Experiments in death camps. The horrific experiences of Nazi doctor Joseph Mengele in a concentration camp

Next, we invite you, in the company of one blogger, to go on a creepy tour of the Nazi death camp Stutthof in Poland, where German doctors conducted their terrible experiments on people during the Second World War.

The most eminent doctors in Germany worked in these operating rooms and X-ray rooms: Professor Karl Clauberg, doctors Karl Gebhard, Sigmund Rascher and Kurt Plötner. What brought these luminaries of science to the tiny village of Sztutovo in eastern Poland, near Gdansk? There are heavenly places here: picturesque white Baltic beaches, pine forests, rivers and canals, medieval castles and ancient cities. But the doctors did not come here to save lives. They came to this quiet and peaceful place in order to do evil, cruelly mocking thousands of people and conducting savage anatomical experiments on them. No one came out alive from the hands of professors of gynecology and virology...

The Stutthof concentration camp was created 35 km east of Gdansk in 1939, immediately after the Nazi occupation of Poland. A couple of kilometers from the small village of Shtutovo, active construction of watchtowers, wooden barracks and stone security barracks suddenly began. During the war years, about 110 thousand people ended up in this camp, of whom about 65 thousand died. This is a relatively small camp (when compared with Auschwitz and Treblinka), but it was here that experiments on people were carried out, and in addition, Dr. Rudol Spanner in 1940-1944 produced soap from human bodies, trying to put the matter on an industrial footing.

From most of the barracks, only the foundations remained.

But part of the camp has been preserved and you can fully experience the harshness for what it is.

At first, the camp regime was such that prisoners were even allowed to occasionally meet with relatives. In these rooms. But very quickly this practice was stopped and the Nazis began to seriously engage in the extermination of prisoners, for which, in fact, such places were created.

No comments needed.

It is generally accepted that the most terrible thing in such places is the crematorium. I don't agree. Dead bodies were burned there. Much more terrible is what the sadists did to people who were still alive. Let's take a walk to the "hospital" and see this place where the luminaries of German medicine saved unfortunate prisoners. I said this sarcastically about “rescuing”. Usually it was relatively healthy people who ended up in the hospital. Doctors didn't need real patients. People were washed here.

Here the unfortunate people relieved themselves. Pay attention to the service - there are even toilets. In the barracks, the toilets are just holes in the concrete floor. A healthy body means a healthy mind. Fresh “patients” were prepared for medical experiments.

Here, in these offices, at different times in 1939-1944, the luminaries of German science worked hard. Dr. Clauberg enthusiastically experimented with the sterilization of women, a topic that fascinated him throughout his adult life. Experiments were carried out using x-rays, surgery and various drugs. During the experiments, thousands of women, mostly Polish, Jewish and Belarusian, were sterilized.

Here they studied the effects of mustard gas on the body and looked for cures. For this purpose, prisoners were first placed in gas chambers and gas was released into them. And then they brought them here and tried to treat them.

Karl Wernet also worked here for a short period of time, devoting himself to finding a way to cure homosexuality. Experiments on gays began late, in 1944, and were not brought to any obvious result. Detailed documentation has been preserved about his operations, as a result of which a capsule with a “male hormone” was sewn into the groin area of homosexual prisoners of the camp, which was supposed to make them heterosexuals. They write that hundreds of ordinary male prisoners passed themselves off as homosexuals in the hope of surviving. After all, the doctor promised that prisoners cured of homosexuality would be released. As you understand, no one escaped from the hands of Dr. Vernet alive. The experiments were not completed, and the experimental subjects ended their lives in a gas chamber nearby.

While the experiments were carried out, the test subjects lived in more acceptable conditions than other prisoners.

However, the close proximity to the crematorium and gas chamber seemed to hint that there would be no salvation.

A sad and depressing sight.

Ashes of prisoners.

The gas chamber, where they first experimented with mustard gas, and from 1942 switched to “Cyclone-B” for the consistent destruction of concentration camp prisoners. Thousands died in this small house opposite the crematorium. The bodies of those who died from the gas were immediately dumped into the crematorium ovens.

There is a museum at the camp, but almost everything there is in Polish.

Nazi literature in the concentration camp museum.

Plan of the camp on the eve of its evacuation.

Road to nowhere...

