The Holocaust in World War II is one the many cases of genocide. Millions of people were killed, or injured during the war. People were held in places called concentration camps. In the camps, people were dehumanized. They were treated like animals, and hurt. Sometimes they were even put through unethical treatments and medical experiments. Medical experiments are often talked about during times of war, as most of the time they are unethical, and a crime against humanity, as in the case of the experiments during the Holocaust. The medical experiments, and the trials that followed were the first trials for the crimes against humanity. The medical experiments of the Holocaust were a horrendous crime against humanity because they needlessly slaughtered …show more content…
Victims were chosen as they got off the train. They were carefully selected based off their build, race, gender, and family. The life they had to suffer through as a part of the experiments was not at all better than those in the concentration camps, if anything, it was worse. They were forced into painful situations, and received nothing. One of the goals of the experiments was to sterilize people who would not produce the perfect off springs. One way that was done was through X-rays. People were put to X-ray machines, and they were turned on. The X-rays would cause serious burns and swelling, but they were forced to go back to work regardless.(3) They forced to people who were what they wanted to get sterilized in a painful fashion, then forced them to continue on hard, strenuous work. This seriously hurt some, and helped to the overall deaths of people in the concentration camps, and the systematic destruction of entire groups of people. As one person recounts in his experience that man man came and, “He distributed various desserts to us children. After a couple of hours, we realized that something was not in order with the food. I got really sick and suffered from cramps, I threw up, had diarrhea, the chills and fever. Many died as a consequence of this poisoned food.”(4). The people had been starved, and then they received poison food …show more content…
The doctors of the Holocaust were cruel people. They did not care about the people they hurt to get the results the so desperately were seeking. They killed many in the experiments, killed some to hide evidence, and killed others without reason. All of the people involved were supposed to go on trial for their crimes. In some cases, they did not go on trial, or receive little to no sentencing. Some doctors were tried during what was known as the as the Nuremberg trials, or the Doctors Trial, a total of “23 leading German physicians and administrator” (7) were tried for crimes against humanity. These people were involved the the torture and murder of innocent people. These people were tried as only 23 out of the 200 physicians (3), as some people like Josef Mengele, known for his experiments on kids, escaped, and “lived for 35 years hiding under various aliases”(8). People like Mengele escaped any sort of punishment for years. They never faced justice for their actions. This was not fair to the people who suffered because of people like him, and their families. Of the 23 put on trial, “Sixteen of the doctors were found guilty. Seven were sentenced to death.” (7). Only sixteen got in trouble and faced punishment for their ungodly acts. This means seven doctors escaped punishment on
It is interesting to note that Nazis were cunning enough to choose locations that were far from the public eye because they probably knew to a certain degree that although the Nazi party had massive support, that could all go out the window if the German people found out cruel experiments and executions being conducted. Another thing to note is that it seems as though mentally disabled Germans were the guinea pigs for how the Nazis would experiment on and execute the Jews later on. Doctors weren't really needed at these institutions, they were only really there to maintain the illusion of a scientific and medical program. However they did have another task, which was to come up with reasons for the cause of their patients' deaths. They would send out letters to victims' families. It seems these Nazi doctors were very methodical in order to cover up what they were doing but it would turnout that weren't as clever as they thought they were. The families of the victims would notice inconsistencies with the official cause of death and later on public protests would cause Hitler to order the gas chambers be dismantled in August
There were many ways that the Nazi tortured the Jews during the Holocaust. They harmed them both mentally and physically, but the most horrific kind of torture was the physical abuse. The Nazis tortured, killed, and experimented on the Jews in an inhuman way. The experimentations that were conducted by the doctors were very horrendous and shocking. They had three categories for the experiments: military, biomedical, and racial/ideological. Though all the types of experimentations were terrible, the biomedical category was the most appalling. In the biomedical experimentations, the doctors did some cruel studies on the prisoners that included injecting diseases, inflicting wounds, and killing them to observe body functions. They were
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
The horrific experiments of Dr. Mengele demonstrate the cruelty of the Nazi’s during the holocaust. Most of the world today knows of Dr. Mengele of having been the doctor of death for being responsible for killing more than 6 million Jews.
Millions of people lost their lives in the holocaust, a portion of them dying at the hands of corrupt doctors. During the holocaust, over 200 doctors stationed at various concentration camps performed violent, inhumane medical experiments that took hundreds of lives.(United) Experiments were done to further the Nazi beliefs, as well as the performing doctor's own career. For example, experiments benifiting soldiers, and genetic experiments supporting the government's views increased their ranking in Nazi society and allowed the physican special treatment. Similarly, information learned about diseases and medicines could be sold to pharmecutical companies for a profit. (www.auschwitz.org) Consequentally, many of the doctors only cared about
Josef Mengele had a very sick mind for the type of gruesome experiments that he performed on men, and women. Dr. Josef Mengele performed an experiment where he would test two things. The first thing the doctor would test is how long it would take for the body temperature to lower to death, and the second thing that they would test is how long it would take to resuscitate the frozen victim. The frozen victims would not wear their clothes that were provided to them by the camp, the victims were put out naked in sub-zero conditions. The frozen victim would also have water that is heated to a near blistering temperature forcefully irrigated into the stomach, bladder, and intestines. This experiment killed every person. That is two of the many types ways Dr. Josef Mengele experimented on men, and women. Another way the doctor experimented on “test subjects” was they were put under a sun lamp, and it would burn their skin off. Despite being put in a sun lamp, they were also put in warm water where the water slowly increased. That was the best experiment the doctors did. There are various ways that men, and women were tortured. Children were usually instantly killed when they arrived at the camps. (“Medical
Experiments were carried out by the Nazi’s to start an advancement in German medicine compared to the rest of the world. Tons of medical and scientific testing was done in the concentration camps to prisoners with no consent of the patients (“Nazi Medical Experiment…”). The experiments so harmful, that there was nearly no chance of survival except for a few. It led some to disability, mutation, and most likely death.
