Child Victims of Nazi Medical Experimentation -- A Child's Lamentation

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A Child’s Lamentation

Jeffrey Daniel Mucha

University of Amsterdam

Master’s Thesis in Holocaust and Genocide Studies

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Master’s Thesis I History: Holocaust and Genocide Studies

University of Amsterdam

By: Jeffrey Daniel Mucha

Word count: 19874

Student number: 11314346

Date: 30 June 2017

Adviser: Prof. Dr. Karol Berkhoff

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…As a guinea pig…

I was the only one picked that day personally by Mengele and his assistant. They took me to his [laboratory], where I met other children. They were screaming from pain. Black and blue bodies covered with blood. I collapsed from horror and terror and fainted. A bucket of cold water was thrown on me to revive me. As soon as I stood up I was whipped with a leather whip which broke my flesh, then I was told the whipping was a sample of what I would receive if I did not follow instructions and orders. I was used as a guinea pig for medical experiments.1

1_{“Mrs. M”. Testimony for The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. She requested that her real}

name not be used. http://www.claimscon.org/about/history/closed-programs/medical-experiments/personal-statements-from-victims/ last accessed: 6/22/17

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Abstract

During the Nazi era, some 1.5 million children were murdered. This number includes over one million Jewish children, along with hundreds of thousands of German children with various disabilities, tens of thousands of Sinti and Roma children, as well as thousands of others deemed Lebensunwertes

Leben (life unworthy of life).2_{Although virtually all of the children were killed outright by bullets or gas}

chambers, or by starvation and privation in the ghettos and concentration camps, a select few, however, were chosen for medical experimentation. While much has been researched and written about the Nazi doctors themselves and their experiments, little attention has been paid to the child victims of Nazi medical research. This thesis seeks to answer the questions of how and why children were selected as human test subjects, and whether this represents a nadir in humane medical practices. Further, this thesis will examine the experiences of such medical experiments from the perspectives of the children and what they understood to be happening to them. To answer the questions how and why I will discuss the development of human testing. For the scope of this paper I will be following the vein as it pertains to the ethics of human medical testing progressing from animals to adult males to females and finally into experimenting on children. To shed light on the experiences of the children I will discuss their suffering for each procedure and experiment as a narrative created from the testimonies of the survivor themselves.

2_{Lifton, Robert Jay. The Nazi doctors: Medical killing and the psychology of genocide. Basic Books, 2000. Pg. 46. As}

translated and cited from Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche, Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebebsunwerten Lebens: Ihr Mass und ihre Form (Leipzig F. Meiner, 1920). On Binding and Hoche see Ernst Klee, “Euthana sie” im NS-Staat: Die "Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens” (Frankfurt/M.: S. Fischer, 1983), pp. 19-25.

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Part One

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…Into the fire…

Introduction

Much has been written regarding the medical experiments conducted in the concentration camps on adult male, and female, prisoners. Likewise, the experiments conducted on twins in Auschwitz are generally well known amongst Holocaust historians and Nazi history “buffs.” The story of the doctors and their experiments are well documented, as well as the development of informed consent and medical human rights. While there are a few excellent books and studies conducted about experiments on children, there has not been much research done into the experiences of the children themselves. Indeed, historian Paul Weindling comments on this dark area in Holocaust research: “How many victims there were, and when and where the experimental destruction occurred – and the overall delineating of the institutional and political contours of the coerced human research – have rarely been matter of historical concern…but historians have rarely engaged with the experiences and life histories of victims.”3_{This thesis}

will tell the story of the development and implementation of using children as medical testing subjects, and what they experienced. I will use the testimonies of the survivors to narrate their stories from their perspective, and what they experienced.

Chapter One is entitled, Conflagration, which means a great flame, or fire. This title was chosen as a term to embody the rise of Nazi racial ideology and its perversion of the traditional moral, ethical, and humane medical practices. The debasement of human life caused by the rise in popularity of the new sciences of race and natural law resulted in the notion of “life unworthy of life” being incorporated into official policy. Beginning with deformed newborns, the Nazis would murder thousands of young children. This notion of mercy killing, called euthanasia, would lay the foundations of the methods of mass murder later implemented during the Holocaust. The influence of this program on the radicalization of medical practices is important to the understanding of the plight of child victims of Nazi medical experimentation by highlighting the utter detachment from the medical welfare of children. Those individuals whose lives were deemed “unworthy,” and served no purpose to the state, were the most vulnerable of society – newborns and deformed children.

3_{Weindling, Paul. Victims and Survivors of Nazi Human Experiments: Science and Suffering in the Holocaust.}

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For Chapter Two, the title Incineration -- to burn completely with fire – was chosen to convey the destruction of the traditional norms of medicine, from curative to murder. This chapter will illustrate the consumption of moral values as “scientific” experimentation on human beings became acceptable, and even desirable. This chapter follows the vein of the progression from animal testing to human experimentation using the translated transcripts of the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial. The ends of implementing the biological vision of Nazi ideology would be achieved through means of establishing medical and scientific legitimacy. The means were the specially created institutions designed to handle the processing and approval of applications for human test subjects. This chapter will also discuss the medical perpetrators and their aspirations requiring human beings. Further, those involved from the Nazi physicians conducting experiments to those responsible for the organizing and management of human test subjects will be discussed. Furthermore, this chapter will briefly address the paradoxical nature of gathering results meant for the “super-humans” derived from experimentation on “sub-humans.”

Chapter Three is titled, A Children’s Story. This chapter will further follow the progression of human experimentation as children are slowly brought into the fold. The story of the children will answer the questions of when children were first used as test subjects, how they were selected, where the experiments occurred, and why children were ultimately favored as prime candidates for medical experimentation.

Chapter Four is entitled, Immolation, which means to be annihilated by fire, and is appropriate because it reflects how the children likely viewed the changing world through their experiences of the experiments. This chapter will narrate the story of the children through the stories and interviews of those fortunate enough to survive. The non-lethal experiments will be discussed, and the child’s experience narrating the specific experiments, procedures, and testing.

Chapter Five is titled, Lamentations. A lamentation is a passionate expression of grief, or sorrow. This chapter will narrate the grievous and deadly medical experiments conducted, of which, the vast majority of children did not survive. These experiments range from privation, to surgeries, to lethal injections, to body harvesting. The torment of the child victims cry out in this chapter as they share the horrific experiences.

