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:
Still to be worked out are only minor improvements to the method.
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.
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We have all heard about the experiments conducted by the Nazis during World War II, but relatively little is known about the experiments by the Japanese Imperial Army. More specifically Unit 731.
The unit, also is known as, “Detachment 731” and the “Kamo Detachment.” was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that engaged in lethal human experimentation and biological weapons manufacturing during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and World War II.
The unit began as a research unit, investigating the effects of disease and injury on the fighting ability of an armed force. One element of the unit, called “Maruta,” took this research a little further than the usual bounds of medical ethics by observing injuries and the course of disease in living patients.
I will only go into a few of their experiments.
Frostbite Testing: The picture above is of the frostbitten hands of a Chinese person who was taken outside in winter by Unit 731 personnel for an experiment on how best to treat frostbite.
Vivisection: Thousands of men, women, children, and infants interned at prisoner-of-war camps were subjected to vivisection, often performed without anesthesia and usually lethal. In an interview, former Unit 731 member Okawa Fukumatsu admitted to having vivisected a pregnant woman. Vivisections were performed on prisoners after infecting them with various diseases. Researchers performed invasive surgery on prisoners, removing organs to study the effects of disease on the human body.
Venereal Disease: To learn what they needed to know, doctors assigned to Unit 731 infected prisoners with the disease and withheld treatment to observe the uninterrupted course of the illness. A contemporary treatment, a primitive chemotherapy agent called Salvarsan, was sometimes administered over a period of months to observe the side effects.
To ensure effective transmission of the disease, syphilitic male prisoners were ordered to rape both female and male fellow prisoners, who would then be monitored to observe the onset of the disease. If the first exposure failed to establish infection, more rapes would be arranged until it did.
In other tests, subjects were deprived of food and water to determine the length of time until death; placed into low-pressure chambers until their eyes popped from the sockets; experimented upon to determine the relationship between temperature, burns, and human survival; hung upside down until death; crushed with heavy objects; electrocuted; dehydrated with hot fans; placed into centrifuges and spun until death; injected with animal blood, notably with horse blood; exposed to lethal doses of X-rays; subjected to various chemical weapons inside gas chambers; injected with seawater; and burned or buried alive. In addition to chemical agents, the properties of many different toxins were also investigated by the Unit. To name a few, prisoners were exposed to tetrodotoxin (pufferfish or fugu venom), heroin, Korean bindweed, bacterial, and castor oil seeds (ricin). Massive amounts of blood were drained from some prisoners for the study of the effects of blood loss according to former Unit 731 vivisectionist Okawa Fukumatsu. In one case, at least half a liter of blood was drawn at two-to-three-day intervals.
As stated above, dehydration experiments were performed on the victims. The purpose of these tests was to determine the amount of water in an individual’s body and to see how long one could survive with a very low to no water intake. It is known that victims were also starved before these tests began. The deteriorating physical states of these victims were documented by staff at periodic intervals.
One member of Unit 731 later recalled that very sick and unresisting prisoners would be laid out on the slab so a line could be inserted into their carotid artery. When most of the blood had been siphoned off and the heart was too weak to pump anymore, an officer in leather boots climbed onto the table and jumped on the victim’s chest with enough force to crush the ribcage, whereupon another dollop of blood would spurt into the container.
Unit 731 researchers conduct bacteriological experiments with captive child subjects in Nongan County of northeast China’s Jilin Province. November 1940.
Members of Unit 731 were not immune from being subjects of experiments. Yoshio Tamura, an assistant in the Special Team, recalled that Yoshio Sudō, an employee of the first division at Unit 731, became infected with bubonic plague as a result of the production of plague bacteria. The Special Team was then ordered to vivisect Sudō. Tamura recalled:
“Sudō had, a few days previously, been interested in talking about women, but now he was thin as a rake, with many purple spots over his body. A large area of scratches on his chest was bleeding. He painfully cried and breathed with difficulty. I sanitized his whole body with disinfectant. Whenever he moved, a rope around his neck tightened. After Sudō’s body was carefully checked [by the surgeon], I handed a scalpel to [the surgeon] who, reversely gripping the scalpel, touched Sudō’s stomach skin and sliced downward. Sudō shouted “brute!” and died with this last word.”
