Nazi Medical Experimentation
The German physicians who ran SS and Wehrmacht
medical institutions, along with medical personnel at lower levels,
participated actively in carrying out Nazi extermination plans. SS
physicians assigned to the concentration camps, including Auschwitz,
played a special role. They conducted criminal medical
experiments on prisoners and committed other acts that violated
medical ethics. Having furthered the extermination program in the concentration
camps, they have gone down in history as medical criminals.
The SS physicians who carried out pseudo-medical
experiments in Auschwitz included:
Professor Dr. Carl Clauberg
Carl Clauberg experimented with sterilization in the camp.
Part of Block No. 10 in the Main Camp was put at his disposal.
Several hundred Jewish women from various countries lived in two
large rooms on the second floor of the building. Clauberg developed
a method of non-surgical mass sterilization that consisted of
introducing into the female reproductive organs a specially
prepared chemical irritant that produced sever inflammation. Within
several weeks, the fallopian tubes grew shut and were blocked.
Clauberg's experiments killed some of his subjects, and others were
put to death so that autopsies could be performed.
In June 1943, Clauberg wrote to Himmler:
"The non-surgical method of
sterilizing women that I have invented is now almost perfected .
. . As for the questions that you have directed to me, sir, I can
today answer them in the way that I had anticipated: if the
research that I am carrying out continues to yield the sort of
results that it has produced so far (and there is no reason to
suppose that this shall not be the case), then I shall be able to
report in the foreseeable future that one experienced physician,
with an appropriately equipped office and the aid of ten
auxiliary personnel, will be able to carry out in the course of a
single day the sterilization of hundreds, or even 1,000 women."
Dr. Horst Schumann
Like Clauberg, Horst Schumann was searching for a
convenient means of mass sterilization that would enable the Third
Reich to carry out the biological destruction of conquered nations
by "scientific methods"--through depriving people of
their reproductive capacity. "X-ray sterilization"
equipment was set up for Schumann in one of the barracks at
Birkenau. Every so often, several dozen Jewish men and women
prisoners were brought in. The sterilization experiments consisted
of exposing the women's ovaries and the men's testes to X-rays.
Schumann applied various intensities at various intervals in his
search for the optimal dose of radiation. The exposure to radiation
produced severe burns on the belly, groin, and buttocks areas of
the subjects, and festering sores that were resistant to healing.
Many subjects died from complications. The results of the X-ray
sterilization experiments were unsatisfactory. In an article that
he sent to Himmler in
April 1944, titled "The Effect of X-Ray Radiation on the human
Reproductive Glands," Schumann expressed a preference for
surgical castration, as being quicker and more certain.
Dr. Josef Mengele
Josef Mengele held a Ph.D. and a medical
doctorate. In close collaboration with the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
for Anthropology, Genetics, and Eugenics, he studied the phenomena
of twins, as well as the physiology and pathology of dwarfism. He
was also interested in people with different-colored irises and in
the etiology and treatment of noma ("water cancer" of the
cheek). This latter disease, widespread in the Gypsy Camp, had been
previously almost unknown in Europe. Mengeles first experimental
subjects were Gypsy children. He had a laboratory in the so-called "Gypsy Family
Camp." On Mengele's orders, children suffering from noma were
put to death in order for pathology investigations to be carried
out. Organs and even complete heads of children were preserved and
sent in jars to institutions including the Medical Academy in Graz,
Austria.
Mengele also began selecting dwarves and persons
with physical peculiarities (including inborn disabilities and the
developmental defects that appear in dwarfism) from the Jewish
transports brought to Birkenau for extermination, from the Jewish "Theresienstadt Family Camp" in Birkenau, and from the so-called Mexico (Sector
BIII).
In the first phase of his experiments, Mengele
subjected pairs twins and people with physical handicaps to special
medical examinations that could be carried out on the living
organism. Usually painful and exhausting, these examinations lasted
for hours and were a difficult experience for starved, terrified
children (for such were the majority of the twins). The subjects
were photographed, plaster casts were made of their teeth and jaws,
and their fingerprints and toeprints were taken. As soon as the
examinations of a given pair of twins or dwarf were finished,
Mengele ordered them killed by phenol injection so that he could go
on to the next phase of his experiments, the comparative analysis
of internal organs at autopsy. "Scientifically"
interesting anatomical specimens were preserved and shipped to the
Institute in Berlin-Dahlem for more detailed examination.
Dr. Johann Paul Kremer
The killing of prisoners was also accompanied by
research into the changes that occur in the human organism as a
result of starvation--in particular, liver atrophy ("braune
Atrophie"). This research was carried out at Auschwitz Concentration Camp by SS-Obersturmführer Johann Paul Kremer, M.D.,
Ph.D., professor at the University of Münster, where he lectured
on anatomy and human genetics. At the Block No. 28 clinic in the
main camp, he carried out assessments of prisoners attempting to
gain admission to the hospital. Many of them were at the point of
exhaustion, in the "Musselman" state, in the final stages
of starvation to death. Kremer ordered most of them killed by
phenol injection. Kremer selected prisoners who struck him as
particularly good experimental material, and questioned them just
before their deaths, as they lay on the autopsy table awaiting
injection, about such personal details as their weight before
arrest and any medicines they had used recently. In some cases, he
ordered these prisoners photographed. Before their bodies were
cold, they were subjected to autopsies and slides were made for
Kremer of the liver, spleen, and pancreas.
SS Physicians Friedrich Entress, Helmuth
Vetter and Eduard Wirths
In 1941-1944, SS camp physicians Friedrich
Entress, Helmuth Vetter, and Eduard Wirths carried out clinical
trials of the tolerance and efficacy of new medications and drugs,
with such ode names as B-1012, B-1O34, B-1O36, 3582, P-111,
rutenolu, and peristonu, on Auschwitz Concentration Camp prisoners. They did so on commission from IG
Farbenindustrie, and particularly from the Bayer firm, which
was part of that cartel. These preparations were given to prisoners
suffering from contagious diseases, who had in many cases been
deliberately infected.
Prof. Dr. August Hirt
In 1942, SS-Hauptsturmführer Prof. Dr. August
Hirt, chairman of the anatomy department at the Reich University in
Strassburgu, set about assembling a collection of Jewish skeletons
under the auspices of the Ahnenerbe Foundation. To this end, he
received permission from Himmler to select the required number of
prisoners at Auschwitz Concentration Camp. The selection of 115 persons (79 Jewish men, 30
Jewish women, 2 Poles, and 4 "Asians"--probably Soviet
POWs) and the preliminary preparation, consisting of biometrical
measurements and the collection of personal data, were carried out
by Hirt's collaborator, SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr. Bruno Beger, who
arrived in Auschwitz in the first half of 1943. Berger finished his
work by June 15, 1943. After going through quarantine, some of the
prisoners whom Berger selected were sent in July and early August
to Natzweiler-Struthof Concentration Camp, where they were killed
in the gas chamber. The victims' corpses were sent to Hirt as
material for his skeleton collection, which was intended for use in
anthropological studies that would demonstrate the superiority of
the Nordic race.
Sources: The
State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Reprinted with permission. |
