Nazi Curatives: Lethal Experimentation

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“It exists alone in history (Weber 13).” The word unaccompanied might send chills down the spine of any individual with the slightest knowledge of its connotation. Those lucky enough to have survived it lived on in constant fear of the “twisted cross” worn on the arms of men whose sole purpose in life was to kill anyone they considered to be unworthy of life by their own perverse standards. Some six million Jews along with hundreds of thousands of Roma (gypsies), mentally ill, physically disabled, homosexual, and otherwise “racially unfit” men, women, and children were murdered in cold blood. There was no rational reason for the slaughter of these people. The only motive their killers possessed was that these people were different and somehow imperfect. “It is the Holocaust, the systematic, state-organized persecution and murder of [millions] … by Nazi Germany and its collaborators (Weber 13).” The Nazis were striving to breed a perfect race (Campbell). Anyone who did not fit the Aryan model had to die. However, the manner in which these people were murdered may prove to be even more appalling.

During World War II, between the fall of 1939 and the spring of 1945, Nazi doctors conducted numerous, extremely dangerous medical experiments on unwilling concentration camp prisoners. Upwards of twenty different types of medicinal research and more than seventy projects were conducted in the name of medicine. “At least seven thousand were so treated, based upon existing documents and personal testimonies; there were undoubtedly more for which no documentation or personal testimony remains (Jewish Virtual Library).”

Doctors have consistently been considered as the “saviors … the healers, and caretakers” of all humanity (www.remeber.org)...

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