Along with Josef Mengele, other medical doctors joined the Nazi party and performed wicked medical experiments inside and outside concentration camps. Some other medical practitioners include Dr. Karl Brandt, Dr. Herta Oberheuser, Dr. Carl Clauberg, and Dr. Horst Schumann. These doctors not only performed experiments to help Germany’s military, they also experimented ways to advance their belief that the Aryan race is superior to all others. These doctors executed many unreasonable and vile experiments on the innocent victims of the Holocaust.
Of these doctors, Dr. Brandt was Adolf Hitler’s personal physician and was in his inner circle. Born in Alsace, he became a medical doctor in 1928, but found it difficult to make a living as a new
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Herta Oberheuser. Although there is very little information on Dr. Oberheuser’s early and personal life, there is a lot of documentation of the experiments she performed at the Auschwitz and Ravensbrück concentration camps. She killed children by injecting oil and evipan into their veins, while the patient being fully conscious until their death, and the time until death being between three and five minutes. Then, she dissected their limbs and removed their vital organs to have them sent to Berlin for examination. She focused on deliberately inflicting wounds on patients and rubbing them with objects such as rusty nails, ground glass, dirt and sawdust to resemble a wound on the battlefield. Oberheuser removed sections of bones, muscles and nerves and performed bone transplantation without the use of anesthesia to study bone, muscle, and nerve regeneration. As a result of the operations she performed, many of her patients suffered intense agony, trauma, permanent disability, and death. In the Nuremberg Medical Trials, Oberheuser was sentenced to 20 years in prison. She was released in 1952 and became a family doctor in Germany, but when an ex-inmate from Ravensbrück recognized her, the controversy ended in her medical license being revoked. After the pain and torture she inflicted, she thought she could finally help people in need, but the world thought …show more content…
Of these doctors who performed sterilization, the most notorious are Dr. Carl Clauberg and Dr. Horst Schumann. Dr. Clauberg was born in Germany and participated in World War I as an infantryman. He later became the doctor-in-chief at the University gynaecological clinic in Kiel. He became a zealot to Nazism and entered the NSDAP in 1933. In 1942 he asked Heinrich Himmler, a critical Nazi leader, for the opportunity to sterilize a profusion of people for his experiments. Clauberg was granted this opportunity and moved to the Auschwitz concentration camp, and a portion of one of the blocks at the camp was put to his disposal for his experiments. Thousands of Jewish and Gypsy women had acid liquids injected into their uteruses without anesthesia by means of finding a cheap and efficient way to sterilize women (ushmm.org). These injections caused horrible pain, bursting spasms in the stomach, bleeding, inflamed and seriously damaged the victim’s ovaries, and then they were sent to Berlin for examination. Clauberg’s experiments often killed his patients, and if they did not die during the procedure they were put to death so he could perform autopsies on them. When the Russian army was about to capture the Auschwitz camp, Clauberg escaped to the Ravensbrück concentration camp to continue
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
“Ah, the creative process is the same secret in science as it is in art,” said Josef Mengele, comparing science to art. He was less of an artist and more of a curious, debatably crazy, doctor. He was a scientist in Nazi Germany. In general, there was a history of injustice in the world targeting a certain race. When Mengele was around, there were very few medical regulations, so no consent had to be given for doctors to take patients’ cells and other tests done on the patients’ bodies without their consent.
Between 1939 and 1945, more than seventy medical research projects and medical experiments were conducted at Auschwitz and Dachau. (Auschwitz Medical Experimentation). Over two hundred doctors participated in such research projects and experiments, sentencing between 70,000 and 100,000 people, held against their will, to death through experimentation. These were mostly Jews, but also gypsies, homosexuals and other minorities. They were thought to be inferior to the human race. Such practices became widely accepted and embraced by the Germans, due to the Nazis propaganda. The experiments conducted were diverse, but could be categorized in three classes.