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Conflagration

Chapter One

--If one imagines…a battlefield covered with thousands of dead youths…and then our institutes for idiots and their care…one is most appalled by…the sacrifice of the best of humanity while the best care is lavished on life of negative worth.4

Life Unworthy of Life

At the turn of the 20th_{century Germany was one of the world leaders in medicine. And using}

arguments advanced in the 1920’s, the Nazis murdered in the name of euthanasia, “mercy death”, and enlisted within their ranks professionals and academics from across a range of scientific disciplines. The new science of eugenics was being argued and debated across the world as the way forward for civilized man. These ideas were initially well intentioned and logical as a notion of limiting heredity diseases and naturally producing the healthiest offspring possible. This notion, however, would be taken to its logical extreme under Nazi radicalization. Indeed, many early proponents of eugenics who had once denounced killing would eventually come to support murder during in wartime, “for the good of the Fatherland.” The first victims were the most vulnerable – newborns and young children with severe birth defects.”5

From the beginning, German medical research had two primary objectives: the first was to cure, prevent, and ideally eradicate diseases impeding military operations; the second was to enhance the overall fitness and fertility of the German race for preparation for the vast resettlement schemes.6_{For the}

latter, such a project had been discussed from the time of Darwin’s theories and the dawn of “scientific racism” amongst intellectuals beginning in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Darwinian evolutionary theory posited that only the strongest and healthiest of organisms would survive and prosper. The natural world followed a simple law: only the strongest survive. Thus, for a species to prosper

4_{Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche, Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebebsunwerten Lebens: Ihr Mass und ihre Form}

(Leipzig F. Meiner, 1920). On Binding and Hoche see Ernst Klee, “Euthana sie” im NS-Staat: Die "Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens” (Frankfurt/M.: S. Fischer, 1983), pp. 19-25

5_{Bloomfield, Sara J. Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race. (Washington, DC: United States Holocaust}

Museum 2004). Pg 10

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and survive, the offspring would need to be as strong as possible. This theory was applied to the “social organism.”

Integral to the development of the new ranges of medicine was the idea of the Volk as an organic, social organism. The people, or nation, were inherently endowed, not only with natural biological fitness, but also with a racial and cultural imminence. Extrapolating these natural laws transformed the collective group into an “organism” whose “life” must be preserved at all costs, even in such ways that transcend individual fate.7_{Darwinism reinforced the importance of health and fitness as objective criterion for}

measuring a species’ likelihood to triumph in the struggle for survival. Thus, Social Darwinism offered “objective” criteria for evaluating prosperity and welfare in the struggle to survive in an urban and commercial life. Naturally, Darwinism had a popular appeal, and at the same time it offered to expand the scope of medicine.8

The medicalizing of racial science gave the legitimization for radical reformist railing against the modern industrialized world which they believed was thoroughly corrupt. The horrors of mud and blood from the First World War left a generation bitter from its soul-destroying mechanization of destruction of human life and its existence. Life in the new nation was held in contempt as being immoral and decadent, being the result from the degradation of traditional values by the growing working class. Youthful dissidents began to scheme solutions for the degenerative effects of modern civilization. Moral and political remedies would be applied. However, to achieve a truly comprehensive change, it would be necessary to purify the cultural and scientific structures that had also been so tarnished by industrialization.9_{Thereby, biological health and racial hygiene became a key component of the}

reformation strategy.

In 1920, two distinguished German professors, Alfred Hoche and Karl Binding, published a book entitled The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life. In the book, the authors carefully and logical argued, in numbered-paragraph form, that “unworthy life” was not only the “incurably ill, but also large segments of the mentally ill, the feebleminded, and retarded and deformed children.”10_{In doing so, the}

authors professionalized and medicalized the entire concept and stressed the therapeutic goal of that

7_{Lifton, Nazi Doctors, 46.}

8_{Weindling, Paul. Health, Race and German politics between national unification and Nazism, 1870-1945.}

Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pg. 25

9_{Ibid., 62.}

10_{Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche, Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebebsunwerten Lebens: Ihr Mass und ihre Form}

(Leipzig F. Meiner, 1920). On Binding and Hoche see Ernst Klee, “Euthana sie” im NS-Staat: Die "Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens” (Frankfurt/M.: S. Fischer, 1983), pp. 19-25.

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concept: destroying life unworthy of life is “purely a healing treatment” and a “healing work.”11_{The notion}

that some life was unworthy certainly received influence from the debasement of human lives during The Great War.

The value assigned to human life had been drastically changed due to the waste and squander of the senseless slaughter in the trenches. The authors, Binding and Hoche, posit their argument for the relative value of worthy life, and unworthy, to the nation in a poignant and patriotic contrast to the devastating losses of ‘fit’ Germans during the war: “If one imagines…a battlefield covered with thousands of dead youths…and then our institutes for idiots and their care…one is most appalled by…the sacrifice of the best of humanity while the best care is lavished on life on negative worth.” In 1920 the authors were arguing of what use these invalids were for society when their strongest offspring had all died fighting for the nation; at no time did the authors mention race.12

There was considerable advocacy elsewhere of “mercy killing,” including in the United States.13

Anyone trained in American medicine at the time would have had personal experience of doctors and staff collaborating in the death of acutely mentally and physically impaired patients, usually children. However, those practices had been restrained by legal limitations and strong public outcry, however unlike Nazi Germany, they did not developed into a systematic program of mass murder.14

Likewise, in Germany there was a strong backlash against the euthanasia of adults, but curiously, not of children. Also, there were codified regulations regarding medical informed consent and human experimentation. The Final Circular of the Reich Minister of the Interior concerning Guidelines for New

Therapy and Human Experimentation was issued on 28 February 1931 and it recognized the necessity for

clinical human trials albeit within limits.15_{Specifically, section (c): “experimentation involving children or}

young persons under 18 years of age shall be prohibited if it in any way endangers the child or young person.”16_{These laws and public opposition would reverse themselves through the process of Nazifying}

the medical profession. In fact, a small number of psychiatric institutional orderlies even said that, in

12_{Bloomfield, Deadly Medicine, 128.}

13_{See Foster Kennedy, “The Problem of Social Control of the Congenital Defective Education Sterilization}

Euthanasia,” American Journal of Psychiatry 99 (1942):13-16. Kennedy was rebutted by Leo Kanner, the leading American child psychiatrist of the time who did, however, favor sterilization. “Exoneration of the Feebleminded,” American Journal of Psychiatry 99 (1942):17-22

15_{Weindling, Victims and Survivors, 18.}

16_{German Guidelines on Human Experimentation 1931. “reichsrundschreiben_1931.pdf”. artnscience.us. available}

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theory, they would not object to the state covertly killing their children, ironically foreshadowing later Nazi practice.17

