Medical Experiments During Ww2

Medical Experiments during the Holocaust The holocaust, lasting from 1933 to 1945, became known as one of the most disturbing affairs in history. During this time period not only were six million Jew’s murdered, but many people from different minority groups were killed as well. They were brought to German concentration camps, where they were prisoners in very harsh conditions.

How does this relate to the Holocaust where almost 8 million Jewish people died? In this essay, you will be informed about the main leader of the Nazis, why saying that Hitler only captured Jews is historically inaccurate, concentration camp treatment, and five atrocious experiments done by the Nazi soldiers to innocent prisoners. Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler was born in Austria on April 20, 1889. He’d always been a churlish student who was always the leader of

They would take twins, some as young as five years old,and killed them after their experimentation and their bodies were dissected. Doctors in the death camps would drop chemicals into the child’s eyes to see if they would change color, (“Holocaust-Medical Experiments). More experiments that were done to twins would be when they sewed them together,to make Siamese twins, but their hands would get infected, and they were later gassed. The would perform surgeries without anesthesia.

From 1939 to 1945, Nazi doctors and physicians conducted roughly 70 research experiments, many resulting in death. These cruel experiments were normally conducted in concentration camps. The Nazis had three main areas of research: survival and rescue of german troops, testing of new pharmaceuticals and medical procedures, and experiments trying to confirm Nazi racial ideology. Some of the doctors involved in these experiments were: Karl Brandt, who was Hitler's personal physician and the major general for health and sanitation. Sigmund Rascher conducted high altitude and freezing experiments.

On April 11, 1945, Harry J. Herder Jr. and his company discovered one of the many secret horrors of World War II that dotted the European landscape; the Buchenwald concentration camp. The battle hardened man who had seen his fair share of death and human suffering surveyed the camp with a sinking feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach. Before his eyes lay human beings so starved they could not pick themselves up off of their bunks, children who had never seen the outside of the camp fence, partially clothed bodies and shaved heads. Shocked and disgusted, Harry J. Herder Jr. and two of his comrades then took a deeper tour of the camp. Eerie, and abandoned by the German soldiers lay the “medical rooms” with human organs floating in jars of liquid and the gallows where unruly prisoners were hung.

Adolf hitler set up concentration camps to work jew to death or kill them right when they got there by making them “Shower” which was a gas chamber that killed them. At any point the nazi soldiers would accuse the jews for doing something they did not do so they sent them to a camp far worse than the one there were at “Convicted of forgery, aiding the enemy and attempted escape, the sisters were sent to separate prisons. Then in December 1943 Anita was told she was being moved to Auschwitz. She was aware what that meant. “You knew about the gas chambers in Auschwitz long before one was in Auschwitz,” Anita told me.”

With both of these experiments we see that it doesn’t take much to persuade even the best natured humans to do inhumane things. In Hitler’s case it took him being in an authoritative position as well as him allowing those under him a bit of power of their own. Even those who may have had a few reservations about what was happening, continued on with the horrific deeds because someone above them assured them that nothing they were doing was

The Jews were also given a striped uniform which they had to wear indefinitely without washing it. They were fed small portions of watery soup and small pieces of bread. Within a week or so, the concentration camp inmates were nothing more than skin, bones, and a number tattooed into their forearm. Also, there was always the imminent fear of death. An SS officer could shoot any inmate without reason.

I am researching about concentration camps. The two things that I am writing about is why concentration camps were established, and what the Nazis did to the inmates in concentration camps. The first concentration camps were set up as detention centres to stop any who opposed the Nazis. “The first concentration camps were made to detain people without trial, usually under harsh conditions.” (www.theholocaustexplained.org)

Many know Mengele as a SS physician, who is infamous for his experiments at the notorious concentration camp, Auschwitz. In 1931, Mengele, aged 20, joined the Stahlem or the Steel

“They experience ongoing mental and physical suffering from the endless boredom. Confinement, fear, and emotional stress of daily laboratory life. Add to this fear and agony of a procedure, and only then can we start to understand the desperation and pain in which they live, every day—and for most, their entire lives.” (New

During their time at Auschwitz, Eva and Miriam were put through many extremely harsh surgeries and experiments. Josef Mengele did many medical experiments at Auschwitz using twins. He did experiments without using anesthesia, and performed transfusions of blood to one twin to another. Mengele would also make injections with lethal germs, do sex change operations, and even removed organs and limbs of some helpless twins. The children that were as old as five and six years were usually murdered after the experiment was over.

Although Germany initiated the Holocaust, other countries also believed in a “master race” and the idea of eugenics, brought about by Sir Francis Galton. German eugenicists explored other countries research on eugenics, and combined them with their own ideas, thus creating the Holocaust. Hitler believed that there was a “master race” and exchanged that idea with people in Germany through speeches and propaganda; eventually the “inferior” people were put into concentration camps. In concentration camps, such as Auschwitz, prisoners encountered medical experiments that brought both physical and mental pain, as well as death. Before German eugenicists got the idea to bring about the Holocaust, they explored other countries research.

“By the end of 1938, the regime was receiving requests from the families of newborn or very young children with severe deformities and brain damage for the grant of a “mercy killing”(“Introduction to Nazi Euthanasia”). Why were parents asking the Nazis to kill their own children? As a result, disabled Germans were subjected to starvation, sterilization, and ultimately mass murder based on the Nazi 's propaganda campaign and their belief that these individuals were inferior. The Nazi’s main goal of the Holocaust was to create a master race.

The Gestapo also used menacing methods of interrogation, such as drowning a prisoner in a bathtub filled with ice-cold water, beatings of the person with whips and burning their flesh with a soldering iron . If the person wasn’t arrested and tortured to death, they would be sent by the Gestapo to concentration camps which were spread around Germany. These briskly made prison camps had terrible conditions while prisoners were forced to undertake hard labour, according to which they should “work to death.” The inmates were rarely given nutritious food or appropriate medical care and clothing. It is estimated that at least ten million prisoners have died within these concentration camps.