— Criminal History of Unit 731 of the Japanese Military, pp. 118–119 (1991)
In April 2018, the National Archives of Japan disclosed a nearly complete list of 3,607 members of Unit 731 to Katsuo Nishiyama, a professor at Shiga University of Medical Science. Nishiyama reportedly intended to publish the list online to encourage further study into the unit.
Only 12 of them were ever brought to justice, and the longest jail term served was seven years.
On 15 November 1943, Himmler ordered that Romani and “part-Romanies” were to be put “on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps”.
Between 1933 and 1945, Roma and Sinti in Europe were targets of Nazi persecution. Building on long-held prejudices, the Nazi regime viewed Roma as “a-socials” (outside “normal” society) and as racial “inferiors.” During World War II, the Nazis and their collaborators killed hundreds of thousands of Roma men, women, and children across German-occupied Europe.
Mass killings of Roma reached their pinnacle on July 31–August 2, 1944, when the Germans began the liquidation of the Zigeunerlager (“Gypsy camp”) at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Almost 3,000 Roma were put to death in this single operation.
Under the rule of Nazi Germany, the Roma were persecuted, detained and executed as part of the Holocaust. Roma call the Roma Genocide the Porajmos, which means the ‘Devouring’ in Romani language.
Drawing support from many non-Nazi Germans who harbored social prejudice towards Roma, the Nazis judged Roma to be “racially inferior.” The fate of Roma in some ways paralleled that of the Jews. Under the Nazi regime, German authorities subjected Roma to arbitrary internment, forced labor, and mass murder. German authorities murdered tens of thousands of Roma in the German-occupied territories of the Soviet Union and Serbia and thousands more in the killing centers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. The SS and police incarcerated Roma in the Bergen-Belsen, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen, and Ravensbrück concentration camps. Both in the so-called Greater German Reich and in the so-called Generalgouvernement, German civilian authorities managed several forced-labor camps in which they incarcerated Roma.
Under Adolf Hitler, a supplementary decree to the Nuremberg Laws was issued on 26 November 1935, classifying the Roma as “enemies of the race-based state”.
Under the July 1933 sterilisation law, many Roma were sterilised against their will.
August 2nd is assigned Roma Holocaust Memorial day because on the night of 2nd August 1944, the remaining 2,897 Roma women, old men and children from the so called “Zigeunerlager” or “Gypsy” camp were killed in gas chambers. There were no Roma and Sinti survivors from Auschwitz concentration camp.
SS medical researchers assigned to the Auschwitz complex, such as SS Captain Dr. Josef Mengele, received authorization to choose human subjects for pseudoscientific medical experiments from among the prisoners. Mengele chose twins and dwarves, some of them from the Gypsy family camp, as subjects of his experiments. Approximately 3,500 adult and adolescent Roma were prisoners in other German concentration camps; medical researchers selected subjects from among the Roma incarcerated in Ravensbrück, Natzweiler-Struthof, and Sachsenhausen concentration camps for their experiments, either on site in the camps or at nearby institutes.
German military and SS-police units also shot at least 30,000 Roma in the Baltic States and elsewhere in the occupied Soviet Union, where Einsatzgruppen and other mobile killing units killed Roma at the same time that they killed Jews and Communists. In occupied Serbia, the German authorities killed male Roma in shooting operations during 1941 and early 1942. The total number of Roma killed in Serbia will never be known. Estimates range between 1,000 and 12,000.
In France, Vichy French authorities intensified restrictive measures against and harassment of Roma after the establishment of the collaborationist regime in 1940. In 1941 and 1942, French police interned at least 3,000 and possibly as many as 6,000 Roma, residents of both occupied France and unoccupied France. French authorities shipped relatively few of them to camps in Germany, such as Buchenwald, Dachau, and Ravensbrück.
