Nazis Medical Experiments During World War II

Therapeutic Testing Throughout the Holocaust: Experimentation on the Jews during the Holocaust Over six million Jews were slaughtered throughout the Holocaust. Most died because of merciless situations and the notorious gas chambers. However, a documented seven thousand were also exterminated through medical experimentation. The medical trials can be classified into three main categories: endurance and salvage, medical management, and racial experiments.

They have painful ways to get the infections into the test subjects body. The scientists would create many different diseases in the victim's body. They stated that they did the experiments to find treatments for malaria, typhus, tuberculosis, typhoid fevers, and hepatitis (Nazi). To get the infections into the test subjects body, they would either cut wounds with knives or anything they could find and let infection start on its own or inject it themselves through shots.

The Gypsies had to go through the horrific and frightening process of testing for the purity of their “kind”. The Nazis constructed research to prove that

The prisoners experience starvation, succumb to disease, and are abused by the guards. The Nazi doctors regularly perform selections where they

Hence, three experiments will only be mentioned in this essay. The experiments were mainly done to help in making combat strategies against the Nazis’ enemy and for treating affected soldiers. First and foremost, freezing experiments were made upon Jews and Romas in German concentration camps. Heinz Reimer a prisoner of a concentration camp was subjected to freezing water. This was done to identify how the body tries to cope up in decreasing (cold) temperatures.

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.

Dehumanization of Jews in Concentration Camps During the Holocaust of World War II, millions of Jews in concentration camps became the targets of dehumanizing techniques accomplished by Nazis. However, this wasn’t the first occurance of dehumanization done by the Nazis prior to concentration camps; dehumanization of Jews had been building up for quite a while, but continued into concentration camps . Taking away a Jew’s entire identity, treating them similarly to animals, creating an environment where it became a fight for the fittest, all were methods of dehumanization initiated by Nazis. The amount of Jewish people killed in concentration camps can be attributed to these techniques, as denying that Jews were less than human made it easier

They were subject to insufficiencies of food, equipment, medicine and clothing, whilst working long hours. There was little or no time for rest or breaks” (Forced Labour Camps). This quote shows details that describe the inadequate conditions that existed in the Nazi forced labor camps. The author notes that inmates were seen as temporary and could be replaced with others, indicating that the Nazis did not

One of the Nazi Party’s first steps towards their goal occurred on July 14, 1933, when the Nazi government passed the “Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring” (“Disabled People”). This law established the forced sterilization of people with diseases considered hereditary such as mental illnesses, learning disabilities, physical disabilities/deformities, epilepsy, blindness, deafness, and alcoholism (“People with Disabilities”). The law was coauthored by lawyer Falk Ruttle, Arthur Gütt, a physician and director of public health affairs, and Ernst Rüdin, a psychiatrist and early leader of the German racial hygiene movement (“The Nazi Euthanasia Program Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race”). People from prisons, nursing homes, asylums, care homes for the elderly, and special school were selected to be sterilized. Sterilization is the process of making someone unable to produce offspring.

Some prisoners were also subjected to barbaric medical experiments led by Josef Mengele” (History.com Editors). “Auschwitz was also a killing center and played a central role in the German effort to

Josef Mengele was a German SS officer and physician during world war two. He performed most of his experiments in the concentration camp: Auschwitz. His main focus was twins and how they are born, along with other patients that had growth abnormalities. Having an interest in these special cases he was given the job to create what the Nazis called: “The Perfect Race.” He is infamous for his inhumane medical experimentations.

Medical Experimentation on Humans Medical Experimentation on humans is Extremely controversial for some people. Many people believe that Medical experimentation is extremely unethical. Unit 731 was an Extreme Experiment,” Around 14,000 victims, referred to as ‘logs’ by their captors and including at least eight Allied prisoners of war, were murdered in unit 731 between 1936 to 1945 ” (Hill).There was no exact number of how many people died when Unit 731 happened.

Only a small fraction of those imprisoned in Nazi camps survived. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 1)”. The prisoners were tortured in ways beyond imagination. A special few prisoners would be selected by Nazi doctors, who would then perform dangerous medical experiments on them. The Nazi’s would also beat the Jews and do many treacherous things to them.

The oppression began with health policies aimed towards the removal of “unfit” persons. Over time, the Nazi strategies intensified; beginning at forced sterilization, and then transitioning into mass murder. Forced sterilization was a government policy that coerced the Disabled into surgical treatments in an attempt to cure them. The most extreme method of manslaughter, known as the “Euthanasia Program”, was a trial run for the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (“Euthanasia Program”). The word “Euthanasia” is translated into “good death”, but to the Nazis, it was a term that implied the systematic mass murders of thousands.

The data that was gathered failed to yield a tangible result, as well. No new advancements were made to help save the lives of German soldiers. It is still interesting, though, to look at the background of the camp and the thought process that led to using prisoners in medical experimentation. One wonders if there would be as much objection to morally repugnant prisoners being allowed to suffer this fate, instead of innocent Jews. The Nazi, in his twisted mind, thought he had found the perfect solution to supplying experiments with