Nazification of German Medicine

In the late 18th_{century, the German anatomist, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, had the idea of}

measuring skull form. He used his findings to establish the existence of five main archetypes of man’s origin: the Caucasian, Mongoloid, Ethiopian, American, and Malayan, which he regarded as descended from a single human type.18_{Further, he postulated that these “races” were adaptable in response to}

varying influences, and could thus be altered by human impetus. Among each of these were species, or races, which held respective characteristics, were groups which ranged from “inferior” or “superior.” One hundred years later a Hamburg journalist, Wilhelm Marr, coined the term “anti-Semitism” to convey the idea that Jews were a distinct Semitic race.19_{This rift between the civilized European cultures and the}

other “primitive” societies was exacerbated by the ethnological studies of language. Those of the Semitic languages were postulated to be inferior to those of the Indo-Germanic family of languages. All the latter were called Aryan, meaning “noble” in Sanskrit.20_{The Aryan people were now seen as a distinctly superior}

“organism” whose vitality must be purified and protected; the individual would be acquiescent to the collective. Individuality was removed from the moral sphere and redefined in scientific terms with the individual subsumed in a “race.”21

The historian, Robert Lifton, identifies five stages through which the Nazis transgressed in their pursuit of the principle of “life unworthy of life.” Coercive sterilization was the first. Then followed the killing of “impaired” children in hospitals; and then killing of “impaired” adults, mostly collected from mental hospitals, in centers specially equipped with carbon monoxide gas. This project was extended (in the same killing centers) to “impaired” inmates of concentration camps, and, finally, to the mass killings, mostly of Jews, in the extermination camps themselves.22_{While most of these stages are beyond the}

scope of this thesis, the stages of killing children highlights the lack of moral value held by the Nazis regarding a child’s life.

17_{Bloomfield, Deadly Medicine, 129.}

18_{Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics, 50.} 19_{Ibid., 58.}

20_{Ibid., 255-61} 21_{Ibid., Pg 49}

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Euthanasia and Detachment

To implement the purification of the Volk, it was necessary to create a registry of all “unworthy” life. Thus, on 18 August 1939, the Reich Committee for the Scientific Registration of Serious Hereditary and

Congenital Diseases was created, as part of the health administration, to function as a collection center

for data on “deformed etc. newborns.”23_{It was not long before the Reich Committee began organizing}

the killing of handicapped infants in so-called “Pediatric Departments.” The directive for the Reich Committee stated that, “for the clarification of scientific questions in the field of congenital malformation and mental retardation, the earliest possible registration was required for all children under three years of age in whom any of the following ‘serious hereditary diseases’ were ‘suspected’: idiocy and mongolism (especially when associated with blindness and deafness); microcephaly; hydrocephaly; malformation of all kinds, especially of limbs, head, and spinal column; and paralysis, including spastic conditions.”24_By

doctors reporting disabilities to the governmental department, the Reich Committee began to make their lists of children to be killed. However, the reports took the form of questionnaires that originated in the Reich Health Ministry. The wording of the questionnaires and the lack of a traditional medical history led many physicians and staff to assume, at least at first, that affected children would merely be registered for statistical purposes.25

From the beginning, this program circumvented regular administrative channels and was associated directly with Hitler himself. The first “mercy death” of the entire “euthanasia project was the petition of killing an infant named “Knauer,” born blind, with one leg and part of one arm missing, and apparently an ‘idiot.’26_{This paved the way for official requests and it seemed easier and more “natural”}

to begin with the very young.27

The process was streamlined and rather short. The Charitable Foundation for Curative and

Institutional Care which was located at Tiergartenstrasse, Number 4 in Berlin, became cryptically and

colloquially known as the T4 program. After receiving the questionnaires from local physicians regarding disabled children, three central medical experts would make their either-or judgments. Their decision was

23_{Aly, Gotz, Peter Chroust, and Christian Pross. Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene.}

Translated by Belinda Cooper (Baltimore, 1994), 36.

24_{Lifton, Nazi Doctors, 52/} 25_{Ibid., 52.}

26_{Ibid., 50.} 27_{Ibid., 51.}

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made solely by the basis of the questionnaires without examining the children or even reading their medical records. On the form with the names of the three doctors were three columns under the word “treatment,” that is, killing the child. If an expert decided upon ‘treatment’ he put a plus sign (+) in the left column. If he decided against killing the child, he put a minus sign (-) in the middle column. If he was uncertain then he put a question mark (?), and then initialed his opinion. The same form was passed along in sequence to the three experts. A unanimous opinion was necessary for a child to be killed, which was generally encouraged.28

When a decision for killing was not unanimous, these children were sent for observation to the same children’s unit where the killing was done. This process was referred to as obtaining an “expert opinion.” This arrangement also encouraged a decision for “treatment.” The units where the killing was done were parts of the children’s institutions whose chiefs and prominent doctors were known to be politically reliable and ‘positive’ towards the Reich Committee’s goals. These centers were euphemistically referred to as “Reich Committee Institutions,” “Children’s Special Institutions,” or even “Therapeutic Convalescence Institutions.” 29_{In reality, there was no difference amongst these establishments.}

The children selected for “special treatment” would, purportedly, receive the best and most modern therapy available.30_{However, the fact of the matter was that they were starved to death,}

subjected to fatal injections, and experimented on. The first “special care unit” was at the Brandenburg clinic in Görden, and along with approximately twenty other such facilities, murdered several thousand children.31_{These child-killing clinics became resources for experimentation and research on the murdered}

child’s body parts.32_{This would be the beginning of using children’s bodies for medical and scientific}

experimentation.

One of the most significant aspects of the whole process of the T4 program was that it was structured to diffuse individual responsibility. In the entire sequence, from reporting the child’s case by midwives or doctors, to the institutional bureaucracy of managing the reports, to expert opinions regarding “treatment,” to the killing of the child at the Reich Committee institution, there was at no point a sense of personal responsibility for, or even involvement in, the murder of another human being.33_This

28_{Ibid., 53.}

29_{Ibid., 53.} 30_{Ibid., 54.}

31_{Weindling, Victims and Survivors, 36.} 32_{Ibid., 37.}

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departmentalization was commonplace amongst Nazi hierarchies and served well to expand the scope of the killing program.

