Over the years, it has been said that science could not progress without testing. It has been debated that in the name of progress and the improvement of human living conditions, the ends justify the means. However, when that line begins to blur and Doctors forget the reasons behind their actions we result in some of the the worst medical experiments. The Nazi Party, in power from 1933 to 1945, when he was doomed to extinction after the Allied victory in World War II, it has passed into history as responsible for some of the worst atrocities of which man is capable of.…
“Nazi data could be critical to saving victims' lives today. The brains of the Vogt Collection offer no immediate benefit to any ailing victims. The brains were not collected for transplant purposes, but for research and study. The potential to save lives from use of the study of the brains seems as tenuous as the Nazi data. At the 1986 meeting of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, Doctor Bernhard Bogerts presented his findings on schizophrenic brains based on the experiments of the Brain Collection at the Vogt Institute of the Brain Research in Dusseldorf, West Germany. Normal and schizophrenic brains were collected by the Vogts between the years 1928 and 1953 (Cohen, Baruch C. "Nazi Medical Experimentation: The Ethics Of Using…
They had deadly showers for the prisoners and the doctors did experiments on the captives. Some would say that the Dachau Concentration camp was a "massive killing system” (Friess, 2015). Prisoners who were experimented with usually died. An example would be when they were searching for the cure for malaria. The Nazis stuck liquid into the prisoners blood. This was very fatal and most of the captives that were experimented on with this died. A scientist named Dr. Rascher had a new experiment that was also very fatal for the prisoners. He would do a freezing cold experiment that worked at below zero temperatures. Mostly all the prisoners who had this experiment done to them were killed as well. There was also a building made for killing large amounts of prisoners. It was called the 'Gas Chamber'. Large amounts of people would walk in and the ceiling would have poison gas fall from it (Never Again Jamais Plus, 2016). Several people suffered this terrible death. The Nazis had no mercy when it came to killing the…
Some of the numerous experiments were hypothermia treatments. The Nazis tried to discover the point at which the core temperature of a human was so low that they…
The Nazis had many motivations for performing medical experiments on various groups of people during the Holocaust. Such motivations included collecting data in order to aid the German army, finding effective methods of treatment for diseases in a purely scientific attempt, and discovering techniques to bolster the Nazi racist beliefs. Additionally, the Nazis executed such experiments to determine the most productive strategy in mass elimination.…
Nazi Germany during World War II was extremely ruthless and unsafe. The country, military, officials, physicians, and other leaders showed that they clearly valued German lives over all others. In particular, the doctors and military used prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp to conduct experiments on vulnerable, helpless individuals. The main project focused on at this camp was the immersion-hypothermia project conducted during August 1942 and May 1943. The purpose for the project was to learn how to treat the German air force pilots who had been lost in the extremely cold North Sea.…
Dr. Mengele was the Chief Physician at Auschwitz. He was known for preforming gruesome, inhumane experiments. He had a strange fascination with Heterochromia, or having two different colored eyes, and was trying to understand the secret of artificially changing eye color. His victims were twins, usually children. He was legally allowed to maim and kill them in order to obtain information therefore he collected their eyes and kept them as “research material”. His experiments were extremely painful and usually killed the patient. This is a perfect example of the horrible things that went on at the concentrations camps. No normal human could do something so evil, yet Dr. Mengele was so dehumanized he could do it with…
The camp served many purposes. During the first year, the prisoners were either worked to death, executed by gun, or died from natural causes. In September 1941, the camp officials first started experimenting with Zyklon B, a poison gas. However, because of the camp’s small size, it was impossible to mass exterminate prisoners by gas and not have the prisoner labor force find out. Another function of the camp was to use selected prisoners for medical experiments. The team of doctors was led by Josef Mengele. “Mengele had become interested in utilizing twins for medical research through Verschuer, famous for experimenting with identical and fraternal twins in order to trace the genetic origins of various diseases” (“Josef Mengele”). Because of this, Mengele used many young Jewish and Guypsy twins in painful and often deadly experiment. Many of their subjects were murdered in order to do post-mortem examination on them (“Josef…
