was an Army Medical Inspector and Army Surgeon in the General Quartermaster’s Office of the Army High Command from February 1941. He was appointed the first Chief of Wehrmacht Medical Services (“Chief W San”) at the High Command of the Wehrmacht in June/July 1942.

Handloser cooperated with Ernst Robert Grawitz, “Reichsarzt-SS und Polizei,” but was not his superior. He was in charge of all the Wehrmacht medical personnel—including the medical units of the Waffen-SS.

Handloser became responsible for all medical crimes in the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS. He experienced increasing criticism during the war, as there were deficiencies in medical supplies, which eventually came to a complete collapse.

Handloser attended a meeting on December 29, 1941, at which it was decided to conduct human experiments to test typhus vaccines at Buchenwald Concentration Camp.

The tests resulted in the deaths of about 100 people. Handloser actively operated the organization of forced prostitution in the territories occupied by the Nazis, using his position as chief of the Wehrmacht Medical Service. Handloser strove to minimize the danger of venereal disease and to prevent “sexual intercourse with Jewish women.”

Orderly prostitution was also intended to avoid undesirable contact with women in the occupied territories, which could have been used for espionage purposes. After Hitler refused parole for soldiers convicted of homosexual acts in 1942, Handloser turned his attention to this issue as well. In this context, the establishment of more Wehrmacht brothels to “remedy the sexual emergency” was discussed.

Handloser was convicted by the American Military Tribunal No. 1 (the Doctors’ Trial) in August 1947 and sentenced to life imprisonment. This was later reduced to 20 years, but in 1954, he was released shortly before dying of cancer in Munich at the age of 69. He was shown compassion where he had none himself.


Sources

https://www.dgim-history.de/en/biography/Handloser;Siegfried;1126

https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/sfz25809.html

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/defendants-in-the-doctors-trial

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Karin Magnussen—Mengele’s Willing Assistant

Somebody once told me, “Evil acts can only be committed by men.” I disputed that notion. History has many examples of women who are just as evil—if not even more evil than men.

Anyone who knows me knows how important eye health is to me. In 2011, I lost my right eye, and in 2015, I nearly lost the left one.. For the best part of a year, I was basically blind. When I see something about eye health or care—it immediately catches my attention.

Karin Magnussen was a German biologist, teacher and researcher at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics department during the Third Reich. She is known for her 1936 publication, Race and Population Policy Tools, and her studies of heterochromia iridium (different-coloured eyes) using iris specimens supplied by Josef Mengele from Auschwitz Concentration Camp victims.

Mengele sent blood samples from about 200 patients of various races to the Berlin Institute. Karin Magnussen received human parts (such as eyes taken from a deceased Sinti family) from the notorious concentration camp—Auschwitz.

This is from a colleague—she received the information that more twins and family members with Heterochromic irises would be found in the Sinti family in Mechau from northern Germany. Karin Magnussen had adrenaline eye drops administered to inmates from Auschwitz Concentration Camp. The Sinti family had a high prevalence of heterochromia iridium and was forced to participate in this study. Members of this family, as well as other victims, were later killed, had their eyes enucleated and sent to Magnussen for examination. Magnussen articulated the findings of these events in a manuscript that has never been published.

No fewer than 40 pairs of eyes were received by Magnussen from Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Hungarian prisoner pathologist Miklós Nyiszli noted after the autopsy of the Sinti twins that they had been killed, not due to illness but because of a chloroform injection to the heart. Nyiszli had to prepare their eyes and send them to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.

Mengele was not an ophthalmologist, but he did work in close collaboration and complicity with Karin Magnussen and Otmar Von Verschuer at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. The eye colour protocol objective was to demonstrate hereditary differences in iris structure determined by race and ostensibly to cure heterochromia. Mengele sent heterochromous Gypsy eyes to Magnussen, extracted from the bodies of inmates who died (or he killed). Mengele injected adrenaline into the children’s eyes, in an attempt to change eye colour and to study environmental influences. Magnussen was fully aware of Mengele’s methods.

At least until spring 1945, Magnussen was working in Berlin. After the end of World War II, she moved to Bremen and continued to complete her research. She was published in 1949. She was later de-nazified in Bremen.