Robert Ritter was a German racial scientist doctor of psychology and medicine, with a background in child psychiatry and the biology of criminality. In 1936, Ritter was appointed head of the Racial Hygiene and Demographic Biology Research Unit of Nazi Germany’s Criminal Police, to establish the genealogical histories of the German Gypsies, both Roma and Sinti, and became the architect of the experiments Roma and Sinti were subjected to. His pseudo-scientific “research” in classifying these populations of Germany aided the Nazi government in their systematic persecution toward a goal of “racial purity”.
Roma woman with German police officer and Nazi psychologist Robert Ritter
Sometimes known as the “Forgotten Holocaust,” the Roma Genocide was excluded from the history of World War II for decades after the end of the war. There were no Roma witnesses at the Nuremberg Trials.
The genocide of Roma people wasn’t formally recognised until 1982. Until then, the West German government denied that Roma were subjects of racially motivated persecution. Instead, it was insisted that Roma were imprisoned for their ‘asocial’ and ‘criminal’ characteristics, allowing the government to avoid responsibility for racial discrimination and compensation for genocide.
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“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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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There are millions of Holocaust stories I could write, but none will be as powerful as the testimonies of those who survived the darkest era.
Following are some of those testimonies.
Written by Zdeněk and Jiří Steiner, born 20. 5. 1929 in Prague, residents of Prague, former prisoners in the concentration camps of Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, residing in Prague XI., Vratislavova 13, Czech nationality.
“We left Prague bound for Theresienstadt on 22. 12. 1942 together with our parents and a great number of relatives. We spent 8½ months Theresienstadt, where things had been so-so for us. We left Theresienstadt on September 6th, 1943, and, after a miserable two-day journey, we finally arrived at the Neu-Berun train station. From there, they took us to the concentration camp in Birkenau. We were told that it was only a quarantine. After the usual procedures, such as a bath and a getting a tattoo (we were given the numbers 147742 and 147743), we were clothed in old rags (children in adult clothing) and housed in camp B II b, where we spent 6 whole months. We experienced so much in this place. Through the efforts of Fredy Hirsch, a children’s home was established. We children were better off than the adults because we didn’t have to work, our food was a little bit better, and, later, our clothes were better as well. Such was our life in the Birkenau children’s camp under extremely harsh conditions. A doctor arrived in December (each camp had a building for the sick and a single German doctor, who generally didn’t know how to do much else besides sending as many people as possible to their graves, served several of these buildings). With a wave of his fingers, Dr. Mengele decided who lived and who died, just like Nero did in ancient times. This renowned doctor was very interested in us twins, which was actually what saved us despite the fact that we came down with so many illnesses. Once, Dr. Mengele took a closer look at us, but then he contracted spotted typhus. In addition to him, we were tortured by the SS man Buntrock, who had a preference for beating children.
Another SS man, probably a Russian spy, who helped one of our people escape, was shot by other SS officers after he returned.
In the meantime, the fateful month of March began. This month took away our parents and all of our closest friends — the only thing that we still had in our lives. At the start of the month, it was rumored that the entire transport that had arrived in September 1943 would be taken to the labor camp in Heidebreck. And that’s exactly what happened. On March 5th, postcards on which we were supposed to write to our relatives that we were healthy and doing fine were handed out. These cards were sent dated March 25th-27th. We weren’t allowed to write about our departure. On the morning of March 6th, as usual: Blockälteste antreten — an order for the entire transport to go to the lower section of the camp immediately. From there they took us to camp B II a. There were so many rumors going about, for example that it wasn’t a labor transport, but a chimney. We didn’t believe it because we thought it was impossible. We waited all day, and in the evening we were told that the transport couldn’t depart because 100 persons were to be reclaimed. This news greatly disturbed us. A terrible sleepless night wreaked havoc with our nerves. The people, who were now extremely distraught, didn’t pay attention to anything; everyone just wished for this uncertainty to end. Midday, on March 7th, a call: Ordnung am Block, Raportführer Buntrok geht. And he really came, read the names of several doctors, and then we heard our names. We became very frightened, because father’s name wasn’t read, and mother wasn’t present on the block. Buntrok assured father that we would see one another in the evening, and we were taken to the Krankenbau of camp B II b. There, we found out what it was really all about. There were 32 of us in total, twins and doctors combined. Mengele reclaimed us twins because he was interested in us, as we’ve already mentioned. He came to see us the next day. When we told him that our parents had left on the transport, he said: Schade. In the meantime, we found out that the cars had driven off during the night ¨