The fate of the fascist doctors-fanatics developed differently:

The main monster, Josef Mengele fled to South America and lived in Sao Paulo until his death in 1979. Next door to him, the sadistic gynecologist Karl Wernet, who died in 1965 in Uruguay, quietly lived out his life. Kurt Pletner lived to a ripe old age, managed to receive a professorship in 1954, and died in 1984 in Germany as an honorary veteran of medicine.

Dr. Rascher himself was sent by the Nazis in 1945 to the Dachau concentration camp on suspicion of treason against the Reich and his further fate is unknown. Only one of the monster doctors suffered the deserved punishment - Karl Gebhard, who was sentenced to death by the Nuremberg court and was hanged on June 2, 1948.

Nazi Germany, in addition to starting World War II, is also notorious for its concentration camps, as well as the horrors that happened there. The horror of the Nazi camp system consisted not only of terror and arbitrariness, but also of the colossal experiments on people that were carried out there. Scientific research was carried out on a grand scale, and its goals were so varied that it would take a long time to even name them.

In German concentration camps, scientific hypotheses were tested and various biomedical technologies were tested on living “human material”. Wartime dictated its priorities, so doctors were primarily interested in the practical application of scientific theories. For example, the possibility of maintaining people’s working capacity under conditions of excessive stress, blood transfusions with different Rh factors were studied, and new drugs were tested.

Among these monstrous experiments are pressure tests, experiments on hypothermia, the development of a vaccine against typhus, experiments with malaria, gas, sea water, poisons, sulfanilamide, sterilization experiments and many others.

In 1941, experiments were carried out with hypothermia. They were led by Dr. Rascher under the direct supervision of Himmler. The experiments were carried out in two stages. At the first stage, they found out what temperature a person could withstand and for how long, and the second stage was to determine ways to restore the human body after frostbite. To conduct such experiments, prisoners were taken out in winter without clothes for the whole night or placed in ice water. Hypothermia trials were conducted exclusively on men to simulate the conditions experienced by German soldiers on the Eastern Front, as the Nazis were ill-prepared for winter. For example, in one of the first experiments, prisoners were lowered into a container of water, the temperature of which ranged from 2 to 12 degrees, wearing pilot suits. At the same time, they were put on life jackets, which kept them afloat. As a result of the experiment, Rascher found that attempts to bring a person caught in ice water back to life are practically zero if the cerebellum was overcooled. This was the reason for the development of a special vest with a headrest that covered the back of the head and prevented the back of the head from plunging into the water.

The same Dr. Rascher in 1942 began conducting experiments on prisoners using pressure changes. Thus, doctors tried to establish how much air pressure a person could withstand and for how long. To conduct the experiment, a special pressure chamber was used in which the pressure was regulated. There were 25 people in it at the same time. The purpose of these experiments was to help pilots and skydivers at high altitudes. According to one of the doctor's reports, the experiment was carried out on a 37-year-old Jew who was in good physical shape. Half an hour after the start of the experiment, he died.

200 prisoners took part in the experiment, 80 of them died, the rest were simply killed.

The Nazis also made large-scale preparations for the use of bacteriological agents. The emphasis was mainly on fast-moving diseases, plague, anthrax, typhus, that is, diseases that in a short time could cause mass infections and death of the enemy.

The Third Reich had large reserves of typhus bacteria. In the event of their mass use, it was necessary to develop a vaccine to disinfect the Germans. On behalf of the government, Dr. Paul began developing a vaccine against typhus. The first to experience the effects of vaccines were the prisoners of Buchenwald. In 1942, 26 Roma, who had previously been vaccinated, were infected with typhus there. As a result, 6 people died from progression of the disease. This result did not satisfy the management, since the mortality rate was high. Therefore, research was continued in 1943. And the next year, the improved vaccine was again tested on humans. But this time the victims of vaccination were prisoners of the Natzweiler camp. Dr. Chrétien conducted the experiments. 80 gypsies were selected for the experiment. They were infected with typhus in two ways: by injection and by airborne droplets. Of the total number of test subjects, only 6 people became infected, but even such a small number were not provided with any medical care. In 1944, all 80 people who were involved in the experiment either died from the disease or were shot by concentration camp guards.

In addition, other cruel experiments were carried out on prisoners in the same Buchenwald. So, in 1943-1944, experiments with incendiary mixtures were carried out there. Their goal was to solve problems associated with bomb explosions, when soldiers received phosphorus burns. Mostly Russian prisoners were used for these experiments.