In 1950, Magnussen taught at a girls high school in Bremen. She worked as a study counsellor and official, including teaching biology. She was considered a popular teacher who prepared interesting biology lessons. Her pupils could examine, for example, living and dead rabbits from their breeding. Until 1964, essays in scientific journals were published by her. She retired in August 1970. Even in old age, she justified the Nazi racial ideology. She noted in 1980, in a conversation with the geneticist Benno Müller-Hill, that the Nuremberg Laws were not fair enough. She also denied until the last minute that Mengele would have killed children for their scientific studies. She was entangled by her cooperation with Mengele, the supply of human materials, and mired deep in concentration camp crimes that she claimed to know nothing about.

In 1990, Magnussen moved into a nursing home and died in February 1997 in Bremen

Sources

https://www.dw.com/en/skeletons-in-the-closet-of-german-science/a-1587766

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32387532/

http://www.estherlederberg.com/Eugenics%20(Anecdotes)/Karin%20Magnussen.html

Experiments on Women in Auschwitz

On 7 July 1942, Heinrich Himmler, in cooperation with three others, including a physician, inaugurated experimenting on women in Auschwitz and investigated extending this experimentation on men.

Himmler convened a conference in Berlin to discuss the prospects for using concentration camp prisoners as objects of medical experiments. The other attendees were the head of the Concentration Camp Inspectorate, SS General Richard Glueks (hospital chief), SS Major-General Gebhardt and Professor Karl Clauberg (one of Germany’s leading gynaecologists). The conference outcome showed the major program of medical experimentation on Jewish women at Auschwitz was allowed. The experiments performed secretively ensured prisoners would not be aware of what was happening.

The aim was to obtain a fast, cheap method of sterilization “not only to defeat the Jewish enemy,” the SS Reich Leader wrote, “but also to exterminate him.” The sterilization campaign used experimental drugs and X-ray radiation to sterilize several thousand women and several hundred men.

The experimentation would take the form of sterilization via massive doses of radiation or uterine injections. Also decided was a consult with an X-ray specialist about the prospects of using X-rays to castrate men and demonstrating this on male Jewish prisoners. Adolf Hitler endorsed this plan on the condition that it remained top secret.

Below are testimonies by two women. They are only known as Ms A and Ms B to protect their identity and more importantly, dignity.

Ms A
“The experiment was done to me in Auschwitz, Block 10. The experiment was done on my uterus. I was given shots in my uterus and as a result of that, I was fainting from severe pain for a year and a half. [Years later,] Professor Hirsh from the hospital in Tzrifin examined me and said that my uterus became as a uterus of a 4-year-old child and that my ovaries shrank.”

Ms B
“I was put into Barrack No. 10 in Auschwitz in April of 1944. After a month or so of being placed in Barrack No. 10, I as well as the other female prisoners no longer produced monthly menses and experiences terrible effects of a rash. First, pus-filled blisters appeared then turned into sores. In some cases, this rash occurred on both my arms and my chest. In the morning and the night, we were lined up approximately for two hours for a ‘roll call.’ During this time Dr Mengele came once or twice a week and he pulled out the weak and the sick from the line and they never have been seen again. It was necessary to make sure that the entire body was covered so Dr Mengele would not see even one sore, or our life would be over. Dr Gisella Perl assisted Dr Mengele during the day. However, at night Dr Perl came into the barrack and administered an ointment with glue-like consistency to every sore, in order to heal this horrific rash. Dr Perl came periodically to Barrack No. 10 and also went to other barracks to administer this ointment. The rash needed several weeks to clear up; however, it would often return a few days later. In Auschwitz, there was a belief among the female prisoners that the soup we were given to eat was drugged and the drug was the reason why we suffered from this horrific rash. Without Dr Perl’s medical knowledge and willingness to risk her life by helping us, it would be impossible to know what would have happened to me and many other female prisoners. I lived in Sighet, the same town as Dr Gisella Perl until I was 16 when I was sent away to the ghetto. I remember what a wonderful reputation she had, and how well-known she was in our area. My mother was her patient, and my grandmother went to her husband, Dr Krauss, who was an internist. When we were both in Auschwitz, I remember she was the doctor of the Jews there.”

sources

Personal Statements From Victims of Nazi Medical Experiments

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/himmler-decides-to-begin-medical-experiments-on-auschwitz-prisoners

https://jewishcurrents.org/july-7-nazi-medical-experimentation-begins

Evil Science

Six weeks after Americans liberated Buchenwald in April 1945, a guide shows an American soldier human organs the Nazis removed from prisoners.

The one thing that I have conflicting feelings about is the data that was gathered from the Nazi experiments. On one hand, I believe it should never be used, on the other hand, I have benefitted myself from it via some medications I used, although I did not know the origins at the time.