“In the direction of the crematorium. The camp was empty; flames shot up from the crematorium. We will never forget this scene. But we didn’t believe that our parents were dead. However, we soon found out the truth from a doctor who was a member of the Sonderkommando, who was forced to do this work. Mengele arrived the following day, and took us by car to the Roma camp, which was where his station was. There, he precisely measured and weighed us, measured the length and width of our fingers and nails, the length and width of our noses, and anything else that could be measured and weighed. He also took down the color of our hair and skin. He carefully inspected us. He took fingerprints of our hands and feet. He worked alone; he never entrusted anyone else with the tasks he was performing. Then they brought us to the Krankenbau and life went on. We received 2 liters of soup per day, otherwise the food was the same as before. We were also photographed and x-rayed. Jewish doctors, who guaranteed the correctness of the examinations with their lives, had to examine our nerves, eyes, teeth, and ears. The first labor transport from camp B II b left on 1. 7. In the meantime, another transport from Theresienstadt with 7½ thousand people arrived in May. This brought the number of people in the camp to 12,500, 3,000 of whom left to work. The rest were incinerated within 2 nights. We were taken to B II f. In this new camp, they drew our blood, which made our weakened bodies feel even worse. There is one horrible experience that we will never forget: one of our torturers, the camp doctor Thilo, was making a selection, i.e. choosing the people who would be sent to the crematorium, and he took our names down. What we felt when he did this cannot be described. Fortunately, Mengele heard this and saved us because he still needed us.
The front was approaching and the mood in the camp lifted. During this time, I became a Pipel in the Krankenbau, i.e. a runner, and so I was slightly better off. But then came winter and a new year, which was happier because we could hear the thunder of cannons. A rumor went around that the camp was going to be liquidated, but nothing happened. Finally, on January 16th, they led the first transport on foot out of Birkenau. The following days were extremely vexing, because one transport after another departed. Everyone left voluntarily and we children were the last to leave, partly because we didn’t want to go. People had to walk 60 km in the cold and frost, poorly clothed and hungry. We expected to be told that trains would come pick us up. We finally got what we wanted on January 20th, the day the last SSman left the camp. This was a wonderful time for us. We went wherever we wanted, ate whatever we wanted, did whatever we felt like doing. We roamed around the SS camp. In short, we were having a great time. We went without supervision for 5 days. Then, a group of SDmen arrived. They wanted to do us in, but didn’t get the chance. They, too, fled, and so we stayed until January 27th, when the victorious Red Army took over.
On March 27th, the Czech Svoboda’s Army took charge of us and brought us to Prague. Out of our family of 18, only 3 of us survived.”
Letter from Gerta Sachsová addressed to family friends. Gerta was deported with her husband from Prague to the Theresienstadt Ghetto in July 1943, from where she was sent to Auschwitz in autumn 1944. Her parents and husband were murdered . Gerta describes their fate and her difficult postwar adaptation..
“My Dears,
We are overjoyed that we are finally in written touch with you and that we can write to you in our mother tongue. We have so much to tell you that there isn’t enough paper in the world that could contain it all. Unfortunately, it’s mostly all bad news. So little of it is good. As you have perhaps already learned from Maruška, out of our whole family only Hanka and I returned, but we are happy that at least the two of us were reunited. I must tell you all about our departure from Prague. As you know, Kurt and I were transported to Theresienstadt in July 1943 to be with our parents and Hanka. We were together there for 1 ¼ years. We were doing rather well, all told. Kurt and my parents worked in the office, Hanka in the bakery, and I mostly did nothing because I was sick. Then, in the fall of 1944, we were gradually transported — father left separately, mother with Hanka, and I with Kurt. All of the transports went to Auschwitz. You cannot imagine what we suffered through. I don’t want to describe our experiences and so it’s perhaps a little cruel of me to write and tell you so directly that our dear mother died there. Father, who successfully made it past the selection process, was shot on the Czech border on May 3rd, 1945, just 5 days before the end of the war, during the evacuation of the labor camp where he was sent. Kurt was separated from me in Theresienstadt near the train and it was only when I returned to Prague that I learned that he was held for about 3 weeks in the Small Fortress and was supposedly shot there. We are positive regarding father since he was with Hanka’s young man, who returned. Jirka also returned and we’re living together with him now. I ran into Hanka by happy chance in Prague. She had come back one month earlier than I and she no longer believed that I would return. I’m sure you can imagine what our life is like now. Our financial situation is miserable; we don’t have enough clothes to wear.