During World War two, the nazis captured and imprisoned many people who did not fit into their desired Aryan race or disagreed with their beliefs. During the prisoner’s time alive in concentration camps, some were subjected to horrific experiments. Many of them either died or were left disfigured due to these events. Many of the tests were to benefit the lives of Nazi soldiers. However, some doctors performed the test without a proper reason behind it. An example of how the Nazis felt about the Jews and other races that were considered the 'lesser race’ can be compared to the idea that “ you’re flying outside the hive, talking to humans that attack our homes”(Bee Movie) . The Nazi felt as though the “ lesser race” were destroying their way of life so the sent them off to concentration camps.…
Medical experimentation was carried not only at Auschwitz but in most of the concentration camps. Experimentation was done on Jewish and non-Jewish victims who did not volunteer or consent to the experiments. It is important to note, that there were three basic types of experimentation that occurred in the concentration camps. The first consists of experiments aimed at facilitating the survival of military personnel. In Dachau, conducted high-altitude experiments, using a low-pressure chamber, to determine the maximum altitude from which crews of damaged aircraft could parashute to safety. In a letter from SS-Untersturmführer Rascher to Reichführer-SS Himmler, in April 1942, Rascher writes:…
The use of extermination camps ,also called "death camps", equipped with gas chambers for the systematic mass extermination of peoples was an unprecedented feature of the Holocaust. These were established at Auschwitz, Bełżec, Chełmno, Jasenovac, Majdanek, Maly Trostenets, Sobibór, and Treblinka. They were built for the systematic killing of millions, primarily by gassing, but also by execution and extreme work under starvation conditions.Stationary facilities built for the purpose of mass extermination resulted from earlier Nazi experimentation with poison gas during the secret Action T4 euthanasia programme against mental patients.…
In April of 1940, the largest and most horrific concentration camp use during the Holocaust was Auschwitz. Almost all Jews taken hostage were transferred to this camp during the war. Auschwitz had the worst living conditions and some of the most brutal methods of execution. In the camp they used gas chambers to kill large amounts of Jews in addition to using the firing squads to kill of smaller amounts of Jews. The doctors at the camps took children away and performed experiments on them, and after that the children eventually died. These are just a few of the many methods the Germans tried. Throughout the Holocaust, Auschwitz became known as the most infamous of all camps because of methods of execution, experiments…
Mengle’s area of expertise was genetics and twins. He wrote his medical dissertation on how the structure of the lower jaw differed between the races. The twins he kept as pets, isolating them from the rest of the camp, giving them treats of candy and clothes, bribing them for before he would perform horrific experiments on them. The twins would endure daily blood draws and injections in the eye in hopes that he (Mengle) would be able to change their eye color. He even went so far as to sew a set of twins together to see if he could create “Siamese twins”. On Mengle’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. (Bard 1) More often than not, there was no real medical knowledge gained from any of his experiments. Sigmund Rascher however focused his experiments on high altitude sickness and hypothermia on Dachau camp prisoners. (Harvard) The experiments of high altitude were meant to push the limits of human endurance and existence. Prisoners were often placed in a low pressure chamber and the pressure was…
Three prime examples of this touring would be the music, experiments and the lack of water. The SS officers would make inmates sing while they marched. Some camps had orchestras which were often comprised of inmates themselves. The inmates were often beaten if they weren't synchronized or if they were off beat. Another example of the torture caused by SS officers were the experiments performed on prisoners. Some of these experiments included being submerged in ice water to see the effects of hypothermia. Some inmates were made to drink nothing but seawater just to see what would happen. Another experiment was being injected with chemicals to test their effectiveness. Other experiments that took place were sterilized, vivisected, and being operated on without anesthetic. The last instrument of terror used by the SS was denying the inmates water to drink. Many inmates suffered from dehydration that they licked the floors after mopping them just to get to drink a small amount of water to…
Many people during the 1940s were put into concentration camps, and after getting out, if they did get out, suffered many problems. The stress and torment these people went through was pure murder (Nelken). The humans put into these concentration camps were from many different races, and also included the mentally retarded, severely handicapped, insane, and very sick people (Austin). Survivors of concentration camps faced psychological, spiritual, physical, economic, and family problems, some of which stayed with them for the rest of their lives.…