Doctors In The Holocaust

The horrific experiments of Dr. Mengele demonstrate the cruelty of the Nazi’s during the holocaust. Most of the world today knows of Dr. Mengele of having been the doctor of death for being responsible for killing more than 6 million Jews.

The chapter on Nazi medical experiments in Chalmers’ book is one of the most fascinating chapters because it examines the different types of techniques that the Nazi’s used to sterilize men and women. Chalmers explains that women were particularly subject to medical experiments because the Nazis were obsessed with destroying inferior races and wanted to perfect the art of sterilization so no more undesirable elements would be born (Ibid 123). However, both men and women were subject to Nazi medical experiments like medical injections, X-Rays, and chemicals, which resulted in burnt skin, abnormalities, and death. Among these experimentations many chemical companies, doctors, and University professors supported the experiments being done on

Conditions of crisis and instability within a country or situation render it impossible for human rights to flourish. In The Nazi Doctors, Lifton explores the psychology of the doctors during the Nazi regime who were able to commit atrocities such as sterilization, human experimentation, and mass murder. Throughout the book, Lifton demonstrates how in order to commit violence, there is no

"The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it." This is a quote by the Angel of Death himself, a man who brought medical advancements and discoveries to the Nazi society. Throughout the Holocaust there have been many experiments for the better of medicine and the disregard of its patients. These experiments had no regard to the patient's' well being and partly due to the hate of the victims but mainly due to the medical breakthroughs that brought forth. The holocaust in retrospect was very beneficial to the medical and experimental society as a whole.

The doctors of the holocaust were some of the most brutal humans known to man. These doctors performed a wide range of experiments sometimes there was no point to them but to just kill innocent humans. Which is why the doctors will always be remembered for their brutal experiments, the reasons behind them, the results of those experiments, and the consequences they faced after the holocaust.

During World War II, there were many acts of cruelty done towards people seen as unsuitable or worthless to the Nazis. These people included Jew, homosexuals, gypsies, and the handicapped. In this paper, I'm going to describe the medical experiments that were performed on inmates by Nazi doctors during the Holocaust. These experiments include: the twin experiments, the freezing experiments, the seawater experiments, and the bone grafting and nerve experiments.

A new bureaucracy, headed by physicians, was established to kill anyone deemed to have a “life unworthy of living.” The Nazis referred to the program’s victims as “burdensome lives” and “useless eaters.”

Millions of people lost their lives in the holocaust, a portion of them dying at the hands of corrupt doctors. During the holocaust, over 200 doctors stationed at various concentration camps performed violent, inhumane medical experiments that took hundreds of lives.(United) Experiments were done to further the Nazi beliefs, as well as the performing doctor's own career. For example, experiments benifiting soldiers, and genetic experiments supporting the government's views increased their ranking in Nazi society and allowed the physican special treatment. Similarly, information learned about diseases and medicines could be sold to pharmecutical companies for a profit. (www.auschwitz.org) Consequentally, many of the doctors only cared about

Understanding the events of the Holocaust requires consideration of numerous socio-political and economic factors in interwar and WW2 Europe. One particularly important area of exploration is the role played by physicians working for the Reich. Examining their behavior, justifications for murder, and relationship to the state provides insight into the moral and ethical foundations of the society which allowed a genocide that ended in the death of millions. In the context of the concentration camps they abandoned both their humanity and their ethics as doctors to become murderers and torturers for state science. Multiple factors, including ideology, socialization, and psychological adaption allowed Nazi doctors to throw away the fact that

The Holocaust was a horrific genocide that started in 1933 and proceeded to last 12 years. It included the killing of 6 million Jewish men, women, and children as well as gypsies and political prisoners (“Ravensbrück” 1). Many escaped, especially those who were more fortunate (Thomson, 5), however others were not as lucky. This event has been documented by millions of sources, however the medical experiments that were presented in Nazi camps and prisons in specific Ravensbrück prison are largely undocumented.

This is ridiculous, because these men were evil. They couldn’t have been “brainwashed” because “some of the Paperclip scientists had worked in the U.S. before the war, as many Americans had worked in Germany,” (Swanson). They even so blatantly disregarded the Oath that two sociologists, Binding and Hoche, set out to eliminate the Hippocratic Oath altogether, arguing that people were valued based on their contributions to society, that a doctor’s focus should be utilitarian, and that the “quality of life” should be the determining factor in medical treatment (“Euthanasia in Nazi Germany”). No one instructed doctors to do this, it was on their own, caused by their own feelings of prejudice. In fact, this is directly opposite the Hippocratic Oath, which champions the importance of the individual, in that the value of each human life is concrete, and one shouldn’t ever have to prove their worth (“Euthanasia in Nazi Germany”). So it was dismissed, that which guides doctors and proves them to be

In the Hippocratic Oath, it states, “I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure” (Tyson). Dr. Josef Mengele, other physicians and encampment staff, in charge of medical experiments at concentration camps, discarded this principle, and others, when they chose to mutilate and preform inhumane experiments on innocent people. The people they victimized, were forced to participated for they did not have the option to oppose. During the Holocaust, experiments were conducted upon mainly Jewish people or prisoners from Russia and Poland (Spitz) . Though there were numerous experiments being preformed, it was broken down into; Racial, war-injury, and pharmaceutical experiments.

The Nuremberg Doctor’s trial of 1946 involves human experimentation performed by the Nazi doctors. These physicians were accused of conducting torturous “experiments” with concentration camp inmates. During these studies, physicians conducted treatments that were not permitted and caused severe injuries to the participants, and in some cases, participants died as a result of this. Prisoners were left to freeze to study more on hypothermia. Later, during December 9th, 1946 to August 20th, 1947 representatives establish a Nuremberg trial to prosecuted these doctors for the atrocities that they committed and 23 out 15 were found guilty. As a result, the Nuremberg code was created to

The word “Holocaust”, comes from the Greek word “Holokauston” which means “sacrifice by fire” (Rosenberg). Everyone thinks that prisoners in concentration camps would just live and then be gassed to death, but many were experimented on and tested like animals. At Auschwitz, Josef Mengele was the leading doctor, but doctors are required to follow the Hippocratic oath (Promise all doctors sign saying they will follow ethical standards). Mengele broke that oath by killing and hurting many prisoners. So, was he a doctor?

Nazis used prisoners for medical experiments that are very disturbing. Some people may consider them as an insult to humanity. The Nazi doctors conducted thousands of experiments, each worse than the last.