Experiments with the genitals were also carried out here in order to identify the causes of homosexuality. They involved not only homosexuals, but also men of traditional orientation. One of the experiments was genital transplantation.

Also in Buchenwald, experiments were carried out to infect prisoners with yellow fever, diphtheria, smallpox, and also used poisonous substances. For example, to study the effect of poisons on the human body, they were added to the food of prisoners. As a result, some of the victims died, and some were immediately shot for autopsies. In 1944, all participants in this experiment were shot using poison bullets.

A series of experiments were also carried out at the Dachau concentration camp. Thus, back in 1942, some prisoners aged 20 to 45 were infected with malaria. In total, 1,200 people were infected. Permission to conduct the experiment was obtained by the leader, Dr. Pletner, directly from Himmler. The victims were bitten by malarial mosquitoes, and, in addition, they were also infused with sporozoans, which were taken from mosquitoes. Quinine, antipyrine, pyramidon, and also a special drug called “2516-Bering” were used for treatment. As a result, approximately 40 people died from malaria, about 400 died from complications of the disease, and another number died from excessive doses of medication.

Here, in Dachau, in 1944, experiments were carried out to convert sea water into drinking water. For the experiments, 90 gypsies were used, who were completely deprived of food and forced to drink only sea water.

No less terrible experiments were carried out at the Auschwitz concentration camp. So, in particular, throughout the entire period of the war, sterilization experiments were carried out there, the purpose of which was to identify a quick and effective way to sterilize a large number of people without much time and physical effort. During the experiment, thousands of people were sterilized. The procedure was carried out using surgery, x-rays and various medications. At first, injections with iodine or silver nitrate were used, but this method had a large number of side effects. Therefore, irradiation was more preferable. Scientists have found that a certain amount of X-rays can prevent the human body from producing eggs and sperm. During the experiments, a large number of prisoners received radiation burns.

The experiments with twins conducted by Dr. Mengele in the Auschwitz concentration camp were particularly cruel. Before the war, he worked on genetics, so twins were especially “interesting” to him.

Mengele personally sorted the “human material”: the most interesting, in his opinion, were sent to experiments, the less hardy to labor, and the rest to the gas chamber.

The experiment involved 1,500 pairs of twins, of which only 200 survived. Mengele conducted experiments on changing eye color by injecting chemicals, which resulted in complete or temporary blindness. He also attempted to "create Siamese twins" by sewing twins together. In addition, he experimented with infecting one of the twins with an infection, after which he performed autopsies on both to compare the affected organs.

When Soviet troops approached Auschwitz, the doctor managed to escape to Latin America.

There were also experiments in another German concentration camp - Ravensbrück. The experiments used women who were injected with bacteria of tetanus, staphylococcus, and gas gangrene. The purpose of the experiments was to determine the effectiveness of sulfonamide drugs.

The prisoners were given incisions, where shards of glass or metal were placed, and then bacteria were planted. After infection, subjects were closely monitored, recording changes in temperature and other signs of infection. In addition, experiments in transplantology and traumatology were conducted here. Women were deliberately mutilated, and to make it more convenient to monitor the healing process, sections of the body were cut out to the bone. Moreover, their limbs were often amputated, which were then taken to a neighboring camp and reattached to other prisoners.

Not only did the Nazis abuse prisoners of concentration camps, but they also conducted experiments on “true Aryans.” Thus, a large burial was recently discovered, which was initially mistaken for Scythian remains. However, it was later established that there were German soldiers in the grave. The discovery horrified archaeologists: some of the bodies were decapitated, others had their shinbones sawn apart, and others had holes along the spine. It was also found that during life people were exposed to chemicals, and incisions were clearly visible in many skulls. As it later turned out, these were victims of experiments by the Ahnenerbe, a secret organization of the Third Reich that was engaged in the creation of a superman.

Since it was immediately obvious that such experiments would involve a large number of casualties, Himmler took responsibility for all deaths. He did not consider all these horrors to be murder, because, according to him, concentration camp prisoners are not people.

Research ethics was updated after the end of World War II. In 1947, the Nuremberg Code was developed and adopted, which continues to protect the well-being of research participants. However, previously scientists did not hesitate to experiment on prisoners, slaves, and even members of their own families, violating all human rights. This list contains the most shocking and unethical cases.

