Experiments During The Holocaust

During World War II, a number of German physicians conducted painful and often deadly experiments on thousands of concentration camp prisoners without their consent. Doctors are looked at as the saviors of mankind, the healers, and caretakers of our utter existence. Even dating back to ancient civilizations, as they revered to doctors as having “special power” to protect life. The practice of medicine by the Nazi doctors is both outrageous and shocking, violating the trust placed upon them by humanity and breaking basic rights of morality. People must remember the Holocaust as a insult to humanity. The lives lost were not only great in number, but offered so much to mankind. How the world would have been different if the millions of souls
destroyed could have lived.

Many experiments were aimed at facilitating the survival of military personnel.
In Dachau, physicians from the German air force and from the German Experimental Institution for Aviation conducted high-altitude experiments on the Jewish prisoners held there. The German forces were ill prepared for the bitter cold and thousands of German soldiers died of freezing or were debilitated by cold injuries.The experiments were conducted under the supervision of Dr. Sigmund Rascher At Birkenau, Dachau and Auschwitz. Using low-pressure chambers, determining the maximum altitude from which crews of damaged aircraft could parachute to safety. Scientists there carried out “freezing experiments” using the Jewish to find an effective treatment for hypothermia. The freezing experiments were divided into two parts. First, to establish how long it would take to lower the body temperature to death and second how to best resuscitate the frozen victim. The “icy vat method” was the fastest
way

Chaggar to drop the body temperature. Jews were usually stripped naked and prepared for the experiment. A insulated probe which measured the drop in the body temperature was inserted into the rectum. The victim was placed in the vat of cold water and started to freeze as the immediate drop of temperature caused lethal shock. It was learned that most victims lost consciousness and died when the body temperature dropped to 25 C.

Other experimentation aimed at developing and testing pharmaceuticals and treatment methods for injuries and illnesses which German military and occupation personnel encountered in the field. At German concentration camps Sachsenhausen, Dachau, Natzweiler, Buchenwald, and Neuengamme, scientists tested immunization compounds for the prevention and treatment of contagious diseases including malaria, typhus, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, yellow fever, and infectious hepatitis. The experiments would often be given through injection (to the Jewish prisoners) in which were never cleaned, meaning prisoners would die of outside causes as well as the initial serum, causing fatal results on its own. The Ravensbruck camp was the site of bone-grafting experiments, The experiments involved the regeneration of bones, muscles, and nerves, and the transplantation of bone. In order to carry out these goals, sections of bone were removed from the subjects, legs were removed at the hips, shoulders and arms were removed, and muscles and nerves were removed from healthy patients. These parts were then transferred to other victims in order to see if they could regenerate or transplant successfully. Most of these experiments resulted in death or permanent mutilations. At Natzweiler and Sachsenhausen, prisoners were subjected the investigation of the most effective treatment of wounds caused by Mustard gas. Wounds deliberately inflicted on the subjects were infected with the gas. Chaggar
Some of the subjects died as a result of these experiments and others suffered intense pain and injury. Another large category of medical experimentation sought to advance the racial and ideological tenets of the Nazi worldview. The most infamous were the experiments of Josef Mengele at Auschwitz. Mengele conducted medical experiments on twins: “ Twins (2 boys) received several two liter enemas which caused them much pain and discomfort. The boys on different days were strapped over a bench table and their rectums were hyper descended after which they received an extensive lower gastrointestinal examination. This extensive procedure was performed without any anesthesia. The young men were crying so loud that Doctor Mengele ordered they be gagged. The next day they received a painful and humiliating urological examination. In this examination tissue samples were taken from the kidneys and prostate. After this three weeks of tortuous medical examinations they were taken to the dissection laboratory. Using two doctors, each twin was simultaneously given an injection in the heart, taking their lives. They were dissected and their organs were sent to the Institute of Biological Racial and Evolutionary Research Berlin.”. Mengele also directed serological experiments on Roma (Gypsies), as did Werner Fischer at Sachsenhausen, in order to determine how different "races" withstood various contagious diseases. This would often lead to fatal and horrendous deaths as people experienced outrageous fatal allergic reactions. The Nordic or Aryan Race was the most important goal of the Nazis.
“The blonde hair, blue eye, super men were to be the only race”. Anyone else that did not meet the race requirements were to by cleansed from society through genocide. Hitler and the German High command made a list rules for the fellow Nazis to follow. Requiring all SS before marriage must submit to general testing to insure racial purity. Thousands of marriages were denied due to this. If the laws for marriage were broken it could mean the death penalty. First the party needed propaganda to prove all other races were inferior. Measurements of heads, eyes, nose, blood were required. The vast majority of the early experiments were a propaganda sham. It was determined Gypsies had different blood and were inclined to criminal behavior. The same type of findings were made of all races other than the Nazis. After the camps were started, vast genetic experiments were undertaken. The range of the testing was broad and specialized. The two major groups of experiments were first to refine the master race and second to determine the cause of defects. Dr. Josef Mengele research on twins and Gypsies exemplifies the quest for the genetic studies. Dr. Mengele was known as the “Angel of Death”. He would be at every selection when the new trains would arrive at Auschwitz. After the victims were unloaded off the trains and stripped naked and divided into men, women, and children, he would sort through the thousands of
people. Most went straight to the gas chambers and others to hard labor in the camps. The twins, dwarfs, and unique physical specimens were selected to be assigned to the experimental blocks. In many ways the majority who were killed in the gas chambers were much better off than the survivors that had no idea what horrors awaited them. Many other experiments were conducted at the time of the holocaust, they proved to be sadistic- Freezing, Genetics, Infectious Diseases, Torture Killing, High Altitude, Pharmacological, Sterilization, Surgery and Traumatic Injuries. “After the war, these crimes were tried at what became known as the “Doctors' Trial”, and revulsion at the abuses perpetrated led to the development of the Nuremberg Code of medical ethics. The Nazi physicians in the Doctors' trial argued that military necessity justified their torturous experiments, and compared their victims to collateral damage from Allied bombings.”