“The Most Simple Method”

Before being killed, children were generally kept for a few weeks in the institution in order to convey the impression that they were being given some form of therapy. The killing was usually done with luminal tablets dissolved in water and given to the child to drink over a few days until the they slipped into a coma and passed away.34_{One doctor commented that, “If one does not know what is going on, he}

[the child] is sleeping. One really has to be let in on it to know that…he really is being killed and sedated. And with these sedatives…the child sleeps.”35_{According to the reasoning of the time, the case for killing}

children seemed somehow justifiable, whereas killing the mentally ill adults was viewed definitely as murder. The idea of being sedated, and falling asleep, and going gently into the “good night” sounds humane; however, this would not be the case.36

As the age range of the euthanasia program expanded, older children were bought into these children’s care institutions. Former child patients later described these care centers as a “cruel, even sadistic institutional environment, [wherein] corporal punishment for misbehavior and electric shocks for bed wetting [were administered.]”37_{This suffering was certainly unnecessary as the children were to be}

put to death anyway. Of particular notoriety was Dr. Hermann Pfannmüller, the senior psychiatrist and director of the institution at Eglfing-Haar. As per one account, he held up a starving, nearly dead three-year-old child by the legs and declared, laughing: “This is the most simple method.”38_{In the fall of 1939,}

a non-medical personnel visited an important Reich Committee institution, where the director Dr. Pfannmüller had developed a policy of starving the designated children rather than wasting medication on them. He gave this account of what he witnessed,

I remember the gist of the following general remarks by Pfannmüller: These creatures (he meant the children) naturally represent for me as a National Socialist only a burden for the healthy body of our Volk. We do not kill (he could have here used a euphemistic expression for this word kill) with poison,

34_{Ibid., 55.}

35_{Ibid., 57.}

36_{Thomas, Dylan. Do Not Go Gently into That Good Night, 1947. Available online:}_{www.poets.org}_, https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night. Last accessed 29 June 2017

37_{Lifton, Nazi Doctors, 56.} 38_{Ibid.,119-20.}

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injections, etc.; then the foreign press and certain gentlemen in Switzerland would only have new inflammatory material. No, our method is much simpler and more natural, as you see. With these words, he pulled, with the help of a ... nurse, a child from its little bed. While he then exhibited the child like a dead rabbit, he asserted with a knowing expression and a cynical grin: For this one it will take two to three more days. The picture of this fat, grinning man, in his fleshy hand the whimpering skeleton, surrounded by other starving children, is still vivid in my mind. The murderer explained further then, that sudden withdrawal of food was not employed, rather gradual decrease of the rations. A lady who was also part of the tour asked — her outrage suppressed with difficulty — whether a quicker death with injections, etc., would not at least be more merciful. Pfannmüller then praised his methods again as more practical in view of the foreign press. The openness with which Pfannmüller announced the above-mentioned method of treatment is explicable to me only as a result of cynicism or clumsiness [Tölpelhaftigkeit]. Pfannmüller also did not hide the fact that among the children to be murdered ... were also children who were not mentally ill, namely children of Jewish parents.39

Foundations of the Holocaust

Inevitably, the net cast for killing broadened as the age range for the children increased. Further, many conditions not originally listed were added to encompass even the most limited impairments to those simply designated as “juvenile delinquents.” Jewish children were caught in the net simply for being Jewish. After 1941, Hitler officially ordered the end of the euthanasia program. However, the killing of children continued and even increased. It is estimated that five thousand children were murdered.40_The

Nazi regime practiced and perfected their means of mass murder through the T4 program. In fact, the original commandants of the extermination camps Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka came from the T4 and were on its payroll.41

The dispersion of responsibility further served to alleviate apprehension regarding the murder of children at the hands of the institutional doctors. One doctor noted his learned sense of helplessness

39_{Lifton, Nazi Doctors, 61-2. As quoted from Lehner testimony, cited in Klee, “Euthanasie” [3], pp. 88-89} 40_{Lifton, Nazi Doctors, 55.}

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within the process by commenting that, ‘these children were already marked for killing on their transfer reports, so I did not even bother to examine them.”42_{Indeed, whatever examinations he performed were}

perfunctory since he did not have the authority to question the judgment of the three-man panel of experts.

In the pursuit of racial hygiene and purity of the Volk, the Nazi medical killers carefully planned and covertly executed an operation with specific objectives, and succeeded in murdering thousands of disabled children. Moreover, in this process the Nazi regime also pioneered the techniques and methods necessary for the murder of millions in the Holocaust later to come.43

Perhaps most poignantly, the singular fact remains that numerous German families were prepared to accept the murder of their closest relatives without protest; in fact, they accepted it with approval. This laid the moral and ethical foundations for the policies of genocide. If people did not protest even when their own relatives were murdered, they could hardly be expected to object to the murder of minority groups such as Jews, Gypsies, and Slavs.44_{Once the moral inhibitions towards the sanctity of}

human life were lifted new possibilities opened, such as using human beings for medical and scientific experimentation.

43_{Bloomfield, Deadly Medicine, 152.} 44_{Aly, Gotz, Cleansing the Fatherland, 93}

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Incineration

Chapter Two

– “These experiments revealed nothing which civilized medicine can use. It was indeed ascertained that phenol or gasoline injected intravenously will kill a man inexpensively and within sixty seconds. This and other ‘advances’ are all in the field of ‘thanatology’. Apart from these deadly fruits, the experiments were not only criminal but a scientific failure.”45

-- Brigadier General Telford Taylor

The Means to the End

Racial-biological science was central to the tenants of National Socialism, indeed its very foundations. Therefore, the philosophy of medicine within the Nazi state was to be promoted and incentivized, with the aim of advancing the field at all costs as. The radical racial theories professed by the Nazi elite needed to be validated and proved: Nazi ideology sought evidence to show the differences amongst human species. However, medical practices at the time were inhibited by rules regarding humane treatment and human experimentation. This would change slowly through direct involvement from Hitler and Himmler, the SS, through the creation of new government departments, and through the doctors themselves.

Hitler took personal interest in using human beings as test subjects, as did Himmler and the SS, with their unlimited resources of human beings. Dr. Karl Gebhardt, Heinrich Himmler’s personal physician and Chief Surgeon on the Staff of the Reich during the war, said,

Hitler approved of the idea to carry out medical experiments upon people because he considered It important to the state. The moment a doctor began an experiment he was protected by law. Hitler thought, as did Himmler, that concentration camp prisoners could not simply be left undisturbed while soldiers

45_{WWIIPublicDomain. War Crimes Trials: Case No. 1 (Medical Case), Nuremberg, Germany, 12/10/1946. Filmed}

12/10/1946. YouTube video, 10:40. Posted 16 October 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwGgro9zqrY. Last accessed 6 June 2017

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were dying at the front and their wives and children suffered air attacks and bombardments. The doctor who carried out experiments was not subject to sanctions, on the contrary, the doctor who refused an order to perform an experiment was punished…46