10. Stanford Prison Experiment

In 1971, a team of Stanford University scientists led by psychologist Philip Zimbardo conducted a study of human reactions to restrictions on freedom in prison conditions. As part of the experiment, volunteers had to play the roles of guards and prisoners in the basement of the Faculty of Psychology building, equipped as a prison. The volunteers quickly got used to their duties, however, contrary to the predictions of scientists, terrible and dangerous incidents began to occur during the experiment. A third of the “guards” showed pronounced sadistic tendencies, while many “prisoners” were psychologically traumatized. Two of them had to be excluded from the experiment ahead of time. Zimbardo, concerned about the antisocial behavior of the subjects, was forced to stop the study early.

9. Monstrous experiment

In 1939, a graduate student at the University of Iowa, Mary Tudor, under the guidance of psychologist Wendell Johnson, performed an equally shocking experiment on the orphans of the Davenport orphanage. The experiment was devoted to studying the influence of value judgments on children's speech fluency. The subjects were divided into two groups. During the training of one of them, Tudor gave positive assessments and praised her in every possible way. She subjected the speech of children from the second group to harsh criticism and ridicule. The experiment ended disastrously, which is why it later got its name. Many healthy children did not recover from the injury and suffered from speech problems throughout their lives. A public apology for the Monstrous Experiment was made by the University of Iowa only in 2001.

8. Project 4.1

The medical study, known as Project 4.1, was carried out by US scientists on residents of the Marshall Islands who became victims of radioactive contamination after the explosion of the American thermonuclear device Castle Bravo in the spring of 1954. In the first 5 years after the disaster on Rongelap Atoll, the number of miscarriages and stillbirths doubled, and developmental disorders appeared in surviving children. Over the next decade, many of them developed thyroid cancer. By 1974, a third had developed neoplasms. As experts later concluded, the purpose of the medical program to help the local residents of the Marshall Islands was to use them as guinea pigs in a “radioactive experiment.”

7. Project MK-ULTRA

The secret CIA program MK-ULTRA to research means of mind manipulation was launched in the 1950s. The essence of the project was to study the influence of various psychotropic substances on human consciousness. The participants in the experiment were doctors, military personnel, prisoners and other representatives of the US population. The subjects, as a rule, did not know that they were being injected with drugs. One of the CIA's secret operations was called "Midnight Climax". In several brothels in San Francisco, male test subjects were selected, injected with LSD into their bloodstreams, and then filmed for study. The project lasted at least until the 1960s. In 1973, the CIA destroyed most of the MK-ULTRA program documents, causing significant difficulties in the subsequent US Congressional investigation into the matter.

6. Project "Aversia"

From the 70s to the 80s of the 20th century, an experiment was conducted in the South African army aimed at changing the gender of soldiers with non-traditional sexual orientation. During the top-secret Operation Aversia, about 900 people were injured. Suspected homosexuals were identified by army doctors with the assistance of priests. In a military psychiatric ward, subjects were subjected to hormonal therapy and electric shock. If soldiers could not be “cured” in this way, they faced forced chemical castration or sex reassignment surgery. The "aversion" was led by psychiatrist Aubrey Levin. In the 90s, he immigrated to Canada, not wanting to stand trial for the atrocities he committed.

5. Experiments on people in North Korea

North Korea has repeatedly been accused of conducting research on prisoners that violates human rights, however, the country's government denies all accusations, saying that the state treats them humanely. However, one of the former prisoners told the shocking truth. Before the eyes of the prisoner, a terrible, if not terrifying, experience appeared: 50 women, under the threat of reprisals against their families, were forced to eat poisoned cabbage leaves and died, suffering from bloody vomiting and rectal bleeding to the accompaniment of the screams of other victims of the experiment. There are eyewitness accounts of special laboratories equipped for experiments. Entire families became their targets. After a standard medical examination, the rooms were sealed and filled with asphyxiating gas, and the “researchers” watched through the glass from above as parents tried to save their children, giving them artificial respiration as long as they had strength left.

4. Toxicological laboratory of the USSR special services

A top-secret scientific unit, also known as the "Chamber", under the leadership of Colonel Mayranovsky, was engaged in experiments in the field of toxic substances and poisons such as ricin, digitoxin and mustard gas. Experiments were carried out, as a rule, on prisoners sentenced to capital punishment. Poisons were served to subjects under the guise of medicine along with food. The main goal of scientists was to find an odorless and tasteless toxin that would not leave traces after the death of the victim. Ultimately, scientists managed to discover the poison they were looking for. According to eyewitness accounts, after taking C-2, the test subject weakened, became quiet, as if he was shrinking, and died within 15 minutes.