I’ll likely find an office job. Hanka is graduating in September and then she’ll probably make her living as an illustrator. In short, this is all that we wanted to tell you about what we went through. We don’t know what the future holds. We are in touch with Maruška. Her little Jana is so adorable. We have visited them several times. Please write us soon and let us know if you are coming. We would love to see you, we have so much to tell. You can’t imagine how we are faring. But at least we are happy that you will come and see us.
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
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Josef Mengele was born in Günzburg on 16 March 1911, the oldest of three sons of Walburga (née Hupfauer) and Karl Mengele. His two younger brothers were Karl Jr. and Alois.
There is an eerie coincidence here, Alois was also the name of the Father of the man he came to admire and serve, Adolf Hitler.
I will not go too deep into the crimes of Josef Mengele as such, because so much has already been written about him, even I have done several pieces in the past. His Father Karl Mengele, a prosperous manufacturer of farming implements. In 1935 Josef got a PhD in physical anthropology at the University of Munich. He also held a doctoral degree in genetic medicine.
A privileged and educated man and yet he could not see how inhumane he was. Or maybe he didn’t want to see. With a slight flick of the finger he would decide who would live or die. Even those who initially were selected to live were subjected to medical experiments or slave labour, eventually often resulting in death.
The most disturbing fact about Mengele is that he died a free man. I have no doubt that he was helped escape Germany after the war and not necessarily only by fellow Nazis. It would not surprise me if he actual had surrendered to the allies, he would have been part of Operation Paperclip, the operation which ensured that many of the Nazi scientists got jobs in the USA and other countries, and not just mediocre positions but highly paid jobs within the scientific fraternity.
But the fact that many of his crimes were well documented and used as evidence during the International Military Tribunal, probably meant that the allies could not be seen endorsing this Angel of Death. Having that said if they would have been serious in capturing him, it would have been very easy to do so because he wasn’t really that hard to find.
It is said to you speak not ill of the dead, but in this case I am willing to make an exception. Jospeh Mengele was beyond the shadow of doubt one of the most evil men who ever lived.
Although as a Doctor he was supposed to look after people and first do no harm. The Hippocratic Oath is the oath the Medical Students take, although the actual quote “First do no harm” actually isn’t a part of the Hippocratic Oath at all by the Greek physician Hippocrates . It is actually from another of his works called Of the Epidemics. One line of the Hippocratic Oath states “The physician must be able to tell the antecedents, know the present, and foretell the future — must mediate these things, and have two special objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm.”
Either way Mengele’s duty as a physician was to after the well being of those he treated. However he used his position in Auschwitz to fulfill his own twisted ideology and for his own sick gratification.
But as the title states this blog is about the death of Mengele. He had evaded prosecution . He had actually been in US custody. Unaware that Mengele’s name already stood on a list of wanted war criminals, US officials quickly released him. From the summer of 1945 until spring 1949, using false papers, Mengele worked as a farmhand near Rosenheim, Bavaria. His prosperous family then aided his emigration to South America. He settled in Argentina. He became a citizen of Paraguay in 1959. He later moved to Brazil, where he met up with another former Nazi party member, Wolfgang Gerhard.
