Nazi Medical Experiments During the Holocaust, medicine was not as advanced and clean as it is today. “Patients”, or it seemed more like “victims” of the experiments rarely lived, and if they did, they did not want to remember those experiences. A survivor of the inhumane activities, Heinz Reimer, talks about his experience in the camp and says that,
He withdrew from my body one and a half liters of blood for serum experiments. He infected me with syphilis by inflicting a 12-centimeter cutting wound to my leg. After this I had to undergo cures – I counted 46 injections of Atebrin [a drug used in the treatment of malaria] and other injections. (Maltz)
Many other experiments like this were performed, this experiment was also not the only experiment
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Germany and the Nazi doctors were not the first country to sterilize. “It led to the sterilization of more than 200,000 Germans” (Gotz). In another article it says, “Between 1907 and 1939, more than 30,000 people in twenty-nine states were sterilized, many of them unknowingly or against their will, while they were incarcerated in prisons or institutions for the mentally ill” (“Nazi Medical Experiment.”). Sterilization was a normal occurrence in the early 1900s. The sterilization process performed by the doctors was also thought as Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection brought to life. There were two common methods of sterilization, X-rays and injections. The X-ray method was frequently linked to Dr. Horst Schumann from the Auschwitz concentration camp. In this process the ovaries and testicles were exposed to radiation two to three times a week. This procedure caused serious burning and swelling. This approach did not work as well as castration. (Gotz). Although it was not very effective, the practice was still continued. (Gotz). The injection sterilizations consisted of a phenol injection, which usually killed the subject. After the patient died the bodies were autopsied. If the patient refused the injection they were placed in a gas chamber to await their death. (Gotz). Men were also guinea pigs in the methods of sterilization. Their private parts would be exposed to x-rays and then their parts would be removed two weeks later. The men also did not have to give any consent to have the procedure performed (Korda 34). The practice of sterilization was inhumane and
In Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account, Dr. Miklos Nyiszli tells the story of his time in Auschwitz. Dr. Nyiszli is a Jewish survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp located in Poland. His story provides the world with a description of horrors that had taken place in camp in 1944. Separated from his wife and daughter, Dr. Nyiszli volunteered to work under the supervision of the head doctor in the concentration camp, Josef Mengele. It was under Dr. Mengele’s supervision that Dr. Nyiszli was exposed to the extermination of innocent people and other atrocities committed by the SS. Struggling for his own survival, Dr. Nyiszli did anything possible to survive, including serving as a doctor’s assistant to a war criminal so that he could tell the world what happened at the Auschwitz concentration camp.This hope for survival and some luck allowed Dr. Nyiszli to write about his horrific time at Auschwitz.His experiences in Auschwitz will remain apart of history because of the insight he is able to provide.
In Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account, to say that Auschwitz is an interesting read would be a gross understatement. Auschwitz is a historical document, a memoir but, most importantly an insider’s tale of the horrors that the captives of one of the most dreadful concentration camps in the history of mankind. Auschwitz, is about a Jewish doctors, Dr. Nyiszli, experience as an assistant for a Nazi, Dr. Mengele. Dr. Nyiszli arrived at Auschwitz concentration camp with his family unsure if he would survive the horrific camp. This memoir chronicles the Auschwitz experience, and the German retreat, ending a year later in Melk, Austria when the Germans surrendered their position there and Nyiszli obtained his freedom. The author describes in almost clinical detail and with alternating detachment and despair what transpired in the
"Medical Experiments ." 10 June 2013. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum . 18 March 2014 .
Thousands of people were sent to concentration camps during World War Two, including Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel. Many who were sent to the concentration camps did not survive but those who did tried to either forgot the horrific events that took place or went on to tell their personal experiences to the rest of the world. Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi wrote memoirs on their time spent in the camps of Auschwitz; these memoirs are called ‘Night’ and ‘Survival in Auschwitz’. These memoirs contain similarities of what it was like for a Jew to be in a concentration camp but also portray differences in how each endured the daily atrocities of that around them. Similarities between Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi’s memoirs can be seen in the proceedings that
1. Gutman, Yisrael. “Nazi Doctors.” Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Indiana University Press: 1994. 301-316
Many of the subject’s were twins, mostly identical. Twins when through the worst of the surgeries, including blood transfusions. Doctors drained one twin of his blood and inject it into the other twin to see what would happen. Blood would be drawn from each twin in large quantities about ten cubic centimeters were drawn daily. The twins who were very young suffered the worst of the blood drawing. They would be forced to have blood drawn from their necks a very painful method. Other methods included from their fingers for smaller amounts, and arms sometimes from both simultaneously. The doctors would sometimes see how much they could withdraw until the patient passed out or died.