3. Tuskegee Syphilis Study

The infamous experiment began in 1932 in the Alabama town of Tuskegee. For 40 years, scientists literally refused to treat patients with syphilis in order to study all stages of the disease. The victims of the experiment were 600 poor African-American sharecroppers. The patients were not informed about their illness. Instead of giving a diagnosis, doctors told people they had “bad blood” and offered free food and treatment in exchange for participating in the program. During the experiment, 28 men died from syphilis, 100 from subsequent complications, 40 infected their wives, and 19 children received a congenital disease.

2. "Unit 731"

Members of a special detachment of the Japanese armed forces under the leadership of Shiro Ishii were engaged in experiments in the field of chemical and biological weapons. In addition, they are responsible for the most horrific experiments on people that history knows. The detachment's military doctors dissected living subjects, amputated the limbs of prisoners and sewed them to other parts of the body, and deliberately infected men and women with sexually transmitted diseases through rape in order to subsequently study the consequences. The list of Unit 731 atrocities is enormous, but many of its employees were never punished for their actions.

1. Nazi experiments on people

Medical experiments carried out by the Nazis during World War II claimed a huge number of lives. In concentration camps, scientists carried out the most sophisticated and inhumane experiments. At Auschwitz, Dr. Josef Mengele conducted studies of more than 1,500 pairs of twins. Various chemicals were injected into test subjects' eyes to see if their color would change, and in an attempt to create conjoined twins, test subjects were stitched together. Meanwhile, the Luftwaffe tried to find a way to treat hypothermia by forcing prisoners to lie in icy water for several hours, and at the Ravensbrück camp, researchers deliberately wounded prisoners and infected them with infections in order to test sulfonamides and other drugs.

On August 20, 1947, the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg rendered a decision in the “Doctors' Case”: 16 out of 23 people were found guilty, seven of them were sentenced to death. The indictment alleges “crimes that included murder, atrocities, cruelty, torture and other inhumane acts.” The author of the Fleming project, Anastasia Spirina, sorted through the SS archives and why exactly the Nazi doctors were convicted.

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Auschwitz concentration camp

From a letter from former prisoner W. Kling dated April 4, 1947 to Fraulein Frohwein, sister of SS Obersturmführer Ernst Frohwein, who from July 1942 to March 1943. was the deputy first camp doctor in the Saxenhausen concentration camp, and later - SS Hauptsturmführer and adjutant to the imperial medical leader Conti (hereinafter in italics excerpts from the book “SS in Action”):

“The fact that my brother was an SS man is not his fault, he was dragged in. He was a good German and wanted to do his duty. But he could never consider it his duty to participate in these crimes, which we only learned about now.”
I believe in the sincerity of your horror and in the no less sincerity of your indignation. From the point of view of real facts, it should be stated: it is undoubtedly true that your brother from the Hitler Youth organization, in which he was an activist, was “drawn” into the SS. The assertion of his “innocence” would only be true if it happened against his will. But this, of course, was not the case. Your brother was a “National Socialist”. Subjectively, he was not an opportunist, but, on the contrary, he was convinced, of course, of the correctness of his ideas and actions. He thought and acted the way hundreds of thousands of people of his generation and his origin thought and acted in Germany...” He was a good surgeon and loved his specialty. He also possessed a quality that in Germany - because of its rarity among those who wore the uniform - was called “civic courage.” “...”
I read in his eyes and heard from his lips that the impression these people made on him had at first dismayed him. All of them were more intelligent, treated each other more comradely, often in terribly difficult situations they showed themselves to be more courageous than the drunkards around him - the SS men. “...” In the prisoner he saw - “privately” - “a good fellow.”...” It was clear that beyond this point, the SS officer Frohwein, devoted to his “Fuhrer” and his leaders, would throw away delicacy. Here a split consciousness occurred...”
Whoever put on the SS uniform was registered as a criminal. He hid and stifled everything human that once was in him. For Obersturmführer Frohwein, this unpleasant side of his activity was precisely his “duty.” This was the duty of not only the “good”, but also the “best” German, for the latter was a member of the SS.

From a letter from V. Kling

Fighting infectious diseases

Since experiments on animals do not provide a sufficiently complete assessment, experiments must be carried out on humans.

