The holocaust also known as The Shoah, which roots from the Hebrew for “destruction”[1] was the genocide of approximately six million European jews during WWII , a programme of systematic state-sponsored extermination by Nazi Germany throughout Nazi-occupied territory. [2]All the jews were evacuated to Nazi concentration camps, whereby they were taken advantage of by medical personnels inorder to perform scientific researches.
What were the aims of Nazi concentration camps?[3]
<!--[if !supportLists]-->1- To conduct research aimed at improving the survival and rescue of German Troops
<!--[if !supportLists]-->2- To test new medical procedures and pharmaceuticals.
<!--[if !supportLists]-->3- To perform experiments that would confirm Nazi Racial Ideology, the leading doctor undergoing such investigations who we will be focusing on is Josef Mengele.
Much of the information we now know about Mendele came from a prisoner physician who was forced to assist Dr Mendele in his atrocious experiments, Dr Miklos Nyiszli (create a link to this page ).
This conversation will take you on a journey through one of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps, Auschwitz concentration camp . This tour is imagined to be conducted by one of the Nazi physicians who worked at Auschwitz during 1944.
“Hello and welcome to Auschwitz! We are the most popular amongst all the concentration camps considering the number of overwhelming experiments we do here in the name of science! We are proud to be The Third Reich's largest extermination factory. Now let me give you basic information about the prisoners we have here:Jews, Poles, Gypsies of Roma, Political Prisoners, Soviet POWs, homosexuals and catholic priests[5]. Oh and don’t think that they’re quite fashionable over here, the prisoners are color coded by triangles on their suits. Over here the ones wearing green triangles have committed some sort of crime or another. The ones in red are political prisoners. The ones huddled together in pink are the homosexuals. Prostitutes and iterants wear black. Bible readers wear iliac triangles[6]. Fascinating how organized we are!
Oh, are you nauseated by the smell? Oh don’t worry soon enough you’ll get accustomed to it, after all everyday more than a thousand bodies are burnt in the crematorium. Can you see
[7]
And another one over there? You’ll see plenty of those around. Oh boy this place is grand I don’t know where to start! Lets go to the gas chambers. You see usually after the prisoners arrive here we pick the ones we wish to experiment on, preferably twins they are Dr mendel’s favourties! The rest go straight to the gas chambers, why don’t we go see one of the gas chambers? We make the masses believe they are about to have their”shower” and we actually give them soaps just as to make them belief! Haha, those fools! Once they enter the “showers”, we close the doors shut and off we release HCN into the chambers. They die within ..20 minutes I guess. Usually some of them would climb ontop of one another as to avoid the gas, usually the ones at the top die the latest. But none survive anyway. Oh, here we are, what do you think of the gas chamber?
[8]
We shall talk about the dead no more. In this camp we attempt to stimulate war situations that might result in the defeat of our army such that we can find a cure. As you know our good German soldiers are suffering in the blistering cold of the Eastern front, and thousands of our young men froze to death and suffered debilitating injuries from the harsh
weather .This room is designed for such experiments in attempt to simulate the situation our soldiers face.
[Enter room: Freezing tub]
Oh hello doctor Sigmund Rascher, good to see you!!! This is the doctor who oversees the freezing experiments. He published a paper in 1942 entitled “Medical problems Arising from Sea and Winter” you should take a look at it! marvelous work! Pardon me I get too distracted! Over here in this tank you see the water is subzero. We place the jew in there and measure the temperature taken until they lose consciousness and possibly die. Then there are several attempts to resuccitate those who have lost consciousness but not died yet e.g. placing a hot sun lamp infront of them, irrigating their internal organs with blistering hot water, placing their bodies in warm baths. The latter proved to be the most effective in resuscitation but we’ve noted that the majority of them died of shock if the water was warmed too fast. [10]
Lets go to the second room [Enter room: Low pressure chamber]
Over here we have excellent low pressure chambers to stimulate conditions at altitudes up to 66000ft. Those experiments aid us in assessing the maximum altitude from which crews of damaged aircraft could parachute to safety that means the maximum altitude at which our crew can remain alive without oxygen so far out of 200 subjects, 80 died outright and the others had to be executed [11]
The second criteria of our experiments is to attempt to eliminate infectious causes of mortality amongst our soldiers. Oh we’ve done plenty of them! Where should I start? Our brilliant scientists develop immunization compounds they then use it for prevention or treatment of combat diseases including malaria, typhus, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, yellow fever, and infectious hepatitis. For example We’ve infected some of the healthy inmates by mosquitos or extracts of the glands of infected female mosquetos. We would wait until they have contracted malaria, then our brilliant scientests would expose them to various drugs to test their efficiency[12]. We’ve also been trying to figure out
We’re also trying to find an antidote to mustard gas so some of the inmates are exposed to mustard gas and we sample their tissue and blood to try to find a suitable antidote to counteract the changes that have occurred in their bodies[13].