1.) The Nazi medical experiments included injecting individuals with viruses and gasoline, making them ingest poisons, and submersing them in ice water (Protecting Human Research Participants, 2008).. Although their experiments were inhumane the medical field has benefited from the medical experiments that were conducted. Dr. Josef Mengele was a geneticist that was know as the "Angel of Death" at the Auschwitz concentration camp. He is very well known for his studies on his twin experiments. He also would conduct experiments that he would hope to change the individual's eye color by injecting certain chemicals in their eyes (Bulow, 2015).
The Holocaust was a horrible time for many people. One infamous doctor, Josef Mengele took part in the many cruel events of the Holocaust. According to www.ushmm.org , Mengele was a Holocaust doctor serving in the Auschwitz concentration camp. However, while serving in the camp he greatly abused of his medical talents. Consequentially, he earned the title of the ‘’Angel of Death’’. He slaughtered and tortured many individuals and played a major role at Auschwitz. In fact, ‘’1.5 million children’’ died at the hands of Mengele due to his work (www.mirror.co.uk) .During the Holocaust Josef Mengele, one of the most inhumane Holocaust doctors, engaged in cruel activities such as the selection, experimentation, and assassination of Holocaust victims.
In the Hippocratic Oath, it states, “I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure” (Tyson). Dr. Josef Mengele, other physicians and encampment staff, in charge of medical experiments at concentration camps, discarded this principle, and others, when they chose to mutilate and preform inhumane experiments on innocent people. The people they victimized, were forced to participated for they did not have the option to oppose. During the Holocaust, experiments were conducted upon mainly Jewish people or prisoners from Russia and Poland (Spitz) . Though there were numerous experiments being preformed, it was broken down into; Racial, war-injury, and pharmaceutical experiments.
The Holocaust was a very tragic event in all of history. Some Germans tried to put the chaos to a halt. Most Germans didn’t care at all; they thought Hitler knew what he was doing and that he was a good leader. Most Germans were clueless of what was happening in the concentration camps; they didn't know the pain and suffering Jews went through. They chose to not care. They could’ve saved lives’ but they chose to believe that Jews are bad. But some Germans chose to fight for what is right and tried to help Jews survive the Holocaust.Some of these people saved thousands’ of lives.
The proof is that there was a trial for German physicians who conducted these human experiments on concentration camp prisoners which were prosecuted as war criminals. Until now, the society still continue to discuss if it is acceptable in the medical community to consider the medical research data that were collected during these experimentations. Even some of these experiments had legitimate scientific purposes, the methods used violated the canons of medical ethics. Others were racial in nature, designed to advance Nazi racial theories. Most were simply bad science. Additionally, some believe there are major ethical problems with using the data collected in this unethical manner. Once a decision to use the data has been made, experts suggest that it must not be included as ordinary scientific research, just to be cited and placed in a medical journal. I agree with author Robert J. Lifton who suggested that citation of the data must contain a thorough expose' of exactly what tortures and atrocities were committed for that experiment. Citations of the Nazi data must be accompanied with the author's condemnation of the data as a lesson in horror and as a moral aberration in medical science. The author who chooses to use the Nazi data must be prepared to expose the Nazi doctors' immoral experiments as medical evil. I suggest that if I was a judge that time, I had most definitely torture the Germans in the same way as they tortured Jewish people. According to the philosophy written by Richard Matthews inside the book entitled "The Absolute Violation: Why Torture Must be Prohibited," he said “ It's a comprehensive refutation of the arguments in favor of torture, including act and rule utilitarianism, as well as "dirty
In the 1940’s, post World War II, the Nuremberg trials were held. The Nuremberg Trials were for Nazi German officers who had participated in the planning of the atrocities done to the Jewish people during the holocaust. One of the charges was experimentation of Jewish people from concentration camps, similar to how we treat our prisoners in Jails today. Prisoners are a very vulnerable population who have been tested on for a long time, many unethical tests have been done to penitentiaries across the country and many times they are forced to test by employees of the prisons. The ethics of allowing prisoners to participate in medical research is very wrong and should not be admitted to.
When most people think of the holocaust, they think of people being forced into concentration camps, they think of Jews and Nazis, they think of cruelty and death. But what most people don’t think of, is all the experiments that went on, all the medical experiments. The Nazi doctors wanted to find cures for medical conditions that most everyone wanted to cure, but these doctors went about finding the cure a little differently. They would take prisoners they had and experiment on them in ways of cruelty hard to even imagine. This will only be about one of the many experiments done, the freezing and hypothermia experiments.
Over one million people lost their lives in this one area (“Auschwitz” 2). The high amount of executions are chilling and alarming. A disrobing site, a gas chamber, and a crematorium were created in the death camp (Holocaust Encyclopedia 1). These three aspects assisted into making the massacre occur. After the victims were dead, Nazis proceeded in burning the bodies into ashes. Moreover, several people faced severe torture before even being exterminated. Schutzstaffel specialists, otherwise known as the heinous SS, conducted pseudo-scientific research and experimentation on numerous people. Humans of all ages, from young children to adults, suffered under these circumstances. SS specialists performed painful and traumatic medical experiments on dwarfs, twins, and young children (Holocaust Encyclopedia 2). All of the listed people, were tortured and belittled for simply being the way they were. It was as if these people were puppets and the Schutzstaffel enjoyed tugging on their strings. As for grown men and women, adults were forced to undertake sterilizations and castrations in order to cooperate with the fake research (Holocaust Encyclopedia 2). The