In October 1941, block 46 was created in Buchenwald with the name “Typhus Test Station. Department for the Study of Typhus and Viruses" under the direction of the Institute of Hygiene of the SS Troops in Berlin. In the period from 1942 to 1945. More than 1,000 prisoners were used for these experiments, not only from the Buchenwald camp, but also from other places. Before arriving at Unit 46, no one knew that they would become test subjects. Selection for experiments was carried out according to an application sent to the camp commandant’s office, and execution was transferred to the camp doctor.

Block 46 was not only a place for conducting experiments, but also, in fact, a factory for the production of vaccines against typhoid and typhus. Bacterial cultures were needed to make vaccines against typhus. However, this was not absolutely necessary, since in institutes such experiments are carried out without growing the bacterial cultures themselves (researchers find typhoid patients from whom they can take blood for research). It was completely different here. In order to keep the bacteria in an active state, in order to constantly have a biological poison for subsequent injections, rickettsia cultures were transferred from a patient to a healthy one by intravenous injections of infected blood. Thus, twelve different cultures of bacteria, designated by the initial letters Bu - Buchenwald, were preserved there, and go from “Buchenwald 1” to “Buchenwald 12”. Every month, four to six people were infected in this way, and most of them died as a result of this infection.

The vaccines used by the German army were not only produced in Block 46, but were obtained from Italy, Denmark, Romania, France and Poland. Healthy prisoners, whose physical condition through special nutrition was brought to the physical level of a Wehrmacht soldier, were used to determine the effectiveness of various typhus vaccines. All experimental subjects were divided into control and experimental objects. Experimental subjects received vaccinations, but control subjects, on the contrary, did not receive vaccinations. Then all objects in the corresponding experiment were subjected to the introduction of typhoid bacilli in various ways: they were injected subcutaneously, intramuscularly, intravenously and by scarification. The infectious dose that could cause the development of infection in the experimental subject was determined.

In block 46 there were large boards where tables were kept on which the results of a series of experiments with various vaccines were entered and temperature curves on which it was possible to trace how the disease developed and how much the vaccine could restrain its development. A medical history was made for each person.

After fourteen days (the maximum incubation period), people in the control group died. Prisoners who received various protective vaccinations died at different times, depending on the quality of the vaccines themselves. As soon as the experiment could be considered completed, the survivors, in accordance with the tradition of block 46, were liquidated in the usual way of liquidation in the Buchenwald camp - by injecting 10 cm³ of phenol into the heart area.

In Auschwitz, experiments were conducted to determine the existence of natural immunity against tuberculosis, the development of vaccines, and chemoprophylaxis with drugs such as nitroacridine and rutenol (a combination of the first drug with potent arsenic acid) was practiced. A method such as creating an artificial pneumothorax was tried. In Neuegamma, a certain Dr. Kurt Heismeier sought to disprove that tuberculosis was an infectious disease, arguing that only the “emaciated” body was susceptible to such infection and that the “racially inferior body of the Jews” was most susceptible. Two hundred subjects were injected with live Mycobacterium tuberculosis into their lungs, and twenty Jewish children infected with tuberculosis had their axillary lymph nodes removed for histological examination, leaving disfiguring scars.

The Nazis solved the problem of tuberculosis epidemics radically: from May 1942 to January 1944. all Poles who were found to have open and incurable, according to the decision of the official commission, forms of tuberculosis were isolated or killed under the pretext of protecting the health of Germans in Poland.

From approximately February 1942 to April 1945. At Dachau, malaria treatments were studied on more than 1,000 prisoners. Healthy prisoners in special quarters were subjected to bites from infected mosquitoes or injections of mosquito salivary gland extract. Dr. Klaus Schilling hoped to create a vaccine against malaria in this way. The antiprotozoal drug akrikhin was studied.

Similar experiments were carried out with other infectious diseases, such as yellow fever (in Sachsenhausen), smallpox, paratyphoid A and B, cholera and diphtheria.

Industrial concerns of that time took an active part in the experiments. Of these, the German concern IG Farben (one of whose subsidiaries is the current pharmaceutical company Bayer) played a special role. Scientific representatives of this concern traveled to concentration camps to test the effectiveness of new types of their products. During the war, IG Farben also produced tabun, sarin and Zyklon B, which was mainly (about 95%) used for disinfestation purposes (elimination of lice - carriers of many infectious diseases, such as typhus), but this did not prevent it from being used for extermination in gas chambers.