Many medical experiments went on during the holocaust, mostly in concentration camps. These subjects included Jews, Gypsies, twins, and political prisoners. The experiments included many of these people never survived many were killed for further examination. The Jewish people got the full wrath of the injections, inhumane surgeries, and other experimentations. Twins were also desirable in these experiments to show a controlled group. Gypsies and political prisoners were experimented with, because they were there for the Germans disposal. Thousands of people died in these horrible experiments. These experiments were performed to show how the Jewish race was inferior to the Aryan race.
As the human species develops, medicine follows suit. Researchers look down medicinal avenues which promise a better life-- a longer life. However, red and blue paint cannot engender purple paint without proper mixing. Thus, health sciences cannot expand without thorough experimentation. The Nazis exemplified this concept of “thorough experimentation” with their cruel and inhumane medical experiments. The trials varied in nature and reason. Some of the “experiments had legitimate scientific purposes, though the methods that were used violated the canons of medical ethics. Others were racial in nature, designed to advance Nazi racial theories. [However,] Most were simply bad science.” (jewishvirtuallibrary.org). The medical experiments performed by the Nazis were vast and highly divergent, but they can generally be divided into three categories: racial experimentation, war-injury experimentation, and pharmaceutical testing.
“Nazi Medical Experiments.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 10 June 2013. Web. 17 Jan. 2014.
"Nazi Medical Experimentation: The Ethics Of Using Medical Data From Nazi Experiments." The Ethics Of Using Medical Data From Nazi Experiments. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Dec. 2013.
For some, it seems that the Holocaust in another lifetime, but for others it will be something they will never forget. Holocaust was a time for fighting. The Jewish would fight for the right to live as they were killed solely for being Jewish. The Holocaust began in 1939 and would continue through 1945. It was introduced by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, although he did not act alone. His mission would be to “exterminate” all minorities, but most abundantly, the Jews. Based on information given by About.com, it is estimated that 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust. Six million of these were Jews.
A person’s body can only withstand so much in extreme conditions. One of the top priorities for Nazis doctors was seeing how far you can push your body to the limit (United States Holocaust Museum). While Hitler attempted to take over the world, thousands of his troops were sent all over Europe in many severe environments. So scientists decided to test the endurence of the human body to see if they could send the Nazis soldiers any farther using inmates of the camps as subjects. Many of these experiments tested things like how long a person could fight off hypothermia (United States Holocaust Museum). A very notorious doctor for this kind of “treatment” is Doctor Herta Oberheuser who would cut a child’s limbs to simulate battle wounds (Auschwitz.dk). Oberheuser would then rub things like saw dust, glass, or wood to make the cuts seem more like sores you might get in combat (Auschwitz.dk). After words, she would try to find ways to heal the deep and grimy cuts effectively (Auschwitz.dk). Experiments lik...
Doctors of the Concentration Camps also experimented on birth effects. They meant to radiate and sterilize young men and study the changes in the reproduction organs. Women had substances unwillingly implanted their cervix or uterus which caused pain, bleeding, and spasms. Women were forced into artificial insemination. The subjects were told that they have monsters in their wombs and were cross bred from animals. This was probably the worse of the experiments.
In 1930, young, teenage Mengele completed high school and left his home to study medicine at Munich University in Germany. Adolf Hitler was stirring up the Bavarian people at this time with his “anti-Jewish” ideas. He attracted large crowds, who gather...
As a prisoner, she was allowed to work as a doctor who was forced to aid Dr. Josef Mengele. Dr. Mengele was a man who practiced very bizarre, unethical medical experiments on the prisoners of Auschwitz and he eventually became known as “the doctor of death” or “the angel of death.” Dr, Perl said, “One of the greatest crimes in Auschwitz was to be pregnant.” (Brozan C: 20) Not only did Dr. Mengele perform horrible experiments on pregnant women, but he also preformed tests on handicapped prisoners and twins (which he is most famous for).
1. Gutman, Yisrael. “Nazi Doctors.” Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Indiana University Press: 1994. 301-316
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.
"Nazi Medical Experiments." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 10 June 2013. Web. 23 Mar. 2014.