Nazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on large numbers of prisoners, including children, by Nazi Germany in its concentration camps in the early to mid 1940s, during World War II and the Holocaust. The main target populations were Roma, Sinti, ethnic Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, disabled Germans and Jews from all over Europe.
Nazi doctors and their assistants forced prisoners to participate in this without their consent to the procedures. Typically, Nazi human experimentation resulted in death, injury, disfigurement, or permanent disability, and are recognized as examples of medical torture.
Death camps
In Auschwitz and other camps, under the leadership of Eduard Wirth, individual prisoners were subjected to various dangerous experiments that were designed to help German soldiers in combat situations, develop new weapons, recover the wounded and advanceNazi racial ideology. Aribert Heim conducted similar medical experiments at Mauthausen.
Conviction
After the war, these crimes were condemned in the so-called Doctors' Trial, and disgust at the violations committed led to the development of the Nuremberg Code of Medical Ethics.
German doctors in the Doctors' Trial argued that military necessity justified the Nazis' painful human experiments and compared their victims to the collateral damage of Allied bombing raids. But this defense, which was rejected by the Tribunal anyway, did not refer to Joseph Mengele's double experiments, which were carried out on children, and had nothing to do with military necessity.
The content of the Nuremberg military tribunal prosecutor's document includes titles of sections documenting Nazi medical experiments involving food, sea water, epidemic jaundice, sulfanilamide, blood clotting, and cellulitis. According to the indictments in the subsequent Nuremberg trials, these experiments included cruel experiments of various kinds and forms.
Experiments on twins
Experiments on twin children in concentration camps were created to show similarities and differences in genetics, and to see if the human body could be manipulated unnaturally. The central director of Nazi human experiments was Josef Mengele, who from 1943 to 1944 experimented with nearly1500 pairs of imprisoned twins in Auschwitz.
About 200 people survived these studies. The twins were split by age and sex and kept in the barracks between experiments that ranged from injecting various dyes into the eyes to see if it would change their color, to stitching the bodies together in an attempt to create Siamese twins. Often one test subject was forced to experiment while the other was left to control. If the experience ended in death, the second was also killed. The doctors then looked at the results of the experiments and compared both bodies.
Experiments in transplantation of bones, muscles and nerves
From about September 1942 to December 1943, medical experiments were carried out at the Ravensbrück concentration camp for the German armed forces to study the regeneration of bones, muscles and nerves, as well as bone transplantation from one person to another. Human tissue sections were removed without the use of anesthesia. As a result of these operations, many victims suffered severe anguish, mutilation and permanent disability.
Survivors
August 12, 1946, a survivor named Jadwiga Kaminska spoke about her time in the Ravensbrück concentration camp and how she underwent surgery twice. In both cases, one of her legs was involved, and although she never spoke about what exactly the procedure was, she explained that both times she was in great pain. She described how her leg was oozing with pus for several months after the operation. Nazi experiments on women were numerous and merciless.
Prisoners were also experimented on with their bone marrow to study the effectiveness of new drugs being developed for use on the battlefield. Many prisoners left the camps with deformities that lasted for the rest of their lives.
Head Injury Experiments
In the middle of 1942, experiments were carried out in occupied Poland in a small building behind a private house where a well-known Nazi officer of the SD Security Service lived. For the experiment, a twelve-year-old boy was tied to a chair so that he could not move. A mechanized hammer was placed above him, which fell on his head every few seconds. The boy was driven mad by torture. Nazi experimentation on children was generally common.
Experiments on hypothermia
In 1941, the Luftwaffe conducted experiments to discover means to prevent and treat hypothermia. There were 360 to 400 experiments and 280 to 300 victims, indicating that some of them endured more than one experiment.
In another study, prisoners were exposed for several hours naked in temperatures as low as -6°C (21°F). In addition to studying the physical effects of exposure to cold, the experimenters also evaluated various methods of warming the survivors. Excerpt from court records:
One assistant later testified that some of the victims were thrown into boiling water to keep warm.
Starting in August 1942, in the Dachau camp, prisoners were forced to sit in tanks of ice water for up to 3 hours. After they were frozen, they were subjected to various methods of rewarming. Many subjects died in the process.