Indeed, the ends were to justify the means. That is, the purification of the Aryan race would be accomplished through the eradication of debilitating diseases and abnormalities, and the elimination of all undesirable groups.47_{The “means” by which the Nazis sought were not constricted by any moral or}

ethical conundrums. The bodies of human test subjects would be the foundation for the new Nazi state lain by the medical and scientific professions. During his famous speech in Posen, Himmler underscored his conviction with these chilling words: “That is how I would like to indoctrinate this SS, and, I believe, have indoctrinated, as one of the holiest laws of the future: our concern, our duty, is to our people, and to our blood.”48_{In the introduction of the report of the Medical Case of the Nuremburg Trials, it is further}

stated that the primary abettor of the medical experiments was the SS: “This society [the SS] exists to promote the genealogical and biological research and the dissemination of Nazi racial theories. It is believed to have had some connection with medical experiments on concentrations camp inmates at KL Natzweiller.”4950

Beginnings of Human Experimentation

The introduction on the report for the Medical Case to the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) reads:

“It must be stated at the beginning that there was no overall organization dealing with this work, probably because of the need for complete secrecy. We

46_{Hoedeman, Paul. Hitler or Hippocrates: Medical Experiments and Euthanasia in the Third Reich. (1991), 55.} 47_{Ibid., 55}

48_{Himmler, Heinrich. “Heinrich Himmler's Posen Speech from 04.10.1943”. Translation of Document No. 1919-PS,}

Nuremberg Trial. Translated by Carlos Porter. www.codoh.com. Available online:

https://codoh.com/library/document/891/.

49_{“Case 1: ‘The Medical Case’”. CINFO Report No. 5. United Nations War Crimes Commission (Research Office).}

June 1946. Page 2. From The Wiener Library, London, UK. War crimes trials: Document transcripts and other papers. Item Reference number: 1208/1. Accessed 1-8 June, 2017

50_{The experiments conducted at the concentration camp Natzweiller involved adult test subjects, and therefore is}

beyond the scope of this thesis. However, they do highlight the complicity of the SS in delivering human beings for medical trials.

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also attract the attention of the reader to the reason why the SS was doing this work. It was the only organization in Germany which could produce human guinea pigs in unlimited quantities. Very likely many party organizations and individual scientists would have liked to have done this work on their own (some actually did, in fact), but eventually they were forced to go to the SS for help. This was given gladly, of course, but on the condition that it should be done under the auspices of the SS, which wanted to take all the credit for any scientific or achievements that could result from this work.”51

The progression from animal testing to human testing can be traced through the creation of new government departments such as the Ahnenerbe, through personal correspondence between Himmler and many physicians, and through the monopoly of the SS on human test subjects.

The Case of the AHNENERBE

The Ahnenerbe, known as the Ancestral Heritage Society, was originally founded by Himmler in Berlin on 1 July 1935 and assumed a significant financial and ideological role in the conduct of experiments in concentration camps. In the beginning of 1942, as more physicians began to take an increased interest in human testing, a number of problems were encountered. The primary two were the procurement of funds and centralized supervision of their work. The problems were settled when, on 7 July 1942, Himmler signed an order creating a new department within the AHNENERBE, namely the Institute for Scientific

Research for War Purposes (abbreviated in German as WwZF.)52_{This new institute was to provide the}

framework for that part of the experiments, the results of which could possibly be useful for the execution of the war.53_{The leadership of the new WwZF institute was entrusted to a former bookdealer named}

Wolfram Sievers.54_{The Ahnenerbe would be the supervisory office and the WwZF would function as the}

administrative office. Although, the Ahnenerbe was initially established for the purpose of implementing Nazi racial ideology by determining the origins and heritage of the Aryan race, it would metamorphose into a scientific research center particularly involved with medical research. The WwZF financed experiments and supplied the necessary materials, or, arranged their supply.55

51_{The Medical Case, 2.}

52_{The Medical Case, 5.} 53_{The Medical Case, 2-3.}

54_{Pasternak, Inhuman Research, 237.} 55_{Ibid., 237.}

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Unfortunately, all the Ahnenerbe archives were destroyed by the Germans shortly before they capitulated to the Allies. However, there are other sources from which the story of the development of human testing can be traced. Fortunately, Himmler’s private files produced invaluable information regarding his personal involvement in authorizing and, at times, directing the activities of the SS doctors conducting their research.56_{In fact, on orders from Himmler himself, the Ahnenerbe directed doctors in}

the camps to perform experiments on human beings. Consequently, it was through the WwZF and under the auspices of the Ahnenerbe that thousands of defenseless concentration camp inmates were murdered.57

Further, the WwZF was a unique institution which provided special opportunities and privileges for doctors who were willing to embrace the racial ideology of the Nazi state and apply their talents towards implementing it. Doctors whose research on animals had run into their respective logically humane conclusions would now have the opportunity to test their hypotheses in human trials. The experiments authorized by the institute offered unprecedented opportunities for medical experimentation that were otherwise previously unthinkable. Moreover, should the participating doctors be troubled by conflicts of conscience, then they could find solace in the knowledge that they were working for the greater good of the Reich.58

Initially, some doctors found it difficult to acquire human test subjects. Many were protesting that they were not getting the assistance that they needed in the procurement of human test subjects. Because of the initially unstructured power hierarchy regarding human experimentation, some doctors sought solutions by requesting higher authority and greater autonomy to carry out their research. Sievers sent a letter to Dr. Brandt complaining about this particular issue regarding human test subjects:

We were also advised that we would have to pay for the use of the prisoners used in the experiments. We must make an application that prisoners who are under the Lost Test to put on a full subsistence diet, the same diet the guards are getting, so as to enable us to carry out the experiments under the same condition which would be prevalent among the troops….We intend to make initial experiments on 10 prisoners…After all, we are not making these tests as some wild scientific

56_{The Medical Case, 3-4.}

57_{Pasternak, Inhuman Research, 238.} 58_{Ibid., 238.}

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idea but in order to derive results which will be of benefit for the German troops and even for the German people itself.59

From this letter, it could be inferred that a bureaucratic bottle neck was creating confusion amongst the doctors who had been given permission to conduct their experiments, and the Ahnenerbe, which was providing the necessary human test subjects.

The doctors were completing their research and test trials using animals and now wanted to verify their results with humans. Sigmund Rascher, one of the SS doctors conducting high altitude experiments in Dachau, sent a report to Himmler on 11 May 1942. In an attached letter, he wrote that the report was not complete due to trials ending with only results gained from animal experimentation, and the practical and theoretical results would have to be further evaluated. He wrote, “Based on results of experiments which up to now several scientists had conducted on animals only, the experiment in Dachau were to prove those results would maintain their validity on human beings…”60_{By proving that trials conducted}

on humans held scientific value, the case was being firmly made for escalating experiments to included human beings.