The evil experiments conducted by Nazi physicians which have on some occasions resulted in medicines, as well as the conditions that made them possible, are still a subject of heated debates among historians and bioethicists. Proponents of various positions often refer to the Nazi period in the discussion of the ethics of research on human subjects. The Nuremberg Medical Trial of 1946–47 and the ensuing Nuremberg Code addressed in particular the absence of consent of those involved in research in Nazi experiments, and as a consequence formulated the principle of informed consent for the first time on an international level. In addition to this crucial issue, the preconditions and inherent rationale of Nazi biomedical science have been at the centre of many debates. Recent historical research documents both similarities and differences between Nazi medicine and medicine in other countries in the developed world. It also suggests implications relevant to today’s debates on the ethics of research involving human beings. The Nuremberg Code is a set of ethical research principles for human experimentation created by the court in US v Brandt, one of the Subsequent Nuremberg trials that were held after the Second World War.

However, the vast majority of the experiments were borne out of an evil ideology.

During World War II, Nazi doctors conducted as many as 30 different types of experiments on concentration-camp inmates. They performed these studies without the consent of the victims, who suffered indescribable pain, mutilation, permanent disability, or in many cases death as a result. There has been no full evaluation of the number of victims of Nazi research, who the victims were, and the frequency and types of experiments and research.

Dr Fritz Klein, an SS doctor, committed to death thousands of men women and children in the Belsen Horror camp. He experimented to some extent by injecting Benzine into his victims to harden their arteries.

The picture shows Dr Fritz Klein speaking for the Movietone News sound truck in Front of the grave in which are buried some of his victims.

Without a reliable, evidence-based historical analysis, compensation for surviving victims has involved many problems. Victim numbers have been consistently underestimated from the first compensation scheme in 1951 when the assumption was of only a few hundred survivors. The assumption was that most experiments were fatal. This project’s use of several thousand compensation records in countries where victims lived (such as Poland) or migrated to (as Israel), or were collected by the United Nations or the German government has corrected this impression. The availability of person-related evidence from the International Tracing Service at Bad Arolsen further helps to determine whether a victim survived. Major repositories of documents like the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Yad Vashem archives, court records in war crimes proceedings, and oral history collections notably the Shoah Foundation have been consulted. Record linkage of named records is essential for the project and shows how a single person could be the victim of research on multiple occasions. Father Leon Michałowski, born 22 March 1909 in Wąbrzeźno, was subjected to malaria in August 1942 and then to freezing experiments in October 1942

Experiments in the context of aviation medicine were aimed at finding methods to help pilots survive after their planes had been hit at very high altitudes, or after an emergency landing at sea. The experiments, carried out in the Dachau concentration camp, focused on physiological questions, such as the effects on the human body of low pressure at high altitudes, or of drinking salt water. The researchers responsible, such as Siegfried Ruff, Sigmund Rascher, and Georg Weltz, were all associated with university institutes or the German Air Force. For the high-altitude experiments, about 200 people were chosen from the camp prisoners, at least 70 of whom died during the experiments in a specially designed low-pressure cabin or were killed afterwards to study the pathological changes in their brains. Judged strictly on scientific terms, the methods and results of some of these experiments were innovative and useful. The US Air Force continued some of this research after the war and published the results in cooperation with several German physicians involved in the original experiments.

Guy Morand, a French resistance fighter who was a prisoner in Dora, testified in 1995 that, after an apparent sabotage attempt, Wernher von Braun ordered a prisoner to be flogged, while Robert Cazabonne, another French prisoner, claimed von Braun stood by as prisoners were hanged by chains suspended by cranes.  However, these accounts may have been a case of mistaken identity. Former Buchenwald inmate Adam Cabala claims that von Braun went to the concentration camp to pick slave labourers:

… also the German scientists led by Prof. Wernher von Braun were aware of everything daily. As they went along the corridors, they saw the exhaustion of the inmates, their arduous work and their pain. Not one single time did Prof. Wernher von Braun protest against this cruelty during his frequent stays at Dora. Even the aspect of corpses did not touch him: On a small area near the ambulance shed, inmates were tortured to death by slave labour and the terror of the overseers was piling up daily. But, Prof. Wernher von Braun passed them so close that he was almost touching the corpses.