To help the military

People who still reject these experiments on people,
preferring that because of this the valiant German soldiers
were dying from the effects of hypothermia, I consider them to be traitors and traitors to the state, and I will not stop before naming the names of these gentlemen in the appropriate authorities.

Reichsführer SS G. Himmler

Experiments for the air force began in May 1941 at Dachau under the auspices of Heinrich Himmler. Nazi doctors considered “military necessity” sufficient grounds for monstrous experiments. They justified their actions by saying that the prisoners were sentenced to death anyway.

The experiments were supervised by Dr. Sigmund Rascher.

During an experiment in a pressure chamber, a prisoner loses consciousness and then dies. Dachau, Germany, 1942

In the first series of experiments, changes occurring in the body under the influence of low and high atmospheric pressure were studied on two hundred prisoners. Using a pressure chamber, scientists simulated the conditions (temperature and nominal pressure) in which the pilot finds himself during depressurization of the cabin at altitudes of up to 20,000 m. Then, an autopsy of the victims was carried out, during which it was discovered that with a sharp decrease in pressure in the pilot’s cabin, nitrogen dissolved in the tissues began to be released into blood in the form of air bubbles. This led to blockage of blood vessels in various organs and the development of decompression sickness.

In August 1942, hypothermia experiments began, prompted by the question of rescuing pilots shot down by enemy fire in the icy waters of the North Sea. The experimental subjects (about three hundred people) were placed in water with a temperature of +2° to +12°С, wearing a full set of winter and summer pilot equipment. In one series of experiments, the occipital region (the projection of the brain stem where the vital centers are located) was out of water, while in another series of experiments the occipital region was immersed in water. The temperature in the stomach and rectum was measured electrically. Deaths occurred only if the occipital region was exposed to hypothermia along with the body. When the body temperature during these experiments reached 25°C, the experimental subject inevitably died, despite all attempts at rescue.

The question also arose about the best method of rescuing hypothermic victims. Several methods were tried: heating with lamps, irrigating the stomach, bladder and intestines with hot water, etc. The best way turned out to be placing the victim in a hot bath. The experiments were carried out as follows: 30 undressed people were outdoors for 9-14 hours, until their body temperature reached 27-29°C. They were then placed in a hot bath and, despite partially frostbitten hands and feet, the patient was completely warmed up within no more than one hour. There were no deaths in this series of experiments.

A victim of a Nazi medical experiment is immersed in icy water at the Dachau concentration camp. Dr. Rasher oversees the experiment. Germany, 1942

There was also interest in the method of warming with animal heat (the warmth of animals or humans). The experimental subjects were hypothermic in cold water of various temperatures (from +4 to +9°C). Removal from water was carried out when body temperature dropped to 30°C. At this temperature, subjects were always unconscious. A group of test subjects were placed in bed between two naked women, who had to press as closely as possible to the chilled person. The three faces were then covered with blankets. It turned out that warming with animal heat proceeded very slowly, but the return of consciousness occurred earlier than with other methods. Once they regained consciousness, people no longer lost it, but quickly learned their position and pressed themselves closely to the naked women. Test subjects whose physical condition allowed sexual intercourse warmed up noticeably faster; this result can be compared to warming up in a hot bath. It was concluded that warming severely cold people with animal heat can only be recommended in cases in which no other warming options are available, as well as for weak individuals who do not tolerate massive heat supply, for example, for infants, who are better They are generally warmed up near the mother’s body, supplemented with warming bottles. Rascher presented the results of his experiments in 1942 at the conference “Medical problems arising at sea and in winter.”

The results obtained during the experiments remain in demand, since repetition of these experiments is impossible in our time. Dr. John Hayward, an expert on hypothermia, stated: “I do not want to use these results, but there are no others and there will be no others in the ethical world.” Hayward himself conducted experiments on volunteers for several years, but he never allowed the body temperature of the participants to drop below 32.2 ° C. Experiments by Nazi doctors made it possible to achieve a figure of 26.5°C and lower.

From July to September 1944, experiments were carried out on 90 Gypsy prisoners to develop methods for desalinating sea water, led by Dr. Hans Eppinger. The subjects were deprived of all food and were given only chemically treated seawater according to Eppinger's own method. The experiments caused severe dehydration and subsequently organ failure and death within 6-12 days. The gypsies were so deeply dehydrated that some of them licked the floors after they had been washed to get even a drop of fresh water.

