No noble goal of gaining new knowledge about the human body and creating effective medicines and finding methods for treating diseases can justify the completely egregious medical experiments carried out on prisoners of concentration camps. Almost all doctors, not counting the prisoners as people, showed unprecedented sadism towards them.
Shocking facts about Nazi medical experiments
Doctors have always had a special attitude, they were considered the saviors of humanity. Even in ancient times, healers and healers were revered, believing that they have special healing powers. This is why modern humanity is shocked by the egregious medical experiments of the Nazis.
Wartime priorities were not only salvation, but also the preservation of the working capacity of people in extreme conditions, the possibility of blood transfusion with different Rh factors, new drugs were tested. Experiments to combat hypothermia were of great importance. The German army, which took part in the war on the eastern front, was completely unprepared for the climatic conditions of the northern part of the USSR. A huge number of soldiers and officers suffered severe frostbite or even died from the winter cold.
Doctors dealt with this problem in the concentration camps of Dachau and Auschwitz under the leadership of Dr. Sigmund Ruscher. Reichminister Heinrich Himmler personally showed great interest in these experiments (the Nazis' experiments on people were very similar to the atrocities of the Japanese detachment 731). At a medical conference held in 1942 on the study of medical problems associated with work in the northern seas and highlands, Dr. Rusher announced the results of his experiments carried out on prisoners of concentration camps. His experiments concerned two sides - how long a person can stay at low temperatures without dying, and in what ways he can then be reanimated. To answer these questions, thousands of prisoners immersed themselves in icy water in winter or lay naked, tied to stretchers in the cold.
Sigmund Ruscher during another experiment.
To find out at what body temperature a person dies, young Slavic or Jewish men were immersed naked in a tank of ice water close to "0" degrees. To measure the body temperature of a prisoner, a probe was inserted into the rectum using a probe having an expandable metal ring at the end, which was brought to open inside the rectum to hold the probe firmly in place.
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It took a huge number of victims to find out that finally death occurs when the body temperature drops to 25 degrees. They simulated getting German pilots into the waters of the Arctic Ocean. With the help of inhuman experiments, they found out that hypothermia of the occipital lower part of the head contributes to a more rapid death. This knowledge led to the creation of lifejackets with a special headrest that prevents the head from sinking into the water.
Sigmund Ruscher during hypothermia experiments.
To quickly warm up the victim, inhuman torture was also used. For example, they tried to warm the frozen ones with ultraviolet lamps, trying to determine the exposure time at which the skin begins to burn. The method of "internal irrigation" was also used. At the same time, water heated to "bubbles" was injected into the stomach, rectum and bladder with the help of probes and a catheter. All victims died from such treatment, without exception. The most effective was the method of placing a frozen body in water and gradually heating this water. But a huge number of prisoners died before it was concluded that heating must be slow enough. At the suggestion of Himmler personally, attempts were made to heat the frozen person with the help of women who warmed the man and copulated with him. This kind of treatment has had some success.but, of course, not at critical cooling temperatures….
Dr. Ruscher also experimented with the goal of determining from what maximum height pilots could jump out of an airplane with a parachute and stay alive. He set up experiments on prisoners, simulating atmospheric pressure at an altitude of up to 20 thousand meters and the effect of free fall without an oxygen cylinder. Of the 200 experimental inmates, 70 died. It is terrible that these experiments were completely meaningless and did not give any practical benefit to the German aviation.
For the fascist regime, research in the field of genetics was very important. The goal of the fascist doctors was to find evidence of the superiority of the Aryan race over others. A true Aryan had to be athletic in proportion to the body, blond and have blue eyes. So that blacks, Hispanics, Jews, gypsies, and at the same time, and simply homosexuals, in no way could prevent the accession of the chosen race, they were simply destroyed …
For those entering into marriage, the German leadership required the fulfillment of a list of conditions and full testing to ensure the racial purity of the children born in the marriage. The conditions were very harsh, and the violation was punishable by up to the death penalty. No exceptions were made for anyone.
So the legal spouse of the previously mentioned Dr. Z. Rusher was sterile, and the married couple adopted two children. Later, the Gestapo conducted an investigation and Z. Fischer's wife was executed for this crime. So the killer doctor was punished by those people to whom he was fanatically devoted.
In the book of the journalist O. Erradon “The Black Order. The pagan army of the Third Reich”refers to the existence of several programs to maintain the purity of the race. In Nazi Germany, "death by mercy" was widely used everywhere on a massive scale - this is a type of euthanasia, the victims of which were disabled children and the mentally ill. All doctors and midwives were required to report newborns with Down syndrome, any physical deformities, cerebral palsy, etc. The parents of these newborns were under pressure and they had to send their children to the "death centers" scattered across Germany.
