The Nazi experiments on people were a series of medical experiments on a large number of prisoners, including children, by Nazi Germany in its concentration camps in the early and mid 1940s, during World War II and the Holocaust. The main target groups were Gypsies, 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 procedure. As a rule, Nazi experiments on people led to death, trauma, disfigurement or permanent disability, and are recognized as examples of medical torture.
Death camps
In Auschwitz and other camps led by Eduard Wirth, individual prisoners underwent various dangerous experiments, which were designed to help German troops in combat situations, in the development of new weapons, in the restoration of the wounded and the promotion of Nazi racial ideology. Aribert Heim conducted similar medical experiments at Mauthausen.
Conviction
After the war, these crimes were convicted in the so-called Trial of Doctors, and aversion to the violations committed led to the development of the Nuremberg Code of Medical Ethics.
German doctors in the trial of doctors argued that military necessity justified the Nazi painful experiments on people, and compared their victims with collateral damage from the Allied bombing. But this defense, which in any case was rejected by the Tribunal, did not belong to Joseph Mengele's double experiments, which were carried out on children and had nothing to do with military necessity.
The content of the document of the Nuremberg military tribunals prosecutor's office includes the names of the sections that document the Nazi medical experiments related to the rotation around food, sea water, epidemic jaundice, sulfonamide, blood clotting and phlegmon. According to indictments in subsequent Nuremberg trials, these experiments included brutal experiments of various types and forms.
Twin experiments
The experiments on twin children in concentration camps were created to show similarities and differences in genetics, as well as to see if the human body can be manipulated unnaturally. The central leader of the Nazi human experiments was Josef Mengele, who from 1943 to 1944 conducted experiments with nearly 1,500 pairs of twin prisoners in Auschwitz.
About 200 people survived these studies. The twins were broken down by age and gender and were kept in barracks between experiments, which ranged from injecting various dyes into the eyes to see if it changed their color, to stitching bodies in attempts to create Siamese twins. Often, one test subject was forced to experiment, while the other remained for control. If the experiment ended in death, the second was also killed. Then the doctors looked at the results of the experiments and compared both bodies.
Bone, muscle and nerve transplantation experiments
From about September 1942 to December 1943, medical experiments were conducted for the German armed forces in the Ravensbrück concentration camp to study the regeneration of bones, muscles and nerves, as well as transplantation of bones from one person to another. Slices of human tissue were removed without the use of anesthesia. As a result of these operations, many victims suffered from severe torment, injury and permanent disability.
Survivors
On August 12, 1946, a surviving prisoner named Jadwiga Kaminska told about her stay in the Ravensbrück concentration camp and how she had been operated on twice. In both cases, one of her legs was involved, and although she never talked about exactly what the procedure was, she explained that she experienced severe pain both times. She described how her leg oozed pus for several months after surgery. The Nazi experiments on women were numerous and merciless.
Inmates were also experimented with their bone marrow to study the effectiveness of new drugs being developed for use on battlefields. Many prisoners left the camps with an ugliness that lasted until the end of their lives.
Head injury experiments
In mid-1942, experiments were carried out in occupied Poland in a small building behind a private house, where a well-known Nazi security officer, SD, lived. For the experiment, a twelve-year-old boy was tied to a chair so that he could not move. A mechanized hammer was installed above him, which every few seconds fell on his head. The boy was crazy about torture. Nazi experiments on children were generally common.
Subcooling Experiments
In 1941, the Luftwaffe conducted experiments to discover means to prevent and treat hypothermia. There were from 360 to 400 experiments and from 280 to 300 victims, which indicates that some of them suffered more than one experiment.
In another study, prisoners were outdoors naked for several hours at temperatures up to -6 ° C (21 ° F). In addition to studying the physical effects of exposure to cold, experimenters also evaluated various methods of warming survivors. Extract from court records:
One assistant later revealed that some victims were thrown into boiling water for warming.
Beginning in August 1942, prisoners were forced to sit in tanks with ice water for up to 3 hours in the Dachau camp. After they were frozen, they were subjected to various methods of warming. Many subjects died in this process.
Nazi experiments in concentration / freezing camps were conducted for the Nazi High Command to simulate the conditions in which the armies suffered on the Eastern Front, as German troops were ill-prepared for the cold weather they were facing.
Many experiments were conducted on captured Russian prisoners of war. The Nazis wondered if their genetics had helped resist the cold. The main experimental regions were Dachau and Auschwitz.
Sigmund Rasher, an SS doctor based in Dachau, reported directly to Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler and made public the results of his freezing experiments at the 1942 medical conference entitled “Medical Problems Occurring from the Sea and Winter.” In a letter dated September 10, 1942, Rasher describes an intensive cooling experiment conducted in Dachau, where people were dressed in the form of a fighter pilot and immersed in frozen water. At Rasher, some of the victims were completely under water, while others were sunk only on the head. It is reported that as a result of these experiments, about 100 people died.
Experiments with malaria
From about February 1942 to April 1945, experiments on the study of immunization for the treatment of malaria were conducted in the Dachau concentration camp. Healthy prisoners were infected with mosquitoes or injections of the mucosal extracts of the female insects. After infection, subjects received various drugs to test their relative effectiveness. More than 1,200 people were used in these experiments, and more than half of them died. Other subjects were left with permanent disability.
Immunization experience
In German concentration camps, Sachsenhausen, Dachau, Natsweiler, Buchenwald and Neuengamme, scientists tested immunization compounds and serums for the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, including malaria, typhoid, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, yellow fever and infectious hepatitis.
From June 1943 to January 1945, Nazi medical experiments on women with epidemic jaundice were carried out in concentration camps Sachsenhausen and Nazweiler. Subjects were given strains of the disease to create new vaccinations against this condition. These experiments were conducted for the German armed forces.