Wernher von Braun inventor of the Nazi V-2 rocket, a member of the Nazi party, and a member of the SS could be linked to the deaths of thousands of concentration camp prisoners. Two and a half decades later on Wednesday, July 16, 1969, von Braun stood in the firing room at Kennedy Spaceflight Centre and watched another of his rockets, the Saturn V, take the Apollo 11 crew to the Moon.

I think the question if we should use the Nazis’ evil—will science remain a conflicting and controversial one?

sources

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/chasing-moon-wernher-von-braun-and-nazis/

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/a-amp-s-interview-michael-j-neufeld-23236520/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309164527_Nazi_Medical_Research_in_Neuroscience_Medical_Procedures_Victims_and_Perpetrators

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2013/5/3/wernher-von-braun-historys-most-controversial-figure

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun#Experiments_with_rocket_aircraft

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/holocaust/experiside.html

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(04)17619-8/fulltext

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4822534/

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-medical-experiments

10,000 Sterilizations Per Day

Sometimes people are evil because they are ignorant. Other times people are evil because they can be, and the regime they follow has given them a carte blanche to do whatever they want. Dr Clauberg probably qualifies for both groups.

Dr Clauberg was a German gynaecologist who conducted medical experiments on human subjects (mainly Jewish) at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. He worked with Horst Schumann in X-ray sterilization experiments at Auschwitz.

In 1945, near the close of World War II, he was captured by the Red Army and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Released in 1955 under a prisoner exchange agreement, he returned to Germany and continued to practice medicine.

Dr Clauberg developed a method of non-surgical mass sterilization. Under the pretext of performing a gynaecological examination, he first checked to make sure that the Fallopian tubes were open and then introduced a specially prepared chemical irritant, which caused acute inflammation. This led to the growing together of the tubes within a few weeks, and thus their obstruction. X-rays were used to check the results of each procedure. He was very proud of his achievements and boasted about them in a letter to Himmler.

June 7, 1943 letter from Professor Clauberg to Himmler, on his research concerning sterilization of women (Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals – Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., 1949-1953, Vol 1, p. 730):

Dear Reich Leader,

Today, I am fulfilling my obligation to report to you from time to time about the state of my research work…

The method I contrived to achieve the sterilization of the female organism without operation is as good as perfect. It can be performed by a single injection made through the entrance of the uterus in the course of the customary gynaecological examination known to every physician. If I say that the method is “as good as perfected” this means:

  1. Still to be worked out are only minor improvements to the method.
  2. Already today, it could be put to practical use in the course of our regular eugenic sterilization and could thus replace the operation.

As to the question which you, Reich Leader, asked me almost one year ago, i.e., how much time would probably be required to sterilize 1,000 women by using this method? Today I can answer you with regard to the future as follows:

If my researches continue to have the same results as up to now – and there is no reason to doubt that— then the moment is not far off when I can say:

“One adequately trained physician in one adequately equipped place, with perhaps ten assistants (the number of assistants in conformity with the speed desired) will most likely be able to deal with several hundred if not even 1,000 per day.”

He returned to West Germany, where he was reinstated at his former clinic based on his prewar scientific output. Bizarre behaviour, including openly boasting of his achievements in “developing a new sterilization technique“ at Auschwitz Concentration Camp“ destroyed any chance he might have had of staying unnoticed. In 1955, after the public outcry from groups of survivors, Clauberg was arrested. He died before trial on August 9, 1957, in Kiel, Germany.

sources

https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/258/

https://www.auschwitz.org/en/history/medical-experiments/carl-clauberg/

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/carl-clauberg

https://academic.oup.com/jhmas/article-abstract/72/3/272/3869820?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false
Carl Clauberg (1898–1957)

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Dachau herb garden

Aside from their murderous practices, the SS also had several businesses.

On January 23, 1939 Oswald Pohl .the head of “SS Main Economic and Administrative Office” founded the “German Research Institute for Nutrition and Food Provision Ltd.” The shareholders were the SS concern “German Earth and Stone Works Ltd.” and a member of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. Although his name is not found in available sources, it can be assumed that the individual concerned was the SS-Standartenfuhrer (Colonel) Dr. Salpeter whose name was recorded as that of a trusted shareholder at the end of 1939. The major aim of the undertaking was the cultivation and study of medicinal plants and spices. Its management was the responsibility of Hauptsturmfuhrer (Captain) Heinrich Vogel in the Office of Economic Administration of the WVHA. According to the partnership agreement the research institute had the following tasks:

a) Systematic research and cultivation of those medicinal herbs native to Germany in the interest of the national economy
b) Supplying German and foreign markets with German drugs.
c) Production of new drugs and new syntheses based on scientific research.
d) Maintenance of laboratories.
e) Acquisition of plots
f) The organization of all commercial and agricultural transactions arising in connection with the enterprise e.g. poultry and animal farms etc.