Himmler’s direct involvement stems from his own personal interest in advancing the racial notions of National Socialism. Of keen interest to Himmler were the theories and prospects regarding sterilizations.61_{A Nazi physician by the name of Dr. Madaus had been experimenting with various methods}

of forced sterilization, ranging from chemical solutions to x-ray exposure. After Dr. Madaus had published the results of his research on medical sterilization, the immense potential of this drug became apparent to the Nazi elite. Dr. Pokorny, one of the defendants at the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial, took note of this potential: “If we should succeed on the basis of these experiments…a new effective weapon would be at our disposal after a short time. The mere thought [that] the three million Bolsheviks now in German captivity could be sterilized so that they would be excluded from propagation, but still remain usable workers, opens up wide perspectives.”62_{As the war was deteriorating in the East, the Nazis were}

becoming desperate to utilize as much slave labor as they could acquire. In a letter sent to Himmler in October 1941, Dr. Pokorny specifically recommended and requested “immediate tests on human beings (criminals) in order to determine the dose and the duration of the treatment [sterilization].”63_Thus,

60_{Ibid., 21.} 61_{“Ibid., 25.} 62_{Ibid., 25.} 63_{Ibid., 25-26}

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Himmler became personally interested in the experiments, and in March 1942, offered the opportunity to Dr. Madaus to conduct his experiments on human beings.64

The “necessity” for the progression from animal testing to human experimentation can be clearly discerned in an observation of Dr. Madaus’ research. In a letter sent to Himmler by Dr. K. Gerland, another

SS physician, on 24 August 1942, contains this recommendation,

“On the basis of extensive experimentation on rats, rabbits, and dogs it was established at what stage after injection or feeding with caladium seguinum, male animals became impotent and when females animals became incapable of conception…If changes in the potency or capability of conception could be produce in the human being through the consumption of caladium seguinum extract, the potential immense importance of these observations is quite obvious, however, it would be necessary to conduct experiments directly on human beings…the necessary examinations and experiments on human beings could be conducted on the inmates of the gypsy camp Lackenbach in Niederdonau...”65

In fact, it was from the concentration camp population that the supply for needed test subjects would be provided. Himmler wanted the subjects for experimentation to be men that had been condemned to death. When Himmler became interested in the high-altitude experiments being conducted at Dachau, he specifically ordered on 13 April 1942 that “this experiment [high altitude pressure] is to be repeated on other men condemned to death.” There was some glimmer of hope for the condemned men that they might be pardoned. Himmler wrote as an addendum, “Considering the long continued action of the heart of the experiments should be specially exploited in such a manner as to determine whether these men could be recalled to life. Should such as experiment succeed then, of course, the [prisoner] condemned to death shall be pardoned to concentration camp for life.”66

By mid-1943, the advances gleamed from using human beings for medical trials was being touted as a success by many Nazi doctors. While researching new vaccines for spotted-fever, a serum had been developed that showed promising results in animals and now was ready for the next stage of testing. Sievers, once again applying for test subject procurement, wrote,

64_{Ibid., 26}

65_{Ibid., 26.} 66_{Ibid., 20}

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“Following our application of 30 September 1943, you granted us permission on 25 October 1943, to conduct experiments on the production of a new type of spotted-fever injection and put one hundred prisoners at our disposal at the Natzweiler KL….…The new serum is already in production so the new experiments can be started as soon as new suitable [emphasize original] human guinea pigs have been put at our disposal. Therefore, I would like to request that a new group of inoculates be sent to Natzweiler for this purpose. In order to obtain precise results…two hundred prisoners would have to be put at our disposal this time. It would again be necessary, however, that these persons be in the same physical condition as the average member of the Wehrmacht…”67

Initially, Himmler wanted only adult males to be used for medical testing; however, the changing reality of the war would force the doctors to seek out other groups for human testing. Thus, it was in the summer of 1942, that the Nazis began to use female prisoners for experiments such as in the sulphonamide [sic] tests in Ravensbrück and later the sterilization experiments in Auschwitz. In fact, the first tests were carried out on 20 July 1942 in Ravensbrück concentration camp on seventy-five women nicknamed “rabbits.”68_{As the war persisted, even children were eventually exploited in concentration camps for}

medical experiments.69_{The story of the children will be the focus of the next chapter.}

Paradox of Using Sub-Humans for Experiments

It is worth noting the paradoxical nature of Nazi racial medicine ascertaining any worthy results from such “inferior” specimens. The prisoners used in the human experiments were considered sub-human. It therefore begs the question as to what good would their results be if they could not be compared and applied to the German übermensch? When the proposal of using Roma and Sinti prisoners came to be discussed, there were those who were reluctant to the idea.

Dr. Grawitz was morally opposed to the idea of using Gypsies as test subjects because of the logical conclusion which he based firmly in Nazi ideology. His disapproval was expressed in a letter to Himmler, “As far as the proposal of using gypsies for these experiments is concerned, I should like to make

67_{Ibid., 24.}

68_{Hoedeman, Hitler or Hippocrates, 55.}

69_{Ley, Astrid. “Children as Victims of Medical Experiments in Concentration Camps." From Clinic to Concentration}

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the following objection: The results of experiments conducted on gypsies would not necessarily be applicable to our men, on account of their partially different racial origin. For that reason, it would be desirable to use as subjects inmates who are racially comparable to the European population.”70_Himmler

also saw the unpleasant, yet infallible truth of Grawitz’s logic. Therefore, he forwarded his approval for human testing on 26 July 1944. And with a penciled annotation, he wrote, “Right, gypsies and three others as a check.”71

Many in the medical and scientific circles at the time also came to the similar conclusion that their experiments may not be usable or useful for the pure German racial stock. The idea, I believe, behind using biologically inferior human beings was the same as animal testing: that is, the doctors could work out the problems and issues associated with developing new medicines using testing samples that were ‘close enough’ before trying the experiments on healthy superior organisms. The concentration camp inmate population would absorb the brunt of the deaths to be expected with inhumane medical trials. After which, the promising (and survivable) results would be refined and retested on “actual” human beings of comparable racial quality.

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Part Two

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A Children’s Story

Chapter Three

GERMAN GUIDELINES ON HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION 1931

section (c): “experimentation involving children or young persons under 18 years of age shall be prohibited if it in any way endangers the child or young person.”72

Advent Children

The Nazi doctors medically murdered children by the thousands throughout the euthanasia program. However, the activities of the T4, while combining German medicine with Nazi racial ideology, were medicalized killings, and were not medical experiments. They do, however, illustrate the fact that Nazi medicine had no qualms violating the sanctity of children’s lives and well-being. That experiments were eventually conducted on children is well within the grasp of imagination when considering the other medicalized Nazi practices. However, unlike the T4 program which followed a rather linear path set with defined goals, the progression towards using children for medical testing was haphazard and reactionary. There was no straightforward progression in the selection of groups to be used for medical experimentation. Experiments began on healthy adult male inmates condemned to death; later came women for differing experiments, and finally the children. In order to understand the development of how children came to be used as human guinea pigs for horrific testing, it is necessary to understand what it was that the SS doctors were looking for, and why they needed human beings for their experiments. Thus, the scientific and medical reasoning of the Nazi logic will be examined, as well as their perspectives as to what they were investigating.73_{It was a cold and simple logic that as the milieu of German scientific circles}

began to be increasingly radicalized, so did medicine and experiments. Thus, through the principles of Social Darwinism, guinea pigs evolved in human beings.

