Nazi Medical Experiments During The Holocaust

From the beginning of time, doctors and medicine have been put up on a pedestal and greatly admired. They have given to the ones that are sick hope and a way to survive. So many of people have put all their money, faith, and hope into doctors, clinging to any chance that their disease or sickness can be cured. Parents wish for their children to grow up to be doctors one day. Our fascination with doctors stems from many reasons, but the main reason is that they have always been the ones to help us find a solution to our greatest fears, such as death, pain, and sickness. Throughout history doctors have accomplished many great wonders and cured many diseases

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 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.

There were many doctors used during the holocaust including Dr. Josef Mengele, Dr. Carl Clauberg, Dr. Herta Oberheuser, and Dr. Karl Brandit to be some of the main ones that performed horrific experiments. These doctors performed some of the most horrific experiments known to mankind. They did many experiments including freezing/hypothermia, genetics,

Disabled Germans were killed in gassings. Midwives, physicians, and guardians of children with severe birth defects were supposed to register the defected child while three expert physicians would decide whether the child lived or died, usually not even seeing the child in person. This was all part to create the “master Aryan race.” 5,000 children were killed in the clinics and state hospitals they were brought to once registered. The Nazis wanted to keep the Euthanasia Program (the program Hitler was using to kill these helpless children) a secret, so the Nazis sent the children’s families made up ways of how their child died. In October of 1939, Hitler started Operation T-4, which was where adult men and women who were “incurable” were moved to carbon monoxide chambers and gassed. 70,000 of these innocent people were lost (Final Solutions).

I am going to be writing about all of the experiments performed during the holocaust. A few aspects I will be covering are: why the scientists did the experiments; who the scientists were; and what kind of experiments they were doing on the jews. A lot of the experiments were very cruel and inhumane.

At extermination camps, the Nazis conducted many medical experiments on the prisoners that resulted in many deaths. Between 1939 and 1945 medical research projects involving cruel and often lethal experimentation on human subjects were performed. These projects were supported, well-known organizations in the Third Reich and were categorized into three fields: research intended at cultivating the endurance and rescue of German troops, testing of medical techniques and medications, and experiments that pursued to approve Nazi cultural belief. More than seven thousand victims of these cruel medical experiments have been acknowledged. Targets of the experiments included Jews, Poles, Gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war, homosexuals, and Catholic priests (Medical Experiments ).

During the Holocaust the Jews were tortured and kill. But were the benefits of science justified for the jewish. Nazi doctors conducted almost as many as 30 different types of experiments on prisoners that were in the concentration camps. You will also find out Hitler’s views on the experiments. And also why they did this.

The Holocaust in World War II is one the many cases of genocide. Millions of people were killed, or injured during the war. People were held in places called concentration camps. In the camps, people were dehumanized. They were treated like animals, and hurt. Sometimes they were even put through unethical treatments and medical experiments. Medical experiments are often talked about during times of war, as most of the time they are unethical, and a crime against humanity, as in the case of the experiments during the Holocaust. The medical experiments, and the trials that followed were the first trials for the crimes against humanity. The medical experiments of the Holocaust were a horrendous crime against humanity because they needlessly slaughtered

Based on what they know, Hitler hired Nazi doctors to do experiments on people to see which experiments kills more people at a time.His experiments include: Freezing/ Hypothermia,Genetics

Out of all these ways that people died in the concentration camps, the terrible medical experiments of the Nazi doctors and scientists have to had been the worst. The doctors and scientists oversaw and ran dozens of different types of experiments on camp prisoners during the war. All of them were cruel, deadly, and just plain wrong. These experiments were mainly to benefit the Nazi army and keep them alive, to answer questions concerning medicine, and to recognize the mental, physical, and genetic differences between different types of people while proving the Nazi beliefs (“Nazi Medical

1.) The Nazi medical experiments included injecting individuals with viruses and gasoline, making them ingest poisons, and submersing them in ice water (Protecting Human Research Participants, 2008).. Although their experiments were inhumane the medical field has benefited from the medical experiments that were conducted. Dr. Josef Mengele was a geneticist that was know as the "Angel of Death" at the Auschwitz concentration camp. He is very well known for his studies on his twin experiments. He also would conduct experiments that he would hope to change the individual's eye color by injecting certain chemicals in their eyes (Bulow, 2015).

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

They would completely submerged the jews under water until they would pass out or die. They also tried to find cures for contagious diseases and find a cure for mustard gas. The Nazis also would hold people under water till they passed out, random injections, and tying people to a bed with wet sheets and left them until their body warmed up the sheets. One of the most known experiments is the twin experiment. Doctor Mengele did many things about the twins. He would draw blood from the children everyday. The smaller children had their blood drawn from their necks which made them very weak. Dr. Mengele also dropped chemicals into the twins eyes trying to change the color to blue which left them blind for a short amount of time or forever. He would inject one twin with a disease but if that twin died the other would be injected the remaining twin with some sort of chemical directly into the heart causing the remaining twin to