The plantation at the Dachau concentration camp was the centerpiece of the whole venture which came to include a wide range of assorted projects. While at the end of 1939 there were in total only three in operation (Dachau, Ravensbruck, Bretsteintal in der Steiermark.) by the end of 1944 the “German Research Institute for Nutrition and Food Provisions Ltd” comprised over twenty agricultural enterprises as well as fish hatcheries and the administration and oversight of properties in the occupied territories of Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Soviet Union.

One of these enterprises was the herb garden in Dachau, Known as the plantation.

The plantation at Dachau and the smaller one at Ravensbruck concentration camp were distinctive in the sense that they were cultivated almost exclusively by prisoners. The other projects, which were spread across Germany an Austria, employed a good deal more civilian workers and were cultivated only in part by prisoners. They were also less labor intensive, being based around experiments with biodynamic cultivation methods in which both Himmler and Pohl were believers as well as cattle and sheep breeding and experimenting with veterinary medicine etc.

Ernst-Günther Schenck was tasked to set up the plantation.in Dachau concentration camp, which contained over 200,000 medicinal plants, from which, among other things, vitamin supplements for the Waffen-SS were manufactured.

In 1940 he was appointed as inspector of nutrition for the SS. In 1943 Schenck developed a protein sausage, which was meant for the SS frontline troops. Prior to its adoption it was tested on 370 prisoners in Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, some of whom died of hunger.

The extensive cultivation of medicinal herbs, however, particularly in the given climate conditions, was highly labor intensive: such a project under the the prevailing wage conditions was hardly feasible. For the initiators of the project to use concentration camp prisoners was therefore an obvious one. Using a labor force that could be exploited could guarantee the viability of the whole undertaking.

The plantation was located outside the prisoner camp. It was a large nursery with areas of cultivated land that, from 1938 onwards, the prisoners were forced to lay out and work on. The SS described this agricultural operation euphemistically as the “herb garden”. Today, the area is mostly overbuilt with industrial buildings.

The complex comprised numerous structures, including a maintenance building, a teaching and research institute, a shop, an equipment shed, a bee house, greenhouses, as well as large sections of productive land. It was Heinrich Himmler’s idea that by cultivating and studying medicinal and aromatic herbs the Nazi state could itself independent of its reliance on foreign medicines and herbs. Establishing a “Volk medicine” in close touch with nature was a prestige project of Nazi health policy and was avidly supported by the leader of the SS. Responsible for selling the produce from the experiments and testing was the SS-owned company “Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Ernährung und Verpflegung GmbH” (DVA).

The residents of Dachau, as in the town Dachau, and neighboring areas could purchase the produce of the “herb garden” in a shop. There individual prisoners succeeded in secretly establishing contact with the civilian population who helped them, at the risk of death, to smuggle goods and information in and out of the camp.

The prisoners called the feared deployment to the outdoor areas of the “herb garden” the “plantation” work detail. They were forced to do the extremely arduous and exhausting work no matter the weather. Inadequate clothing, malnutrition, bullying and abuse by the SS turned the already hard outdoor work into a perilous torture. The working conditions in the buildings and greenhouses were less brutal. A work detail of illustrators had to compile a herbarium.

The former administrative and institute building as well as remnants of three greenhouses with added end structures have survived. There are plans to restore the building ensemble, which is in the possession of the City of Dachau authority. Based on a new utilization concept, the historical structures are to be integrated into the Memorial Site and become part of its ‘space of memory’.

In April 1945 Dr. Ernst-Günther Schenck volunteered to work in an emergency casualty station located in the large cellar of the Reich Chancellery, near the Vorbunker and Führerbunker,during the battle in Berlin.

Although he was not trained as a surgeon and lacked the experience, as well as the supplies and instruments necessary to operate on battle victims, he nonetheless assisted in major surgical operations. During these surgeries, Schenck was aided by Dr. Werner Haase, who also served as one of Hitler’s private physicians. Although Haase had much more surgical experience than Schenck, he was greatly weakened by tuberculosis, and often had to lie down while giving verbal advice to Schenck.