Experiments with concentration camp prisoners began immediately following the outbreak of the war in 1939. But actual child experimentation came rather relatedly, first occurring in mid-1943.

72_{German Guidelines on Human Experimentation 1931. “reichsrundschreiben_1931.pdf”. artnscience.us. available}

online: http://artnscience.us/Med_Ethics/reichsrundschreiben_1931.pdf. Last accessed 28 June 2017

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Such experiments could be seen as the abyss of ethical and moral abandonment in regards to humane medical practices in which children, particularly Jewish children, were used as test subjects due to being considered a member of “sub-human” species.74_{Other historians, notably Dr. Astrid Ley, have argued,}

however, “that despite the brutal testing practices and their ethical reprehensibility, these experiments cannot be considered as senseless, pseudo-medical cruelty, as most of them corresponded in terms of their purposes and methods to the state of scientific practice at that time.”75_{I concur with the former}

position and further agree with Primo Levi when he describes the experiments as being a “form of torture resulting in invalidity, incapacity, death, and psychological scarring. This form of violence was very different from the random and arbitrary form given out by SS guards and camp kapos: it was calculated, “scientific,” authorized, funded, and meticulously recorded.”76

Himmler and the SS held the monopoly on the supply of human beings as experimental subjects. There were three ways to request human test subjects. The first was through an application via the SS

Ahnenerbe Association which carried out human experiments from 1942 onward that were “important

for the war effort.”77_{The second was an application via SS Reich Physician Dr. Ernst Grawitz, whose scope}

of responsibilities included medical testing in concentration camps. And the third way was an application directly to Heinrich Himmler, who had the ultimate decision, if the individual had personal access to him.78

From the very beginning, Himmler held a personal interest in the potential medical breakthroughs that could be possible with unlimited human testing.

For determining potential testing subjects for a research experiment, two conflicting issues arose within the concentration camp hierarchy. First, the SS physicians wanted healthy subjects with sufficient nutrition and overall fitness so that their test results would not be influenced by sickness and weakness. Moreover, the subject group needed to be comparable in terms of gender and age. For infection tests, prisoners without respective prior diseases were sought, if possible, so as to rule out immunities against the relevant pathogen.79_{New arrivals were also favored because they would not yet have experienced}

the detriments of living within a concentration camp.

On the other hand, the commanders of the camps needed as many prisoners as possible for work and labor details.80_{The vast network of concentration camps meant that the prisoners became the labor}

74_{Ibid.,210. Translated by Paul Weindling} 75_{Ibid., 209.}

76_{Levi, Primo. Moments of Reprieve (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987), 10-11} 77_{The Medical Case, Part II.}

78_{Ley, Children as Victims, 209-14.} 79_{Ibid., 211}

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force for the war effort. The grueling nature of the forced labor details required that workers be healthy and strong. Up until 1942, it was relatively easy to accommodate the doctors’ requests. However, after the war began to turn in favor of the Allies, the Nazi’s demand for slave laborers increased sharply. The need for war production, such as munitions and other materials, superseded the wishes of the scientists, who were intentionally debilitating their victims. Therefore, the healthy and strong potential test subjects, desired by the doctors for their experiments, were pressed into hard labor to be worked to death.

In order to resolve this setback to their research, the doctors considered additional groups of prisoners. In addition to women, children also came into the fold. This new potential source came in abundance as hundreds of thousands of people were being “delivered” to the camps following the mass deportations during the course of the “Final Solution.”81_{Although the children that were deported with}

their families to Auschwitz were of little use as laborers, they largely met the doctors’ requirements. Based on their young age and the lower probability of prior illnesses, children were an ideal choice as test subjects for inoculation experiments.82_{In fact, Nazi physicians at other concentration camps such as}

Ravensbrück, Neuengamme, and Sachsenhausen were also engaged in pseudoscientific research that subjected children to various experiments. They ran the gamut from sterilization to inoculation with infectious diseases.83

The fear of infectious diseases weighed heavily upon the minds of the Nazi elites. In fact, the spread of epidemic spread of jaundice (hepatitis) among the ranks of the police and the army left some units listing up to 60% casualties lasting up to six weeks.84_{As the war situation in the East was worsening,}

it was therefore of the upmost importance to find a cure as quickly as possible. It was recommended to Himmler that experiments begin in earnest.85_{Dr. Arnold Dohmen, an immunologist and SA elite, had been}

conducting extensive experiments into finding a treatment for hepatitis.

He eventually discovered that it was not passed along by bacteria, but by virus, and had been successful with cultivating pathogen cultures in animals. Himmler agreed with the recommendation and, on 16 June 1943, granted permission to Dohmen to conduct experiments at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Himmler personally selected from Auschwitz eight Jews associated with the Polish resistance movement who had been condemned to death for use by Dr. Dohmen in his experiments.86_{At first, exclusively adult}

81_{Ley, Children as Victims, 211.} 82_{Ibid., 211.}

83_{Lukas, Richard C. Did the Children Cry?: Hitler's War Against Jewish and Polish Children, 1939-1945. (Hippocrene}

Books, 1994), 88.

84_{The Medical Case, 39.} 85_{Ibid, 39}

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men were used a test subjects for such experiments. These were primarily Polish, Jewish, Soviet, and German concentration camp inmates.87_{However, many of these men, despite being fed full sustenance}

rations, were not ideal for inoculation experiments because they had developed immunities from prior exposure to various contagions. What Dr. Dohmen required were test subjects whose immune systems were still pristine. Therefore, two weeks later, Dr. Dohmen visited and selected twelve boys from Auschwitz for his experiments, of which, eleven were later transferred to Sachsenhausen.88_{As Saul}

Oren-Hornfeld, one of Dr. Dohmen’s test victims, later recounted, the immunologist selected his young subjects in Auschwitz himself from an arriving transport. On the ramp, he asked them: “Children, were you sick? Did you have jaundice?” When the children failed to understand, he pointed to the yellow star on their clothes. “That,” Oren said, “We understood”.89_{The experience of these boys will be discussed in the next}

chapter.