Mustard gas experiments
At various times, from September 1939 to April 1945, many experiments were conducted in Sachsenhausen, Natzweiler and other camps to study the most effective treatment for wounds caused by mustard gas. Subjects were deliberately exposed to mustard gas and other substances (such as lewisite) that caused severe chemical burns. The injuries of the victims were then checked to find the most effective treatment for mustard gas burns.
Sulfonamide experiments
From about July 1942 to September 1943, experiments were conducted in Ravensbrück to study the effectiveness of sulfonamide, a synthetic antimicrobial agent. The wounds inflicted on the subjects were infected by 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 binding blood vessels at both ends of the cut to create a condition similar to a wound on the battlefield. 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.
Seawater experiments
From about July 1944 to September 1944, experiments were conducted in the Dachau concentration camp to study different methods of preparing drinking sea water. These victims were deprived of all food and received only filtered seawater.
Once, a group of about 90 gypsies was deprived of food, and Dr. Hans Eppinger gave them only sea water for drinking, as a result of which they received serious injuries. The subjects were so dehydrated that others watched them lick the newly washed floors in an attempt to get drinking water.
Holocaust survivor Joseph Chofenig wrote a statement about these experiments with sea water in Dachau. He told how, while working at medical stations, he got an idea of some experiments that were conducted on prisoners, namely those where they were forced to drink salt water.
Chofenig also described how victims of the experiments experienced nutritional problems and were desperate for any source of water, including old rags on the floor. He was responsible for using the X-ray machine in the infirmary and described how the prisoners were exposed to radiation.
Sterilization and fertility experiments
The law on the prevention of genetically defective offspring was adopted 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 genetically inferiority. 1% of citizens aged 17 to 24 years were sterilized within 2 years after the adoption of the law.
Over 4,000 300,000 patients were sterilized. Between March 1941 and January 1945, Dr. Karl Klauberg conducted sterilization experiments in Auschwitz, Ravensbrück and elsewhere. The purpose of the experiments was to develop a sterilization method that would be suitable for millions of people with minimal time and effort.
The targets for the experiments were Jews and Roma. These experiments were carried out using x-rays, surgery and various drugs. Thousands of victims have been sterilized. In addition to experiments, the Nazi government sterilized about 400,000 people as part of the adopted program. One survivor said that the experiment conducted on her caused loss 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 presumably containing iodine and silver nitrate were successful, but had undesirable side effects such as vaginal bleeding, severe abdominal pain, and cervical cancer. Therefore, radiation therapy has become the preferred choice for sterilization. A certain amount of radiation destroyed the person’s ability to produce eggs or sperm, sometimes introduced by deception. Many suffered severe radiation burns.
Dr. E. E. Seidelman, a professor at the University of Toronto, in collaboration with Dr. Howard Israel of Columbia University, published a report on the investigation of medical experiments carried out in Austria under the Nazi regime. In this report, he mentions Dr. Herman Steve, who used the war to experiment on living people.
Dr. Stive specifically focused on the reproductive system of women. He informed them in advance of the date of the execution and assessed how a psychological disorder affected their menstrual cycles. After they were killed, he dissected and examined their reproductive organs. Some women were even raped after they were told the date they would be killed so that Dr. Shtiv could study the sperm pathway through their reproductive system.
Experiments with poisons
Somewhere between December 1943 and October 1944, experiments were conducted in Buchenwald to study the effects of various poisons. They were secretly introduced to subjects in food. Victims died as a result of poisoning or were killed immediately for an autopsy. In September 1944, experimental subjects were killed with poisonous bullets and tortured.
Incendiary bombing experiments
From about November 1943 to January 1944, experiments were conducted in Buchenwald to test the effect of various pharmaceuticals on phosphorus burns. They were inflicted by a prisoner using phosphorus materials extracted from incendiary bombs. You can see some photos of Nazi experiments on people in this article.
In early 1942, Sigmund Rasher used prisoners in the Dachau concentration camp in experiments to help German pilots who were supposed to eject at high altitude. The low pressure chamber containing them was used to simulate conditions at heights of up to 20,000 m (66,000 ft). It was rumored that Rasher had performed vivisections of the brain of victims who survived the initial experiment. Of the 200 people, 80 died immediately, and the rest were executed.
In a letter dated April 5, 1942 between Dr. Sigmund Rasher and Heinrich Himmler, the first explains the results of a low-pressure experiment on humans in a Dachau concentration camp in which the victim suffocated, while Rasher and another unnamed doctor took note of his reaction.
The man was described as a 37-year-old man, and he was healthy before he was killed. Rasher described the actions of the victim when oxygen was blocked, and calculated changes in behavior. The 37-year-old began to shake his head after 4 minutes, and after a minute Rasher noticed that he had cramps before he passed out. He describes how the victim lay unconscious, breathing only 3 times per minute, until he stopped breathing 30 minutes after he was deprived of oxygen. Then the victim turned blue and a foam appeared in his mouth. An autopsy occurred an hour later.
What experiments did the Nazis carry out on people? In a letter from Heinrich Himmler to Dr. Sigmund Rasher of April 13, 1942, the first ordered the doctor to continue experiments at high altitude and experiments with prisoners sentenced to death and "determine whether these people can be called to life." If the victim could be successfully resuscitated, Himmler ordered him to have mercy in a "concentration camp for life."
Sigmund Rasher experimented with the effects of Polygal, substances from beets and apple pectin, which promotes blood coagulation. 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. Rasher published an article about his experience with Polygal without a detailed description of the nature of human trials, and also founded a company to manufacture this substance.
Now the reader has an idea of what experiments the Nazis conducted.