During the end time in Berlin, Schenck saw Hitler in person twice, for only a brief time: once when Hitler wanted to thank him, Haase, and nurse Erna Flegel for their emergency medical services, and once during the reception after Hitler’s marriage to Eva Braun.

Because of this chance encounter with Adolf Hitler his memoirs proved historically valuable. His accounts of this period are prominent in the works of Joachim Fest and James P. O’Donnell regarding the end of Hitler’s life, and were included in the film Downfall (2004).

sources

SS experimental agricultural facility “herb garden”/“plantation”

https://www.thirdreicharts.com/the-dachau-herb-garden

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And the evil lived on.

“First do no harm” is a term often associated with the Hippocratic Oath. Although the association is technically incorrect, the Hippocratic Oath is nonetheless an oath that Doctors adhere to.

The Hippocratic Oath is an oath of ethics historically taken by physicians. It is one of the most widely known of Greek medical texts. In its original form, it requires a new physician to swear, by a number of healing gods, to uphold specific ethical standards. The oath is the earliest expression of medical ethics in the Western world, establishing several principles of medical ethics which remain of paramount significance today. These include the principles of medical confidentiality and non-maleficence. As the seminal articulation of certain principles that continue to guide and inform medical practice, the ancient text is of more than historic and symbolic value. Swearing a modified form of the oath remains a rite of passage for medical graduates in many countries, and is a requirement enshrined in legal statutes of various jurisdictions, such that violations of the oath may carry criminal or other liability beyond the oath’s symbolic nature. The oath is attributed to the Greek doctor Hippocrates and.

The actual reference to no harm in the oath is really much stronger then ‘first do no harm’ It says the following

“I will use those dietary regimens which will benefit my patients according to my greatest ability and judgment, and I will do no harm or injustice to them. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art. I will not use the knife, not even, verily, on sufferers from stone, but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein.

Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free. And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession, as well as outside my profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things to be holy secrets.”

Although during the Nazi regime the physicians did not sign up to the oath, on a human level it makes only sense that you try to make a patient better rather then harm them. But several Nazi physicians, although they were ‘human beings’ they only acted inhumanely.

A few months ago I asked the question “Is it acceptable to use data from Nazi experiments?” I think that is a difficult question to answer. Initially I would say no, but what if some of that data was used to save the live of someone in my family. Or what if it was used to find a cure for Rheumatoid Arthritis , something I suffer from? Then the answer would probably be yes.

One thing that I don’t understand that the names of some of these evil men were still used as eponyms to describe some syndromes or disorders, long after the war and some are still being used, despite the fact that they were renamed. Below are just some examples where evil was allowed to live on.

Asperger syndrome- Replacement Term: Autism spectrum disorder.

Hans Asperger “managed to accommodate himself to the Nazi regime and was rewarded for his affirmations of loyalty with career opportunities. He joined several organizations affiliated with the NSDAP (although not the Nazi party itself), publicly legitimized race hygiene policies including forced sterilizations and, on several occasions, actively cooperated with the child ‘euthanasia’ program.

Beck–Ibrahim disease-Replacement Term: Congenital cutaneous candidiasis

Yusuf Ibrahim (May 27, 1877 in Cairo, Egypt – February 3, 1953 in Jena, Germany), also known as Yusuf Bey Murad Ibrahim, was a physician and pediatrician. He was responsible for the description of congenital cutaneous candidiasis, originally known as Beck-Ibrahim disease. The discovery of his association with the Nazi euthanasia program during the World War II resulted in an effort to rename this disease. The clinic for child and adolescent medicine at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena also chose to change its name from Kinderklinik Jussuf Ibrahim after his Nazi past was uncovered.

Cauchois–Eppinger–Frugoni syndrome-Replacement Term: Portal vein thrombosis

Hans Eppinger was born in Prague, the son of the physician Hans Eppinger. His grandmother was Jewish.Eppinger conducted cruel experiments on Romani prisoners in the Dachau concentration camp in order to test the potability of seawater. Eppinger committed suicide with poison on 25 September 1946, one month before he was scheduled to testify in Nuremberg.

Clara cell-Replacement Term: Club Cell

Max Clara owed his career advancement in no small way to his membership in the Nazi party and active support of its programme. In his 1937 paper, Clara acknowledges that the sample he based his work on “was obtained from a prisoner executed by the Nazi ‘justice system

Hallervorden–Spatz disease-Replacement Term: Pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration.

