Holocaust Unit Project

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Holocaust Unit Project

• By Katrina Raskie, Becca Wittek, and Jeff
  Schlichte

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Why did Nazis Perform Experiments?
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Who Performed the Experiments?

• SS Officers that were trained medical
  practitioners
• Dr. Mengele was a well-known physician at
  Auschwitz

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About Dr. Mengele

• Born on March 16th, 1911 in Ginsburg, Germany
• Studied Philosophy and Medicine at the University
  of Frankfurt
• 1938- Enlisted in the S.S.
• 1943- Heinrich Himmler appoints Mengele as the
  head doctor at Auschwitz-Birkenau

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Dr. Josef Mengele

• Known as the Angel of Death
• Supervised selection of who was to be killed and
  who would be kept alive for experimentation
• Most people died because of experiments or later
  infections
• At times he killed people just to be able to
  dissect them afterwards

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Dr. Mengele Cont.

• Common Experiments
• Injecting victims eyes with chemicals in attempt
  to change the color
• Injecting chloroform into their hearts
• Tests on diseases (Tuberculosis, Typhoid) to find
  out how humans of different races withstood them

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More Experiments

• Investigated ways to increase human fertility
• Tried to find a genetic cause for the disease
  noma
• Experimented with infected wounds

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Twin Experimentation

• 1,500 sets of twins collected at Birkenau to
  develop a theory of heredity and relation between
  disease, racial types, and racial inter-breeding
• He wanted to discover the genetic key to creating
  an Aryan
• One twin was a control and the other one was
  experimented on

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Twins Cont.

• They were called Mengeles Children
• Wanted to find a way so that all Aryan women
  could assuredly give birth to twins who were sure
  to be blonde and blue-eyed

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Life of the Twins

• Mengele would often bring candy and talk with
  them
• They would get to keep their hair and clothes
• Called him Uncle Mengele
• Spared hard jobs and labor so they would stay
  healthy for experimentation

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Life of Twins Cont.

• Twins had blood drawn everyday
• Blood transfusions of blood from 1 twin to
  another
• Tried to fabricate blue eyes with chemicals
• Injected Typhus and Tuberculosis
• After one twin dies, the other was killed to
  examine and compare

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Life of Twins Cont.

• Performed surgeries without anesthesia including
  organ removal, castration, and amputations
• Autopsies were considered the final experiment

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Sterilization

• Conducted at Auschwitz and Ravensbruck by Dr.
  Carl Clamber.
• Tried to develop a method of sterilization for
  mass amounts of people with little time or
  effort.
• Some were injected with solutions of iodine and
  silver nitrate. (Caused side effects including
  various types of cancers.) Other methods included
  castration, injections, or invasive surgeries
  with no anesthesia.

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Sterilization (cont.)

• Radiation became the fastest, most effective way
  to sterilize.
• People were brought into rooms and asked to fill
  out forms which only took a few minutes. In this
  time, the people were sterilized. Severe
  radiation burns occurred.
• They did this to develop and
• efficient way to keep the
• non-Aryan race from
• reproducing.

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High Altitudes/Air Pressure

• At Dachau in 1942, doctors from the German Air
  Force and the German Experimental Institution
  tested patients responses to high altitudes to
  gain knowledge of the effects the German pilots
  could have because of ejecting themselves from
  planes at high altitudes.
• Air pressure chambers simulated altitudes of
  66,000 feet.

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Treatment of Disease

• At Dachau and Buchenwald, physicians injected
  subjects with a series of diseases such as
  malaria, typhus, TB, typhoid, and hepatitis and
  then tried to cure them.

• They were all diseases that German military
  personnel could have encountered in their work or
  on the battlefield.
• Almost all of the subjects tested died from the
  contagious diseases injected into their bodies.

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Freezing Experiments

• Tried to simulate the conditions the military was
  facing on the eastern front
• Dr. Sigmund Rasher conducted the experiments at
  Birkenau, Dachau, and Auschwitz
• Put the victims in ice baths, or put them outside
  naked in sub zero temperatures

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Freezing Cont.

• First, they measured how long it took to freeze
  the victims to death
• Second, they tested ways of resuscitating the
  victims
• These included extremely hot sun lamps, injecting
  boiling water into their organs, and giving them
  warm baths

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Testing of Drugs

• Infected victims with malaria, then tested
  multiple drugs to find an immunization or
  treatment
• Most patients died either from the disease or
  from complications from the drugs
• Sulfonamide was tested as a cure for tetanus
• Tested at Dachau Concentration Camp

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Transplantation

• Tested at Ravensbruck concentration camp
• Experiments done of the transplantation of
  nerves, bones, and muscle
• No anesthesia was used
• Also experimented with nerve, bone, and muscle
  regeneration