But let me tell you my friend about our most effective antimicrobial agent that we have discovered, Sulfonamide. Ofcourse we need to create battlefield injuries amongst the inmates so they are infected with bacteria such as streptococcus, gas gangrene and tetanus [14]. We then aggravate the infection by placing ground glass or wood shavings, just for the sake of simulating a war environment as you can understand, and of course we’ve come to realize that sulfonidamide can treat those infections to an extent! Beautiful right?
And this young boy has been injected by tuberculosis in an attempt to find out a treatment for it,if you touch this area under his armpits you’d find a scar indicative of extracted lymph nodes
[15]
Oh there’s one person you must meet on this camp, he is the infamous Josef Mengele! We have high hopes in him in advancing our Aryan Race! His experiments also aimed to find out how various races withstood a myriad of contagious diseases. when the train arrives to Auschwitz, Dr Mengele would be the only one to sieve through the prisoners and pick those he deems appropriate to undergo his genetic experiments. It’s about time you meet him. but I should warn you, some of those children you’re about to see will be in a terrible state. We’re close to his lab, can you hear their screams? Of course you can hear their screams a mile away!
[Enter Dr mengele’s lab]
[16]
Good day sire! It’s an honor to meet you. I was just showing this visitor around Aushwitz. Oh, I am sorry if I have disturbed you , we’re leaving right this second!
[Leave Office]
You see those girls over here? That’s yuhidet and Lea
[17]
Dr mengele’s main studies involve twins. He is trying to figure out how to change eye colour to the blue we all like, so he injects some chemicals into their eyes in attempt to change their colours. Sometimes he would also sew together twins to try and create Siamese twins. , after he was done experimenting with them he would put them to sleep by injecting chloroform into their hearts, then perform a postmortem examination of their organs in attempt to find changes in morphological and pathological features. He usually uses gypsy twins. But if one of the twins is dead the other had to go too such that he would find the reason why one out of the two died despite the experiments conducted being the same.
Oh boy seems like I am running out of time. I am sorry I have to leave you now. I hope you found your visit to Aschwitz educational!
Auf Wiedersehen !
Citations
1. ^ "Holocaust," Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2009: "the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women and children, and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. The Nazis called this "the final solution to the Jewish question ..."
2. ^ a b Niewyk, Donald L. The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust, Columbia University Press, 2000, p.45: "The Holocaust is commonly defined as the murder of more than 5,000,000 Jews by the Germans in World War II." Also see "The Holocaust", Encyclopædia Britannica, 2007: "the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women and children, and millions of others, by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. The Germans called this "the final solution to the Jewish question".
3. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005168
4. http://en.auschwitz.org.pl/m/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=62&Itemid=8
5. dornsife.usc.edu/vhi/cms/files/pdf/Lentini%20glossary.pd
6. http://www.faqs.org/periodicals/201001/2087389301.html
7. http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/1944.html
8. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_ph.php?ModuleId=10005220&MediaId=670
9. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_ph.php?ModuleId=10005168&MediaId=1674
10. Bogod, David. “The Nazi Hypothermia Experiments: Forbidden Data?”, Anaesthesia, Volume 59 Issue 12 Page 1155, December 2004.
11. Tyson, Peter. “Holocaust on Trial: The Experiments“. NOVA Online. Retrieved on 2008-03-23.
12. Distel, Barbara (1972). “Text of Museum booklet about Dachau Concentration Camp“.Scrapbookpages.com. Retrieved on 2008-03-23.
13. “Introduction to NMT Case 1: U.S.A. v. Karl Brandt et al.“. Harvard Law Library, Nuremberg Trials Project: A Digital Document Collection. Retrieved on 2008-03-23.
14. Spitz, Vivien (2005). Doctors from Hell: The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans. Sentient Publications. ISBN 1591810329. http://books.google.com/books?id=_VH-7oeT4lEC&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=sulfonamide+nazi+tetanus&source=web&ots=7OMyTBC1eF&sig=A_3K9WRxdMyS4j7qWAaXpK0m7GE. Retrieved on 2008-01-04.
15. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_ph.php?ModuleId=10005168&MediaId=1413
16. http://isurvived.org/drMengele.html
17. (www.chcuk.co.uk/.../2011-03-08_The_Mengele_Twins_and_Human_Experimentation.pdf).
18. http://www.crossroad.to/Excerpts/books/persecution/mengele.htm
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