Biomedical Experimentation in the Holocaust Essay

The Holocaust was a terrible event that will never be forgotten. One of the worst events that happened was the experiments done on Jews. The experiments done on Jews during the Holocaust, such as freezing experiments, genetic experiments, and experiments on organs, were inhumane and unjustifiable.

Holocaust prisoners left, together, in cold dark water for hours at a time. Were their punishments for nothing? Or did their suffering somehow help us today? Between the years of 1939 and 1945, also known as the Holocaust; the Nazi’s took test subjects from groups of people to perform procedures and experiments on. Unfortunately, all of these so-called “important tests” were exceptionally inhumane. A few examples of the procedures performed were leaving prisoners in freezing cold water for three hours straight or only allowing them to drink pure ocean water for two weeks straight. For the most part, what those German doctors did was unnecessary due to the fact that the outcome was highly predictable. But over the course of the intense studies, a few valid and useful tidbits of information did surface. Some of the research findings from Nazi medical testings during the Holocaust continue to benefit today's modern medical development.

“I will remember that there is an art to medicine as well as a science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife and the chemist’s drug.” (Louis Lasagna). However, the doctors of the holocaust didn’t care, and used the victims as guinea pigs for the results. The medical experiments performed during the Holocaust had horrific outcomes for those experimented upon.

Typhus is a disease that went through the concentration camps. The disease is spread by lice which is a bug that lives in hair usually on the head. (Auschwitz Voices pg.60) Most children were affected by the overcrowding which made it easier to catch typhus and they frequently died from it. Almost 30 percent of the population of Warsaw was packed into 2.4 percent of the city’s area which caused there to be enormous amounts of overcrowding which made it easier to contract diseases.(www.ushmm.Org) It can cause inflamed vessels, which in turn can cause a dramatic drop in blood pressure as well as internal bleeding. (www.share.com) Typhus, in particular was rampant and prisoners were marched out of the camps and into the ghetto for mass disinfections. Disinfection baths were established in certain areas like on Balonowa Street. (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)

During the Holocaust, the Nazis carried out many unethical medical experiments on patients without regard for their survival. Prisoners were forced to be subjects in various studies against their will. The Nazis’ victims went through indescribable pain as they were forced through high-altitude, freezing, tuberculosis, sea water, sulfanilamide, poison, and transplant experiments. Through these tragic Holocaust experiments, scientists and doctors discovered treatments used today for high-altitude sickness, hypothermia, contagious diseases, dehydration, poisoning, and war wounds.

To further explain, two Polish doctors named, Eugene Lazowksi and Stanislaw Matulewicz, discovered a way to help the Jews in the German concentration camps. Matulewicz and Lazowksihad a plan to save Jews by creating a fake typhus epidemic(Fake Epidemic Saves). To create this fake epidemic the doctors injected patients with typhus cells, and when a blood test was taken, the patient would test positive for typhus. However, when a patient is injected, they do not have any of symptoms or the actual typhus disease. The doctors tested this on their Jewish friend who was on a special leave from a concentration camp in Germany. The Jew was sent back to the concentration camp and tested positive for typhus. This fake epidemic the doctor's created saved over 8,000 Jews who faced death in the German concentration camps(Budanovic). Along with typhus saving lives, the disease was a threat to many people living in the ghettos during

During World War II, there were many acts of cruelty done towards people seen as unsuitable or worthless to the Nazis. These people included Jew, homosexuals, gypsies, and the handicapped. In this paper, I'm going to describe the medical experiments that were performed on inmates by Nazi doctors during the Holocaust. These experiments include: the twin experiments, the freezing experiments, the seawater experiments, and the bone grafting and nerve experiments.

These experiments were not only full of hate but also used for the advancement of medicine and effective treatment of the patient. Some were just out of fascination and believed they were for the better of the Aryan race. Injecting prisoners with chemicals, raising and lowering body temperature, and comparing the vitals of twins under extreme conditions are just three ways doctors of the Holocaust used prisoners for medical advancement. Since that age and time we have strived to move forward from that period and time and focus more on the patient's well being rather than the

     As a society we place those in the medical profession on a pedestal. They are people to be looked up to and admired. In many ways they are Gods, right here with us on earth. People put the hope and faith in doctors hoping they can perform miracles. Throughout history, doctors have indeed preformed many wonders. There were, however, some doctors that betrayed this belief and peoples trust. These doctors could be found in concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Dachau. These doctors committed unspeakable acts against the Jews and other minorities, believing that they were conducting helpful experiments. Following the holocaust, however, they were punished for their

Many brutal atrocities were committed during the Holocaust by the Nazi party against anyone they viewed as “unpure”. This included the Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Afro-Germans, Slavs, communists, the handicapped, and the mentally disabled. These groups were targeted, stripped away of their rights and citizenship, and then sent to concentration camps. Some of these camps were death camps; created for the sole purpose to annihilate these groups of people, mainly the Jews. At these camps, the prisoners were tortured, starved, brutally killed, and experimented on. In this research paper, I am going to discuss some of the medical experiments that were

When a soldier got an infection from an amputation, the over crowdedness of the camps made it so the disease traveled very quickly to the rest of the soldiers causing even more than one casualty. When the soldiers were traveling, they met extremes of cold or of heat. The different climates that the soldiers were exposed to made it so the soldiers more vulnerable to different diseases. The doctor’s sanitary situation while performing procedures was appalling. The unclean water used in procedures made the soldiers even more susceptible to diseases and infections.

Disease was one of the effect that affected the Jews in the holocaust. “One of the disease that caused the Jews to get sick was typhus” (“Typhus”). That shows how the Jews were living in poor conditions which caused people to get ill. “There are three different types of Typhus; epidemic/louse-borne typhus caused by rickettsia prowazekii ,murine typhus caused by rickettsia typhi and scrub typhus caused by Orientia tsutsugamushi”(Typhus) . In Auschwitz II Birkenau camp , there was no running water and unsanitary equipment which caused the spread of diseases”(Auschwitz:The Camp of Death).This shows how the Jews did not get clean water to drink and what they drink and eat were contaminated and infected. The contaminated water made more jews infected

The doctors who examined the incoming prisoners and sorted them also worked in these hospitals performing medical research on the ill. This medical research was mostly placing the Jewish prisoners in ice water baths then monitoring them until they died. This research was mostly used to prevent hypothermia if German Pilots ever ended up being stranded in the ocean. Some of the experiments performed by doctors often had no research purpose at all, such as experiments involving eye color changing using chemical droppers and the surgical sewing of children together to create siamese twins. Auschwitz was the largest death camp with 20,000 Jews being killed a day and 39 subcamps.

head for not marching correctly. The shots to the head were what lead to the

The hospitals in Auschwitz were very inferior, and they were never clean. The people that were ahead of the hospitals and infirmaries oversaw the executions of Jews. Prisoners would say that they sat in overcrowded rooms in shirts darkened with filth. Most often they sat naked and lay on pads full of excrement, urine, and puss. Fleas and lice filled the hospital premises. In addition rats would gnaw on the limbs of the dead, and they attacked the weak or the ones that were unconscious. Patients received smaller rations than the ones working. The ones with fever would suffer torments of thirst. The prisoners that were likely to continue to work after a short time were treated better in hospitals. But the ones that were terminally ill to them they would act like they weren’t there. In 1943-44 the prisoners started to take care of the sick but their efforts quickly shot down, because the ones very sick they would be sent to die in the chambers. On July 28, 1941 a special commission sent 575 chronically ill, disabled, and elderly were sent to a mental institution to do a test with