Julius Hallervorden readily admitted that 697 brains he investigated during the Nazi period were from victims of euthanasia. It is alleged that he was present at the killing of more than 60 children and adolescents in the Brandenburg Psychiatric Institution on 28 October 1940. He was reported to have removed brain material himself from euthanasia victims in a nearby extermination (euthanasia) center.

Hugo Spatz was a German neuropathologist. In 1937, he was appointed director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research. He was a member of the Nazi Party, and admitted to knowingly performing much of his controversial research on the brains of executed prisoners. Along with Julius Hallervorden.

Reiter’s syndrome-Replacement Term: Reactive Arthritis

Hans Conrad Julius Reiter was a member of the SS. He participated in medical experiments performed by the Nazis. After the Nazis were defeated, he was arrested by the Red Army in Soviet Union-occupied Germany and tried at Nuremberg. During his detention, he admitted to knowledge of involuntary sterilization, euthanasia, and the murder of mental hospital patients in his function as the gatherer of statistics and acting as “quality control” officer, and to helping design and implement an explicitly criminal undertaking at Buchenwald concentration camp, in which internees were inoculated with an experimental typhus vaccine, resulting in over 200 deaths. He gained an early release from his internment, possibly because he assisted the Allies with his knowledge of germ warfare.

After his release, Reiter went back to work in the field of medicine and research in rheumatology. He died at age 88, in 1969, at his country estate in Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe.

Seitelberger disease-Replacement Term: Infantile neuroaxonal dystrophy

“Franz Seitelberger, a Vienna neurologist and former member of the SS, although never involved in the planning or execution of NS-euthanasia, benefited from it scientifically during the post-war period. Examining the brains of 3 ‘euthanasia’ victims from the Landesanstalt Görden in Brandenburg, Seitelberger earned his PhD in 1954 under the supervision of Julius Hallervorden.

Spatz–Stiefler reaction-Replacement Term: Paralysis agitans reaction

Under Spatz’s control and direction, the brain research institute collaborated with the killing institute at Brandenburg-Gorden, obtaining hundreds of brains from the mentally ill of all ages.

Van Bogaert–Scherer–Epstein syndrome-Replacement Term: Cerebrotendineous xanthomatosis

“During the war, Scherer worked at the Neurology Institute in Breslau, Silesia. Here Scherer was directly involved in neuropathological brain analyses of over 300 Polish and German children euthanized in the nearby Loben Psychiatric Clinic for Youth.

Wegener’s granulomatosis-Replacement Term: Granulomatosis with polyangiitis

The facts which were uncovered do not prove Dr Friedrich Wegener guilty of war crimes. However, the evidence suggests that Dr Wegener was, at least at some point of his career, a follower of the Nazi regime. Dr Wegener’s mentor, Martin Staemmler, was an ardent supporter of the racial hygiene. In addition, our data indicate that Dr Wegener was wanted by Polish authorities and that his files were forwarded to the United Nations War Crimes Commission. Finally, Dr Wegener worked in close proximity to the genocide machinery in Lodz.

Although many of the terms were replaced, some of the original terms are still commonly used. The most common is probably the Aspergers syndrome.

I know there is quite a lot of data in this blog. I do believe it is important to understand that by using these eponyms, we are still keeping the evil alive.

sources

https://www.ima.org.il/MedicineIMAJ/viewarticle.aspx?aid=1082

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1962844/

https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/36/4/706.full

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Is it acceptable to use data from Nazi medical experiments?

The question ‘Is it acceptable to use data from Nazi experiments?’ is one of the most difficult ethical questions to answer. At least for me it is, I am a man who bases a lot of his decisions on his gut feeling. In this case my gut feeling says no.

However if I keep my opinion of this devoid of all emotion, it throws up another question ‘Is it acceptable to use data from Nazi experiments, to safe someone in your family?’. In that case I more then likely would come to a different answer.

I am not going to tell anyone what their answer should be. I will just highlight some of the experiments and how they were conducted. But I’ll start with one experiment and its conclusion.

At the start of August 1942, at Dachau concentration camp, prisoners were forced to sit in tanks of freezing water for up to three hours. After subjects were frozen, they then underwent different methods for rewarming. Many subjects died in this process. The data of this experiment did reveal that body-temperature recovery was fastest with immersion in warm water, but that rewarming and presumably survival were achieved with the other methods, too.