When Himmler discovered that the cause of death for most SS soldiers on the battlefield was blood loss, he ordered Dr. Rascher to develop a blood coagulant to be administered to German soldiers before they went to war. At Dachau, Rascher tested his patented coagulant by observing the speed of drops of blood oozing from amputation stumps in living and conscious prisoners.

In addition, an effective and quick method of individually killing prisoners was developed. At the beginning of 1942, the Germans conducted experiments injecting air into veins with a syringe. They wanted to determine how much compressed air could be introduced into the blood without causing an embolism. Intravenous injections of oil, phenol, chloroform, gasoline, cyanide and hydrogen peroxide were also used. It was later discovered that death occurred faster if phenol was injected into the heart area.

December 1943 and September-October 1944 were distinguished by conducting experiments to study the influence of various poisons. At Buchenwald, poisons were added to prisoners' food, noodles or soup, and the development of a poisoning clinic was observed. In Sachsenhausen, experiments were carried out on five death row prisoners with 7.65 mm bullets filled with aconitine nitrate in crystalline form. Each subject was shot in the upper left thigh. Death occurred 120 minutes after the shot.

Photo of a phosphorus burn

The phosphorus-rubber incendiary bombs dropped on Germany caused burns to civilians and soldiers, the wounds from which did not heal well. For this reason, from November 1943 to January 1944, experiments were carried out to test the effectiveness of pharmaceutical drugs in the treatment of phosphorus burns, which were supposed to make them easier to scar. To do this, the experimental subjects were artificially burned with a phosphorus mass, which was taken from an English incendiary bomb found near Leipzig.

At various times between September 1939 and April 1945, experiments were conducted at Sachsenhaus, Natzweiler and other concentration camps to investigate the most effective treatment for wounds caused by mustard gas, also known as mustard gas.

In 1932, IG Farben was tasked with finding a dye (one of the main products produced by the conglomerate) that could act as an antibacterial drug. Such a drug was found - prontosil, the first of the sulfonamides and the first antimicrobial drug before the era of antibiotics. It was subsequently tested in experiments by the director of the Bayer Institute of Pathology and Bacteriology, Gerhard Domagk, who received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1939.

Photograph of the scarred leg of Ravensbrück survivor and Polish political prisoner Helena Hegier, who was subjected to medical experiments in 1942.

The effectiveness of sulfonamides and other drugs as a treatment for infected wounds in humans was tested from July 1942 to September 1943 in the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp. The wounds deliberately inflicted on the experimental subjects were infected with bacteria: streptococci, causative agents of gas gangrene and tetanus. To avoid the spread of infection, blood vessels were ligated from both edges of the wound. To simulate wounds received as a result of combat, Dr. Herta Oberheuser placed wood shavings, dirt, rusty nails, and glass shards into the wounds of experimental subjects, which significantly worsened the course of the wound and its healing.

Ravensbrück also carried out a series of experiments on bone transplants, muscle and nerve regeneration, and futile attempts to transplant limbs and organs from one victim to another.

The SS doctors we knew were executioners who discredited the medical profession to the point of impossibility. All of them were cynical murderers of a huge mass of people. Rewards and promotions were made depending on the number of their victims. There is not a single SS doctor who, while working in concentration camps, received his awards for his actual medical activities.

From a letter from V. Kling

Who the hell led or seduced whom? “Fuhrer”, the devil or some kind of god?
Is it true that “outside” no one knew about these crimes inside and outside the walls of the camps? The unassuming truth is that millions of Germans, fathers and mothers, sons and sisters, saw nothing criminal in these crimes. Millions of others understood this quite clearly, but pretended not to know anything,
and they succeeded in this miracle. Those same millions are now horrified by the murderer of four million, [Rudolf] Hess, who calmly declared before the court that he would have killed his closest relatives in the gas chamber if he had been ordered to do so.

From a letter from V. Kling

Sigmund Rascher was captured in 1944 on charges of deceiving the German nation and transported to Buchenwald, from where he was later transferred to Dachau. There he was shot in the back of the head by an unknown person a day before the liberation of the camp by the Allies.

Hertha Oberhauer was tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to 12 years in prison for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Hans Epinger committed suicide a month before the Nuremberg trials.

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200 prisoners took part in the experiment, 80 of them died, the rest were simply killed.

Mengele personally sorted the “human material”: the most interesting, in his opinion, were sent to experiments, the less hardy to labor, and the rest to the gas chamber.

When Soviet troops approached Auschwitz, the doctor managed to escape to Latin America.