Nazi concentration camp freezing/hypothermia experiments were carried out for the Nazi High Command to simulate the conditions armies suffered on the Eastern Front as German forces were ill-prepared for the cold weather they faced.
Many experiments were carried out on captured Russian prisoners of war. The Nazis wondered if their genetics helped them resist the cold. The main regions of the experiments were Dachau and Auschwitz.
Sigmund Rascher, an SS doctor based in Dachau, reported directly to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and made public the results of his freezing experiments at a 1942 medical conference en titled "Medical problems arising from sea and winter." In a letter dated September 10, 1942, Rascher describes an intense cooling experiment carried out at Dachau, where people were dressed in fighter pilot uniforms and immersed in frozen water. At Rusher, some of the victims were completely submerged, while others were only submerged up to their heads. About 100 people are reported to have died as a result of these experiments.
Experiments with malaria
From about February 1942 to April 1945, experiments were conducted in the Dachau concentration camp to study immunization to treat malaria. he althy prisonerswere infected with mosquitoes or injections of extracts from the mucous glands of female insects. Following infection, subjects received various medications to test their relative effectiveness. Over 1,200 people were used in these experiments, and more than half of them died. Other test subjects were left with permanent disabilities.
Immunization experiments
In the German concentration camps of Sachsenhausen, Dachau, Natzweiler, Buchenwald and Neuengamme, scientists tested immunizing compounds and sera to prevent and treat infectious diseases, including malaria, typhoid, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, yellow fever and infectious hepatitis.
From June 1943 to January 1945 Nazi medical experiments were carried out on women with epidemic jaundice in the Sachsenhausen and Natzweiler concentration camps. The test subjects were injected with strains of the disease to create new vaccines for the condition. These experiments were carried out for the German armed forces.
Mustard gas experiments
At various times, from September 1939 to April 1945, many experiments were carried out in Sachsenhausen, Natzweiler and other camps to investigate the most effective treatment for mustard gas wounds. Subjects were deliberately exposed to mustard gas and other substances (such as lewisite) that caused severe chemical burns. The victims' wounds were then tested to find the most effective treatment for mustard gas burns.
Sulfonamide experiments
AboutFrom July 1942 to September 1943, experiments were carried out in Ravensbrück to study the effectiveness of sulfonamide, a synthetic antimicrobial agent. Wounds inflicted on subjects were infected with bacteria such as Streptococcus, Clostridium perfringens (the main causative agent of gas gangrene) and Clostridium tetani, the causative agent of tetanus.
Blood circulation was interrupted by tying up blood vessels at both ends of the cut to create a condition similar to a battlefield wound. The infection was aggravated by the fact that shavings and ground glass were pushed into it. The infection was treated with sulfonamide and other drugs to determine their effectiveness.
Experiments with sea water
From about July 1944 to September 1944, experiments were carried out in the Dachau concentration camp to study various methods of preparing drinking sea water. These victims were deprived of all food and received only filtered sea water.
One day, a group of about 90 gypsies were deprived of food and Dr. Hans Eppinger gave them only sea water to drink, causing them to be severely injured. The test subjects were so dehydrated that others watched as they licked the newly washed floors in an attempt to get drinking water.
Holocaust survivor Joseph Chofenig wrote a statement about these seawater experiments at Dachau. He told how, while working at medical stations, he got an idea about some of the experiments that were carried out on prisoners, namely those where they were forced to drink.s alt water.
Chowenig also described how the victims of the experiments experienced nutritional problems and frantically searched for any source of water, including old rags on the floor. He was in charge of using the X-ray machine in the infirmary and described how the prisoners were exposed to radiation.
Sterilization and Fertility Experiments
The Genetically Defective Offspring Prevention Act was passed on July 14, 1933. He legalized the forced sterilization of persons with diseases that are considered hereditary: dementia, schizophrenia, alcohol abuse, insanity, blindness, deafness, and physical deformities. This law was used to encourage the growth of the Aryan race through the sterilization of people who fell under the quota of genetic inferiority. 1% of citizens aged 17 to 24 were sterilized within 2 years of the passage of the law.