To prove racial superiority, Nazi medical scientists carried out innumerable experiments on the measurement of the skulls of people belonging to different peoples. The task of scientists was to determine the external signs that distinguish the race of masters, and, accordingly, the ability to detect and correct defects that still happen from time to time. In the cycle of these studies, the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele, who was engaged in experiments on twins at Auschwitz. He personally scanned the thousands of prisoners arriving, sorting them into "interesting" or "uninteresting" for his experiments. The "uninteresting" were sent to die in the gas chambers, while the "interesting" had to envy those who found their death so quickly.
Josef Mengele and fellow at the Institute of Anthropology, 1930s.
The test subjects faced terrible torture. Dr. Mengele was especially interested in twin pairs. It is known that he conducted experiments on 1,500 pairs of twins, and only 200 pairs survived. Many were killed immediately in order to conduct a comparative anatomical analysis during autopsy. And in some cases, Mengele inoculated various diseases to one of the twins, so that later, after killing both, to see the difference between healthy and sick.
Much attention was paid to the issue of sterilization. Candidates for this were all people with hereditary physical or mental illnesses, as well as various hereditary pathologies, these included not only blindness and deafness, but also alcoholism. In addition to the victims of sterilization within the country, the problem of the population of enslaved countries arose.
The Nazis were looking for ways of the cheapest and fastest sterilization of a large number of people, which would not lead to long-term disability of workers. Research in this area was led by Dr. Karl Klauberg.
Karl Klauberg.
In the concentration camps Auschwitz, Ravensbrück and other thousands of prisoners were exposed to various medical chemicals, surgery, and X-ray. Almost all of them became disabled and lost the ability to reproduce. Injections of iodine and silver nitrate were used as a chemical treatment, which were indeed very effective, but caused many side effects, among others, cervical cancer, severe abdominal pain, and vaginal bleeding.
More "profitable" was the method of radiation exposure of the experimental. It turned out that a small dose of X-rays can provoke infertility in the human body, men stop producing sperm, and women do not produce eggs. This series of experiments resulted in radioactive overdose and even radioactive burns of many prisoners.
From the winter of 1943 to the autumn of 1944, experiments on the effects of various poisons on the human body were carried out in the Buchenwald concentration camp. They were mixed into the food of the inmates and the reaction was observed. Some victims were allowed to die, some were killed by guards at various stages of poisoning, which made it possible to conduct an autopsy and trace how the poison gradually spreads and affects the body. In the same camp, a search was conducted for a vaccine against the bacteria of typhus, yellow fever, diphtheria, smallpox, for which the prisoners were first vaccinated with experimental vaccines, and then infected with the disease.
Buchenwald prisoners were also tested with incendiary mixtures, trying to find a way to treat soldiers who received phosphorus burns from bombs. The experiments with homosexuals were truly terrifying. The regime considered non-traditional sexual orientation a disease and doctors were looking for ways to treat it. For the experiments, not only homosexuals were involved, but also men of traditional orientation. As a treatment, castration, and removal of the penis, and genital transplantation were used. A certain doctor Vaernett tried to treat homosexuality with his invention - an artificially created "gland", which was implanted into prisoners and which was supposed to supply male hormones into the body. It is clear that all these experiments did not bring results.
From the beginning of 1942 to mid-1945 in the Dachau concentration camp, German doctors under the leadership of Kurt Pletner conducted research on the creation of a method of treating malaria. For the experiment, physically healthy people were selected and infected with the help of not only malaria mosquitoes, but also by introducing sporozoans isolated from mosquitoes. Quinine, such drugs as antipyrine, pyramidone, and also a special experimental drug "2516-Bering" were used for treatment. As a result of the experiments, about 40 people died directly from malaria, and more than 400 died from complications after illness or from excessive doses of drugs.
During 1942-1943 in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, the prisoners were tested with antibacterial drugs. Prisoners were deliberately shot and then infected with the bacteria of anaerobic gangrene, tetanus and streptococcus. To complicate the experiment, crushed glass and metal or wood shavings were also poured into the wound. The resulting inflammation was treated with sulfonamide and other drugs, determining their effectiveness.
In the same camp, experiments were carried out in transplantation and traumatology. Deliberately crippling the bones of people, doctors cut out areas of the skin and muscle cover to the bone, so that it would be easier to observe the process of bone healing. They also cut off the limbs of some experimental subjects and tried to sew them on to others. The Nazi medical experiments were directed by Karl Franz Gebhardt.
At the Nuremberg Trials, which took place after the end of the Second World War, twenty doctors appeared before the court. The investigation revealed that they were inherently true serial killers. Seven of them were sentenced to death, five received life sentences, four were acquitted, and four more doctors were sentenced to prison terms ranging from ten to twenty years in prison. Unfortunately, not everyone involved in the inhuman experiments has suffered retaliation. Many of them remained at large and lived long lives, unlike their victims.