Another SS physician, lung specialist Dr. Kurt Heissmeyer, who apparently believed there was no difference between animals and Jews, wanted to develop a serum to combat tuberculosis. Fortunately for him, he had connections in high places, including an uncle who knew Himmler personally, who helped him get the approval to begin his own experiments.90_{His initial experiments on adult males did not produce}

any desired results; all of the test subjects died. At his post-war interrogation, Heissmeyer said, “After determining in the fall of 1944 that my plan to heal TBC [tuberculosis]

patients with the aforementioned serum had failed, and that the condition of most of the inmates had worsened and not improved (I no longer know how many inmates were involved), I discontinued the experiments. I then ordered twenty children to be brought in, on whom I used the same serum to see if they were inherently immune to TBC well as to see if I could immunize them against the disease.”91

Thus, in November 1944, twenty-five children from Auschwitz arrived at Neuengamme. Dr. Heissmeyer had personally selected them for experimentation for the benefit and progress of medicine.92_The

87_{Ley, Children as Victims, 209.}

88_{Ley, Astrid, and Günter Morsch. Medical care and crime: the infirmary at Sachsenhausen concentration camp}

1936-1945. Metropol, 2007.

89_{Oranienburg, Sachsenhausen Archive: Viedo interview of Saul Oren-Hornfeld, in ‘Jedesmal musste es ein Wunder}

sein’, Filmochschule Potsdam, 1996. As translated and presented By Dr. Astrid Ley. "Children as victims of medical experiments in concentration camps."From Clinic to Concentration Camp: Reassessing Nazi Medical and Racial Research, 1933-1945(2017): 211

90_{Lukas, Did the Children Cry?, 89.}

91_{Pasternak, Inhuman Research, 217. As quoted from The murders at Bullenhuserdamm, 37-49} 92_{Ibid., 37-49.}

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youngest was five and the oldest was twelve years old.93_{Heissmeyer inoculated them with tuberculosis}

bacilli. Their story will also be told in the next chapter.

Dr. Mengele, the infamous geneticist and member of the SS elite, who would become the chief doctor of Auschwitz, had a ‘theory’ that human beings had pedigrees, like dogs. He was convinced that he had a personal duty to create a super-race of blue-eyed, blond ‘Nordic’ people through selective breeding, and further of his obligation to eliminate the biologically inferior specimens. At Auschwitz, his surgical ward was immaculately clean and his syringes always sterilized. He often used the latter for injecting his patients with phenolic acid, benzine, or air, which killed them within a few seconds.94_{He believed that the}

key to unlocking the potential procreative power of twins lies within the blood of the twins themselves. Harnessing this power over the creation of life would dramatically increase Germany’s population. This would solve the pressing issue of the inferior races out-reproducing the superior Volk. In Mengele’s twin experiment, pairs of twins deported to Auschwitz were examined and autopsied in comparative terms. In contrast to child twins, adult twins rarely arrived at the camp together.95_{Twins were the primary concern,}

regardless of age. However, adult twins were scarce and when they did arrive together there was a possibility of them already being too sick and frail for medical tests. Therefore, young twins were the best, and only, option for Mengele.

Ruminations

Human experimentation began in the major concentration camps following the start of World War II. Ostensibly, for the purposes of the advancement of the German people and the Nazi war execution, the experiments had a variety of aims and goals. Much of the research was in pursuit of applicable military medicine aimed at testing new therapies and vaccines for treating battlefield injuries, illnesses, and epidemics.96_{Others, like experiments performed by Mengele, were endeavored to affect population}

growth, and planned settlement policies for Eastern Europe. Further, Himmler and the SS, encouraged scientists and physicians to engage in virtually uninhibited research in order to provide scientific legitimization to the racist Nazi ideology.

93_{Lukas Did the Children Cry?, 89.}

94_{Wiesenthal, Simon, and Joseph Wechsberg. The Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Memoirs. (Bantam}

Books, 1967), 148.

95_{Ley, Children as Victims, 211.} 96_{Ibid., 217.}

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While the groups of human test subjects were originally only adult men condemned to death, the range of potential guinea pigs enlarged to encompass all concentration camp prisoner inmates, which up until 1942, were primarily adult males. After the summer of 1942, the tide of the war was beginning to move against the Germans. Simultaneously, women and children were being delivered in droves by the

SS to the concentration camps. Not useful for hard labor details, this new influx of prisoners satisfied the

needs of the doctors for medical experimentation subjects. As a consequence, only inmates who could not be used as forced laborers were provided for medical experiments by the camp commanders.

The desperate need for slave laborers siphoned the doctors’ test subject pool. The Nazi physicians searched elsewhere and found prime subjects in healthy states without prior illnesses in young children. And as discussed above, the advent of these children as new subjects was advantageous to the Nazi physicians in regard to the prevailing medical practices at the time, and in accordance with their racial logic. Thus, in the opinion of the medical perpetrators, children were the best suited subjects for test purposes, or, in the case of Mengele’s research on twins, the only possible subjects.97

97_{Ley, Children as VictimsI, 217.}

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Immolation

Chapter Four

--I suffered immense pain and cruelty from the experiments. They were inhuman, but

because of them I survived. As bad as the experiments were without them I would not be here today to write this … Now that I am emotionally a lot stronger I would like to describe a little more details about my horrible experiments which no matter how hard I am trying I never get over it as long as I live. I was born November 23, 1930. I was about five weeks in Auschwitz alone, separated from my family, my parents, two sisters and two brothers when Dr. Mengele pulled me out of a queue as we were on the way from the c-lager [camp] to the gas chamber. I was the only one picked that day personally by Mengele and his assistant. They took me to his [laboratory], where I met other children. They were screaming from pain. Black and blue bodies covered with blood. I collapsed from horror and terror and fainted. A bucket of cold water was thrown on me to revive me. As soon as I stood up I was whipped with a leather whip which broke my flesh, then I was told the whipping was a sample of what I would receive if I did not follow instructions and orders. I was used as a guinea pig for medical experiments. I was never ever given painkillers or anesthetics. Every day I suffered excruciating pain. I was injected with drugs and chemicals. My body most of the time was connected to tubes which inserted some drugs in to my body. Many days I was tied up for hours. Some days they made cuts in to my body and left the wounds open for them to study. Most of the time there nothing to eat. Every day my body was numb with pain. There was no more skin left on my body for them to put injections or tubes … One day we woke up and the place was empty. We were left with open infected wounds and no food. We all were half dead with no energy or life left in us. [One] day … Russian soldiers tried to shake me to see if I was alive or dead. They felt a tiny beat in my heart and quickly picked me up and took me to a hospital.98

98_{“Mrs. M”. Testimony for The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. She requested that her}

real name not be used. http://www.claimscon.org/about/history/closed-programs/medical-experiments/personal-statements-from-victims/ last accessed: 6/22/17