Category Archives: 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.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/nazi-correspondence-regarding-gassing-vans
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/memoranda-to-himmler
http://www.camps.bbk.ac.uk/documents/073-racial-experiments.html
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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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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. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.
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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
Women’s Health During the Holocaust
I am certain this piece will stir some emotions and will probably cause controversy. There will be some who will question it and “Why would you pick this subject?” However, for future generations (and us) to understand the Holocaust (or at least as much as possible), it is necessary to address all aspects.
Recently I realized how important it was for some survivors to have children after the war. Many of them had lost most or all of their families. They, therefore, started new families, not to substitute them for lost families but to ensure the continuation of the bloodline. It was also a way to show the Nazis that they lost.
Such was the horror of the holocaust though, that this option was denied to several women. I was watching the documentary “The US and the Holocaust” a few days ago. One of the survivors mentioned in the documentary, when she was in Auschwitz, didn’t have any periods—her menstrual cycle had stopped or had been disrupted. This intrigued me and I looked into it.
Evidence at the Nuremberg trial showed that Nazis sought methods of mass sterilization of Jewish women.
Immediately upon arrival at the concentration camps, over 98% of women stopped menstruating.
Anna Hájková has written about the Jewish Theresienstadt prisoner and physician František Bass’ research on amenorrhoea, the loss of menstruation, which focused on how it was caused by the shock of incarceration. Interestingly, however, almost all this research discussed ovulation (and its lack) rather than menstruation, even though both are part of the same biological function.
Periods impacted the lives of female Holocaust victims in a variety of ways. For many, menstruation was linked to the shame of bleeding in public and the discomfort of dealing with it. Periods also saved some women from being sexually assaulted. Equally, amenorrhoea could be a source of anxiety: about fertility, the implications for their lives after the camps and about having children in the future. There has been minimal investigation as to the cause(s) of amenorrhea, beyond malnutrition and trauma.
The only women who did not stop menstruating attributed it to detecting something added to the soup on some occasions and refused to eat on those occasions. Two other women reported detecting a white powder in the “disgusting” and “foul-smelling” brown liquid that participants referred to as either “soup” or “coffee” at Auschwitz but were too hungry to discard the soup.
A few women (15/93) identified precisely what led to their amenorrhea in Auschwitz and for most (as described below), subsequent difficulties with fertility. Most women were haunted by never knowing what caused them to suddenly stop menstruating and later, the long-term effects on their fertility/infertility.
One survivor reported having been sterilized in Auschwitz by radiation. Two were singled out and sterilized in Auschwitz by surgery on their reproductive organs in Nazi experiments. Peggy J Kleinplatz and Paul Weindling conducted interviews focused on reproductive histories, including amenorrhea beginning in 1942-45, subsequent attempts to conceive, numbers of pregnancies, miscarriages and stillbirths. Ninety-eight per cent of women interviewed were unable to conceive or carry to term their desired number of children. Of 197 confirmed pregnancies, at least 48 (24.4%) ended in miscarriages, 13 (6.6%) in stillbirths and 136 (69.0%) in live births. The true number of pregnancy losses is likely much higher. Only 15/93 (16.1%) of women were able to carry more than two babies to term, despite most wanting more children desperately. Amenorrhea among Jewish women arriving at concentration camps was too uniform and sudden to be affected only by trauma and/or malnutrition. Survivors’ narratives and historical evidence suggest the role of exogenous hormones, administered without women’s knowledge to induce amenorrhea as well as subsequent primary and secondary infertility.
Upon entry into the camp, prisoners were given shapeless clothing and had their heads shaved. They lost weight, including from their hips and breasts, two areas commonly associated with femininity. Oral testimonies and memoirs show that all of these changes compelled them to question their identities. When reflecting on her time in Auschwitz, Erna Rubinstein, a Polish Jew who was 17 when in the camps, asked in her memoir, The Survivor in Us All: Four Young Sisters in the Holocaust (1986): ‘What is a woman without her glory on her head, without hair? A woman who doesn’t menstruate?’
Some teenagers experienced their first period in the camps alone, separated from their families or orphaned. In such cases, older prisoners provided help and advice. Tania Kauppila, a Ukrainian ina Mühldorf Concentration Camp, was 13 when she started her periods. She did not know what was happening and shed many tears. She was scared that she was going to die and did not know what to do. Older women in the camp taught her and others in the same position about periods. The girls were taught how to handle it and what they needed to do in order to cope with the blood flow. It was a different learning process than they would have had at home: ‘You tried to steal a piece of brown paper, you know, from the bags and do the best you can’, recalled Kauppila. This story reoccurs across numerous oral testimonies. Many orphaned survivors who had just started mentioned the help of older women, who took on both a sisterly and motherly role in helping these young girls, before they experienced potential amenorrhoea; older women usually lost their period within the first two or three months of imprisonment.
For each testimony, participants were asked about the number of live births and pregnancy losses. It is notable that of the four women who had given birth in the years 1935–1940 and whose children were killed in the camps, three had difficulty conceiving after the war, even though they were still in their 20s and 30s. The total number of live births for 93 women since 1945 was 136. Twenty women were unable to carry any children to term. The majority of women had 1-2 children.
I know this is a controversial subject, and I don’t claim to be an expert in the matter, therefore I have used text from scientific papers, However, it is an important aspect to address.
sources
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953622005561?via%3Dihub
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36007428/
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/menstruation-and-holocaust
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
https://jewishcurrents.org/july-7-nazi-medical-experimentation-begins
Evil Science
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.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:
- 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.
sources
https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/258/
https://www.auschwitz.org/en/history/medical-experiments/carl-clauberg/
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/carl-clauberg
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The Experiments of Unit 731
++++++CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES++++++++++
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.
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.
sources
https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/unit-731
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/17/japan-unit-731-imperial-army-second-world-war
https://www.pacificatrocities.org/human-experimentation.html
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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History of Sorts 
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