The horizontal axis shows minutes, and the vertical axis temperature (°C). The German title can be translated as “Effect of combined rewarming treatment: warm bath, massage and light box.” The water temperature was 8°C. The arrows and numbers (1 to 6) were superimposed by the present author. Translations of the corresponding notations from the German are: 1, in water; 2, period out of bath (no German notation); 3, warm bath; 4, massage; 5, light box; and 6, response to speech (regaining of consciousness).

Sterilization Experiments: Himmler’s interest in Dr Clauberg’s Cell Block 10 was sterilization. He convinced Clauberg to begin experiments on reversing his infertility treatments and to discover ways to block the fallopian tubes. Clauberg redirected all of his energies toward the single goal of effective mass sterilization. Thousands of inmates had their genitals mutilated in order to discover cheap methods of sterilization. The Nazis hoped that these methods could ultimately be applied to millions of “unwanted” prisoners. Women at Auschwitz were sterilized by injections of caustic substances into their cervix or uterus, producing horrible pain, inflamed ovaries, bursting spasms in the stomach, and bleeding. Young men had their testicles subjected to large doses of radiation and were subsequently castrated to ascertain the pathological change in their testes.

Mustard gas experiments: Between September 1939 and April 1945, many experiments were conducted at Sachsenhausen, Natzweiler, and other camps to investigate the most effective treatment of wounds caused by mustard gas. Test subjects were deliberately exposed to mustard gas and other vesicants (e.g. Lewisite) which inflicted severe chemical burns. The victims’ wounds were then tested to find the most effective treatment for the mustard gas burn.

Poison Experiments: A research team at Buchenwald developed a method of individual execution through the intravenous injections of phenol gasoline and cyanide on Russian prisoners. The experiments were designed to see how fast the subjects would die.

Tuberculosis Experiments: The Nazis conducted experiments to determine whether there were any natural immunities to Tuberculosis (“TB”) and to develop a vaccination serum against TB. Doctor Heissmeyer sought to disprove the popular belief that TB was an infectious disease. Doctor Heissmeyer claimed that only an “exhaustive” organism was receptive to such infection, most of all the racially “inferior organism of the Jews.” Heissmeyer injected live tubercle bacilli into the subjects’ lungs to immunize against TB. He also removed the lymph glands from the arms of twenty Jewish children. About 200 adult subjects perished, and twenty children were hanged at the Bullenhauser Dam in Heissmeyer’s effort to hide the experiments from the approaching Allied Army.

Malaria experiments: Between February 1942 to about April 1945, experiments were conducted at the Dachau concentration camp in order to investigate immunization for treatment of malaria. Healthy inmates were infected by mosquitoes or by injections of extracts of the mucous glands of female mosquitoes. After contracting the disease, the subjects were treated with various drugs to test their relative efficacy. Over 1,200 people were used in these experiments and more than half died as a result .Other test subjects were left with permanent disabilities.

Malaria card of Father Bruno Stachowski from Claus Schilling’s research at Dachau. Approximately 1000 cards were kept back from destruction by the prisoner assistant Eugène Ost.

Epidemic Jaundice experiments: From about June 1943 to about January 1945 experiments were conducted at the Sachsenhausen and Natzweiler concentration camps, for the benefit of the German Armed Forces, to investigate the causes of, and inoculations against, epidemic jaundice. Experimental subjects were deliberately infected with epidemic jaundice, some of whom died as a result, and others were caused great pain and suffering.

Every prisoner of the regime was deemded to be a potential subject for inhuman research. Helpless victims, the inmates of psychiatric hospitals and concentration camps, were available for exploitation while alive. Leading scientists and professors took an active part in this ruthless abuse. Every university anatomical institute in Germany — and probably Austria — was the recipient of the cadavers of victims of Nazi terror, in particular, political victims executed by the Gestapo.

After the war, West Germany allowed Doctor Baron Otmar Von Verschuer to continue his professional career. Doctor Von Verschuer was the mentor, inspiration and sponsor of Mengele. After he executed his victims. Mengele would personally remove the victims’ eyes, while there were still warm, and ship them to Von Verschuer to analyze. n 1951, Verschuer was awarded the prestigious professorship of human genetics at the University of Münster, where he established one of the largest centers of genetics research in West Germany.

The question ‘Is it acceptable to use data from Nazi experiments?’ will remain a controversial one.

sources

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199005173222006

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4822534/

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-medical-experiments

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/epidemic-jaundice-experiments

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/medicine-and-murder-in-the-third-reich#3

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-ethics-of-using-medical-data-from-nazi-experiments#2

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