After Wolfgang Gerhard moved back to hi native Austria it is believed the Mengele assumed his identity. The pair had sent several letters to each other. Some of the letters reveal Mengele’s lack of any remorse and how he felt sorry for himself , he complained how ‘bad’ his life was in Brazil, ironically I do agree with his notion of his ‘bad’ life in Brazil. He really should not have fled but should have faced the consequences of his actions and crimes, rather then fleeing like a cowardly dog with his tail between his legs. He should have been executed.
On February 7th, 1979 Mengele went for a swim in near a holiday resort near Bertioga, Brazil, during the swim he had a stroke and drowned. He died age 66 which is a lot older then many of his victims.
In 1985, a multinational team of forensic experts went to Brazil searching for Mengele. The experts established d that a man named Gerhard had died of a stroke while swimming in 1979. Dental records and a DNA test conducted in 1992, revealed that Mengele was the man who had drowned.
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I have to warn you up front, this is not an easy read. I will try to stick to the facts and keep my emotions out of it, regardless on how difficult that will be. And I will keep it only to the experiments and the post war situation for Horst Schumann.
Horst Schumann was an SS-Sturmbannführer and medical doctor who conducted sterilization and castration experiments at Auschwitz he was especially interested in the mass sterilization of Jews by using X-ray radiation.
He worked at Block 30 at the women’s hospital, here set up an x-ray unit in 1942. (the picture below is from an x ray machine in Auschwitz but I don’t know if this one was used by Schumann)
Dr. Schumann did not have any particular qualifications for medical research. His duties prior to his research into sterilization involved the direction of killing centers and selection of victims. By 1942, the doctor and his assistants were at work on X-ray sterilization experiments at Block 30 in Birkenau. In these experiments, men and women had their reproductive areas exposed to a five to eight minute dose of X-rays. Depending on the intensity of the dose, this resulted in external burns or worse. Following exposure, some of the women and men underwent operations to remove reproductive organs for evaluation. Ovaries and testicles were removed and examined. The men also were subject to other brutalizing medical procedures involving semen extraction. Many of the victims died from complications following the surgeries. The survivors were not as likely as others to survive assignment to work details in their weakened condition. Roughly one thousand male and female prisoners were subjected to X-ray sterilization with about two hundred of them undergoing follow-up extractive surgery.
(. Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (Basic Books, 2000), pp. 25, 247, 274-282.)
Both men and women were forcibly sterilized . They were positioned repeatedly for a number of minutes between two x-ray machines, the rays were aimed aiming at their sexual organs. Most victims succumbed to the treatment and died after great suffering, Either that or they were gassed because the injuries they sustained made them unfit to work .Men’s testicles were removed and sent to Breslau for histopathological examination. Schumann chose his test persons himself. They were always young, healthy, good-looking Jewish men, women and girls but who would often look like old people afterwards. Often the intestines were also affected. Another element of Schumann’s experiments was to check whether the radiation had worked, For this they used the so-called semen check. The method was by inserting a stick covered with a rubber hose was into the rectum of the victim and the glands stimulated until ejaculation occurred so that the ejaculate could be tested for sperm. These samples were also sent to the University of Breslau for examination.
Schumann selected several women from Block 10 at the main camp of Auschwitz. To control the radiation on women, prisoner doctors ,Dr. Maximilian Samuel and Dr. Wladislaw Dering had to remove an ovary from a healthy woman.
Another experiment Schumann conducted was typhus experiment. He did this by injecting people with blood from typhus patients and would then attempt to cure the newly infected subjects.
After the war he was a sports doctor for the city of Gladbeck. But when he was identified in 1951 the East German government issued a warrant for his arrest. He managed to evade capture and worked for 3 years as a ships doctor. He had no German passport but in 1954 he applied for a passport in Japan, which was issued to him under his own name. He then fled to Egypt but shortly after he settled in Khartoum in the Sudan as head of a hospital. In 1962 he was forced to flee Sudan after he was recognized by an Auschwitz survivor. He went to Ghana where he received protection from the President
In 1966 he was extradited to West Germany where he stood trial in Frankfurt on September 23,1970. However due to bad health he only served about 18 months in Jail.