“Medical Experiments of the Holocaust and Nazi Medicine.” Medical Experiments of the Holocaust and Nazi Medicine. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Jan. 2014.
The T4 program was not the beginning of Germany’s effort to reach a super race. Leading up to the war Hitler enacted the “Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases” in the year of 1933. The law called for the sterilization of anyone that had any hereditary illnesses. The list of hereditary illnesses included: “schizophrenia, epilepsy, senile disorders, therapy resistant paralysis and syphilitic diseases, retardation, encephalitis, Huntington’s chorea and other neurological conditions.” (History Place) This law was enforced by opening 200 genetic health courts that would analyze the medical records of individuals and decide if they were to be sterilized or not. The sterilization of people usually involved the use of drugs, x-rays, or uterine irritants. Dr. Horst Schumann did a lot of these experiments with sterilization at Auschwitz, where he would take a group of men/women and would expose them to x-rays. Most of his experiments with x-rays were disappointing but he kept using this method. After he subjected his subjects to x...
Epstein shows the process that the majority of Jews were being put through, such as the medical examinations, medical experimentations, gas chambers and crematoriums. Medical examinations were used to determine if the Jews were healthy enough to work. Dr. Mengele used the Jews as “lab rats” and performed many experiments such as a myriad of drug testing and different surgeries. The gas chamber was a room where Jews were poisoned to death with a preparation of prussic acid, called Cyclo...
... on the males genitals or castrate them. “Thousands of Jews who were sterilized suffered untold mental and physical anguish” (6). All in all thousands of Jews suffered many different ways with all the experiments and most of them ended tragic for the Jews.
In 1945 200,000 people were murdered. All of them were children and disabled. The kids that needed help were killed in the Euthanasia Program to save resources. The Euthanasia program was a program designed for the killing of the disabled and started with infants and children. The Euthanasia program was designed by a few people and these people decided how the disabled were selected and killed through the program. They started the program for a specific reason, to make their race superior and pure, this made the life of the discriminated very difficult, with a lot of restrictions on their rights. With all this going many people had different viewpoints on whether the program was right or not and could not find a way to
Being confined in a concentration camp was beyond unpleasant. Mortality encumbered the prisons effortlessly. Every day was a struggle for food, survival, and sanity. Fear of being led into the gas chambers or lined up for shooting was a constant. Hard labor and inadequate amounts of rest and nutrition took a toll on prisoners. They also endured beatings from members of the SS, or they were forced to watch the killings of others. “I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time” (Night Quotes). Small, infrequent, rations of a broth like soup left bodies to perish which in return left no energy for labor. If one wasn’t killed by starvation or exhaustion they were murdered by fellow detainees. It was a survival of the fittest between the Jews. Death seemed to be inevitable, for there were emaciated corpses lying around and the smell...
The Nazi’s perpetrated many horrors during the Holocaust. They enacted many cruel laws. They brainwashed millions into foolishly following them and believing their every word using deceitful propaganda tactics. They forced many to suffer doing embarrassing jobs and to live in crowded ghettos. They created mobile killing squads to exterminate their enemies. Finally, as part of “The Final Solution to the Jewish Question”, they made concentration and killing camps. Another thing the Nazi’s did was to use eugenics as another mean to micromanage the population. What is eugenics, you might ask? It’s the field of scientific study or the belief in genetically improving qualities, attributes and traits in the human race and/or improving the species as a whole—usually done by controlled/selective breeding. Those with positive, desirable, and superior traits are encouraged to reproduce and may be given monetary incentives by the government to have large families. Those with negative, undesirable, or inferior traits may be discouraged from having offspring. They may be sterilized, or undergo dangerous medical procedures or operations with high mortality rates. I chose this topic because it appealed to me and seemed interesting. In the following paragraphs, the tactics, methods, and propaganda the Nazi’s used will be exposed.
There is a long history of voluntary and involuntary sterilizations. It may not be known, but the United States is a big offender of forced sterilizations, dating all the way back to the 1900’s. In 1907, the U.S. applied a policy to sterilize “unwilling” and “unwitting” people forcibly (Krase, 1996). In 1924, Virginia adopted a law to reduce the tax burden, because the public facilities for the “insane” and the “feebleminded” had grown (Lombardo). The first person to be picked to be sterilized was a seventeen year old girl named Carrie Buck. Her mother was already being held in an asylum, the Virginia Colony for the Epileptic and the Feebleminded (Lombardo). The people at the Virginia Colony asylum told Carrie that since she shared the same traits as her mother, the feeble-mindedness and sexual promiscuity traits, she would be sterilized so she could not pass on the traits again; at this time Carrie already had one daughter. She was seen as a perfect candidate for Virginia’s new movement. This case went to trial an...
The first experiment is the “Monster Study” it is about stuttering. This took place in 1939...