Holocaust Medical Experiments

The ignoble experiments of the nazi regime included exposure to freezing/ hypothermia, tests on the genetics of an individual, exposure to infectious diseases, undergoing of interrogation and torture, most effective and inexpensive methods of killing/ mass genocide, exposure to conditions resembling high altitude, pharmacological tests, sterilization of an individual, the undergoing of different surgeries, and inflicting traumatic injuries on the patent undergoing the experiment. The experiments done by nazis on prisoners were in an effort to find ways to cure burns, hypothermia, infections, and ways to mass exterminate the jews in the most cost efficient way possible.

It is interesting to note that Nazis were cunning enough to choose locations that were far from the public eye because they probably knew to a certain degree that although the Nazi party had massive support, that could all go out the window if the German people found out cruel experiments and executions being conducted. Another thing to note is that it seems as though mentally disabled Germans were the guinea pigs for how the Nazis would experiment on and execute the Jews later on. Doctors weren't really needed at these institutions, they were only really there to maintain the illusion of a scientific and medical program. However they did have another task, which was to come up with reasons for the cause of their patients' deaths. They would send out letters to victims' families. It seems these Nazi doctors were very methodical in order to cover up what they were doing but it would turnout that weren't as clever as they thought they were. The families of the victims would notice inconsistencies with the official cause of death and later on public protests would cause Hitler to order the gas chambers be dismantled in August

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

“I will remember that there is an art to medicine as well as a science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife and the chemist’s drug.” (Louis Lasagna). However, the doctors of the holocaust didn’t care, and used the victims as guinea pigs for the results. The medical experiments performed during the Holocaust had horrific outcomes for those experimented upon.

The doctors would cut off limbs and see if the Jew’s could handle what happened to their body. Josef mengele would do the experiments to twins along with many other doctors they were trying to see how twin were made so they could increase the prefect race faster. Even though these were crude experiments they help german know a whole lot more about the human body and what it can handle and what it can't and the almost found out to make twins but they never did.

There were many ways that the Nazi tortured the Jews during the Holocaust. They harmed them both mentally and physically, but the most horrific kind of torture was the physical abuse. The Nazis tortured, killed, and experimented on the Jews in an inhuman way. The experimentations that were conducted by the doctors were very horrendous and shocking. They had three categories for the experiments: military, biomedical, and racial/ideological. Though all the types of experimentations were terrible, the biomedical category was the most appalling. In the biomedical experimentations, the doctors did some cruel studies on the prisoners that included injecting diseases, inflicting wounds, and killing them to observe body functions. They were

This essay examines the involvement and actions of the doctors of the Holocaust. Using examples of experiments performed by the doctors, interviews with some of the doctors, and other evidence found during my research, I will argue that the doctors acted of their own free will and not because the Nazi government made them.

As terrible as it sounds it is true many people refer to it as “medicines dirty little secret”. The doctors would write notes on their findings, which would later be found. The research helped doctors know more about, hypothermia, low-pressure environments, and many more. Most of the antibiotics and new medicine that was tested was useless, with little success. Although no medicine came out of the Nazis research, it helped humans understand the human body more.

Between World War I and World War II, “not a single geneticist expressed reservations about the policies of the German movement” (18). This is particularly concerning as these are the same policies that were then used by Nazi Germany and led to death camps, forced sterilization, and torturous medical experimentation. Nazi doctors had a steady supply of malnourished Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals to experiment on. Phrenology was still viewed as science at this point, so some Nazi doctors measured the facial structure and features of Jewish prisoners’ faces to prove the ‘inferiority’ of Jewish people, thereby dehumanizing them (dehumanization is very useful for genocide). Doctors found treatments for hypothermia, various infectious diseases, and for the effects of tear gas.

Josef Mengele was a Holocaust legend. Mengele performed many experiments that many don’t dare. Auschwits was Mengeles home for most of the Holocaust with a few exceptions. One thing that stands out when you mention the name Josef Mengele is how obsessed he was with twins. Mengele experiment on twins often young children was thought as a “Ideal took in weighing…heredity and environment.”

(Slide 12) The experiments carried out by these doctors involved chemicals being injected into the twins body parts to try to alter one twin and see whether the other twin would be affected. Some of these included injecting into the eyeballs to change the colour of the iris. Often if one twin were to die during a procedure the SS would kill the other twin as they were of no longer use to

The Holocaust was a very tragic event in all of history. Some Germans tried to put the chaos to a halt. Most Germans didn’t care at all; they thought Hitler knew what he was doing and that he was a good leader. Most Germans were clueless of what was happening in the concentration camps; they didn't know the pain and suffering Jews went through. They chose to not care. They could’ve saved lives’ but they chose to believe that Jews are bad. But some Germans chose to fight for what is right and tried to help Jews survive the Holocaust.Some of these people saved thousands’ of lives.

There was excitement in his eyes, a tender touch in his hands This was the moment when Josef Mengele, the geneticist found a pair of twins”(http://www.auschwitz.dk/Mengele.htm). Mengele took good care of his subjects, They lived in better housing and were better fed compared to other prisoners in the camp, He also built a kindergarten for the children subjects which had a playground, He referred to himself as “Uncle mengele” and gave them chocolates, while most of the children had been separated from their parents immediately they viewed Mengele as almost a father like

They would have special people to come into the camps and do special experiments on the twins. They would have to make injections into the twins. They had gathered more than 15 pairs of twins (“Auschwitz”).

Mengele searched for the secrets of heredity. The Nazi ideal of the future would benefit from the help of genetics, according to Nazi doctrine. If an Aryan women could give birth to twins who were sure to be blond and blue-eyed, the future could be “saved.” Mengele believed that twins held these secrets, and Auschwitz seemed the best location for such research because of a large number of available twins to use as specimens. To obtain these specimens, about 3,000 twins were pulled from the masses on the ramp, most of them children.