He eventually died on 5 May 1983.age 77. A lot older then most of the victims he killed.
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I could fill this blog with pictures of the experiments Joseph Mengele conducted in Auschwitz, but I think most of the readers would not be able to stomach the images. I know I can’t ,therefore I am just going to quote some eye witness reports to illustrate how truly evil this man was. He had a particular interest in twins.
Vera Kriegel
Vera and her twin sister Olga were only five years old when they were taken from their village in Czechoslovakia and deported to Auschwitz.
. “I was looking at a whole wall of human eyes. A wall of blue eyes, brown eyes, green eyes. These eyes they were staring at me like a collection of butterflies and I fell down on the floor.”
In one experiment Vera and her sister Olga and more than 100 other twins were given injections of bacteria which causes Noma disease also known as cancrum oris which is an infection of the mouth or genitals, which causes boils and often turns gangrenous and has a high mortality rate.
Miklós Nyiszli
Miklós Nyiszli testified thatt on one occasion , Mengele personally killed fourteen twins in one night by injecting chloroform in to the heart. If one twin died of disease, Mengele would then kill the other twin, in order that comparative reports could be prepared after their deaths.
Vera Alexander
Vera Alexander testifies in the Eichmann trial, she recalled one experiment by Mengele. He sewed the hands of two gypsy twins together,a sin he sewed one hand of one child to the hand of the other child.
The truly sickening thing is that he died a free man and had lived quite a comfortable life after the war.
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This is a blog I had wanted to do for a long time but was reluctant to actually start it. I was afraid it would be used out of context by both pro life and pro choice advocates. However this blog is really about desperation and inhumane sacrifices. I would therefore urge every one not to use this in the current ongoing anti and pro abortion debates.
No one can understand what these women went through,and no one can judge nor should judge them but have compassion instead.
Regardless if pregnant women were able to work, if it was known they were pregnant they were either sent to the gas chambers killing both mother and unborn baby, or they were sent for ‘medical’ experiments and the out come would be the same,death for both.
Dr Gisella Perl was a Romanian Jewish gynecologist deported together with her family to Auschwitz in 1944. Her husband,son and parents all died in Auschwitz. Her son was gassed and her Husband was beaten to death just before the liberation of Auschwitz. Her daughter survived.
She was spared, only to become an Auschwitz physician under Josef Mengele.
Mengele ordered Perl to report all pregnancies to him directly. Pregnant women, he claimed, would be sent to a different camp, one with better care for mother and child. Perl knew he lied. She also knew that she couldn’t tell him about a single pregnancy. How she’d keep them a secret, she did not quite know
Unfortunately , some women who overheard this conversation went to Mengele to tell him they were pregnant themselves . The women were experimented on and, ultimately, died.
Perl faced a dilemma, if she reported the pregnancies the women would die, if the babies were born the cries would be heard and everyone in the barrack would be killed for keeping the secret.
Therefore,even ,though it went against everything she believed she stated to perform abortions dirty floors with her bare, unwashed hands, without any medical instruments or anesthesia, in the hope that the mothers would survive and later, perhaps, be able to bear children.
Sometime when babies were born the mothers would smother them to death in order to survive themselves.
Perl risked her life if she was ever found out she would have been killed.She did suffer after the war, she tried to kill herself by poisoning herself.
However there were some miracle births as well.In February 1945 a Jewish obstetrician Erno Vadasz was called to the women’s “Pregnancy Unit” in Dachau’s sub camp Kaufering by the Kapo, David Witz. Vadasz was emaciated and weak .
There were 7 women expecting babies,. Although he needed help to stand, Vadasz demanded “soap, knife, hot water, towels,” as for any delivery.The mothers had been well fed before the deliveries, and within a few weeks Vadasz had successfully brought all seven babies into the world. This despite the fact that two of the deliveries were complicated.
I have heard and read the most ridiculous comments about this before, comments like “whey did they have sex in the first place” Sex is one of the most primal human instincts, aside from that it was also a bit of an escape of all the horrors around them. A moment of being loved rather then being despised. An opportunity to feel human again.
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History of Sorts 
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