300,000 patients were sterilized within 4 years. From about March 1941 to January 1945, Dr. Karl Klauberg conducted sterilization experiments at Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, and elsewhere. The aim of the experiments was to develop a method of sterilization that would be suitable for millions of people with a minimum of time and effort.
The targets for the experiments were Jews and Roma. These experiments were carried out with the help of x-rays, surgery and various drugs. Thousands of victims were sterilized. In addition to the experiments, the Nazi government sterilized about 400,000 people as part of the adopted program. One survivor said that the experiment carried out on her causedloss of consciousness from severe pain for a year and a half after it. Years later, she went to the doctor and found out that her uterus was the same as that of a 4-year-old girl.
Intravenous injections of solutions believed to contain iodine and silver nitrate have been successful but have undesirable side effects such as vaginal bleeding, severe abdominal pain and cervical cancer. Therefore, radiation therapy has become the preferred choice of sterilization. A certain amount of exposure destroyed a person's ability to produce eggs or sperm, sometimes administered by deception. Many suffered severe radiation burns.
William E. Seidelman, MD, a professor at the University of Toronto, in collaboration with Dr. Howard Israel of Columbia University, has published a report on an investigation into medical experiments carried out in Austria during the Nazi regime. In this report, he mentions Dr. Herman Shtiv, who used the war to experiment on living people.
Dr. Shtiv specifically focused on the female reproductive system. He told them in advance the date of the execution and assessed how the psychological disorder affected their menstrual cycles. After they were killed, he dissected and examined their reproductive organs. Some women were even raped after being told the date they would be killed so Dr. Shtiv could study the sperm's path through their reproductive system.
Experiments with poisons
Somewhere between December 1943 and October 1944, there wereexperiments to study the effect of various poisons. They were surreptitiously administered to subjects as food. Victims died as a result of poisoning or were killed immediately for autopsy. In September 1944, the test subjects were killed with poisonous bullets and tortured.
Incendiary bomb experiments
From about November 1943 to January 1944, experiments were carried out in Buchenwald to test the effect of various pharmaceutical preparations on phosphorus burns. They were inflicted on prisoners using phosphorus materials recovered from incendiary bombs. You can see some photos of Nazi experiments on people in this article.
In early 1942, Sigmund Rascher used prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp in experiments to help German pilots who were about to eject at high altitude. The low pressure chamber containing them has been used to simulate conditions at altitudes up to 20,000 m (66,000 ft). It was rumored that Ruscher performed vivisections on the brains of victims who survived the original experiment. Of the 200 people, 80 died immediately and the rest were executed.
In a letter dated April 5, 1942, between Dr. Sigmund Rascher and Heinrich Himmler, the former explains the results of a low-pressure experiment performed on humans at the Dachau concentration camp in which the victim suffocated while Rascher and another unnamed doctor took note his reactions.
The man was described as a 37-year-old male and was he althy before he was killed. Rusher described the actions of the victim when he was blockedoxygen, and calculated changes in behavior. The 37-year-old began shaking his head after 4 minutes, and a minute later, Rusher noticed that he had convulsions before he passed out. He describes how the victim lay unconscious, breathing only 3 times a minute, until he stopped breathing 30 minutes after being deprived of oxygen. The victim then turned blue and foamed at the mouth. The autopsy happened an hour later.
What experiments did the Nazis conduct on people? In a letter from Heinrich Himmler to Dr. Sigmund Rascher dated April 13, 1942, the former ordered the doctor to continue experiments at high altitude and experiments on prisoners condemned to death and "determine whether these people can be called to life." If the victim could be successfully resuscitated, Himmler ordered that she be pardoned in a “concentration camp for life.”
Sigmund Rascher experimented with the effects of Polygal, substances from beets and apple pectin, which promote blood clotting. He predicted that the prophylactic use of Polygal tablets would reduce bleeding from gunshot wounds received during combat or surgery.
Subjects were given a Polygal tablet and injected through the neck or chest, or limbs were amputated without anesthesia. Rascher published an article about his experience with Polygal, without detailing the nature of the human trials, and also founded a company to manufacture the substance.
Now the reader has an idea of what kind of experiments the Nazis conducted.
