Human experiments in National Socialist concentration camps

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Dissection table, Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp

Human experiments in National Socialist concentration camps were numerous medical experiments by doctors and scientists, which were carried outon inmates of National Socialist concentration camps without their consent and without regard to physical integrity or life, especially during the Second World War . These crimes were the subject of the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial and resulted in the adoption of the Nuremberg Code of Medical Ethics .

Medical ethics

The human medicine u has a permanent and inevitable need for volunteers. a. for surgical and pharmaceutical purposes. Before and during National Socialism, apart from voluntary test persons, recourse to prisoners with their voluntary or forced consent, disabled people in closed institutions and disenfranchised fringe groups was widespread internationally .

In Germany in 1930 ethical questions gained greater importance due to the Lübeck vaccination accident , so that the Reich Health Council dealt with the admissibility of experimental investigations on humans and in 1931 adopted the guidelines for novel therapeutic treatments and the carrying out of scientific experiments . National Socialism prevented their effectiveness.

"Optimal test conditions"

In May 1941, the concentration camp doctor Sigmund Rascher initiated the creation of “optimal research conditions” in the Dachau concentration camp by means of a letter to Heinrich Himmler . In his request to the Reichsführer SS , he stated "with great regret" that "unfortunately we have not yet been able to carry out any experiments with human material," and emphasized the importance of such human experiments for high-altitude research. Almost nine months later, Rascher was able to start his experiments in Dachau.

In fact, since 1941 at the latest, most of the concentration camp doctors found such "optimal research conditions" in the concentration camps: Josef Mengele, for example, tested - among other things - the pain sensitivity of twins by operating them without anesthesia.

Other attempts by the camp doctors related to the effects of the drug mescaline and other hallucinogenic substances on the human will, to the chances of survival of the concentration camp inmates in cooled water basins and in pressure chambers, to finding suitable vaccines by targeting the inmates with typhus (Buchenwald , Natzweiler concentration camp) or malaria sporozoites , as well as the effects of gas fire .

On behalf of the Reich Air Force and the Navy , experiments with Sinti and Roma from concentration camps were carried out from the end of 1944 to determine how people in distress at sea can best survive. The victims were divided into four different groups, who were given either no water at all, pure salt water, salt water with a fresh water taste or salt water with a reduced salt content. This led to extreme thirst, cramps and delirium in the test subjects.

In 1947, in the dock at the Nuremberg doctors trial , camp doctor Karl Gebhardt said : “As I tried to show, the Third Reich […] gave me a great opportunity in the medical field. I took the chance. "

Profiteers

Many interest groups, who also specifically commissioned various tests, benefited from the camp experiments: the military and science, the SS and the pharmaceutical industry, among others. As the Szczecin exhibition “Conscientiously Conscientious” from 2001 shows, Josef Mengele worked closely with the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics . For example, he regularly sent preparations to the institute for evaluation and carried out targeted human experiments for a research project by the local director Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer to find an anti-typhus serum.

Work-up

Legal processing

The 23 defendants in the Nuremberg medical trial, 1946/47
On December 20, 1946, during the Nuremberg medical trial, Leo Alexander explained some of the pseudomedical human experiments to Maria Broel Plater , who was a prisoner in the Ravensbrück concentration camp .

In view of the Nazi atrocities, Jewish associations, national resistance, and underground organizations such as the Polish Underground State began securing evidence and documenting Nazi crimes (including the first mass test with Zyklon B in Auschwitz on 600 Soviet prisoners of war ). The United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) was set up on the initiative of nine London governments in exile in 1943 . The task consisted of preserving evidence, compiling lists of perpetrators, reports to the governments and preparing criminal proceedings for war crimes . The threat of punishment was intended to deter potential perpetrators from further murders, ill-treatment and inhumane acts against civilians and prisoners of war of any nationality. In the London Statute of August 8, 1945, the crimes for the Nuremberg Trial of the major war criminals were grouped into main categories. The complex of medical trials was investigated by the International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of Medical War Crimes .

The assumed number of human victims caused by German concentration camp doctors is over 3,000. In the Nuremberg doctors' trial , 20 doctors, two administrative specialists and a lawyer were held responsible. Many concentration camp trials dealt with the medical experiments and their individual perpetrators. On the other hand, many of the physicians responsible were able to continue their careers after the end of the “ Third Reich ” without any criminal consequences. Above all, the United States (and to a lesser extent England and the Soviet Union) subsequently benefited from the experience of the doctors and their test results: As part of the Paperclip project , a number of aerospace scientists and concentration camp medics were targeted brought scientific progress to the United States before the Nuremberg Trials began , where some of them were still active in research for a long time.

Reparation

The long-standing process of making amends to the victims of human experiments is viewed as controversial in terms of the leitmotifs and effectiveness. In 1951 the cabinet decision of the federal government in favor of surviving victims of human experiments was made, in 1959 reparations to Polish victims, in 1960 the cabinet decision for bilateral negotiations with Eastern European countries and then the global agreements with Yugoslavia 1961/63, Hungary 1971, Czechoslovakia 1969 and Poland 1972. In The Remembrance, Responsibility and Future Foundation followed in 2000 and approved the last application in 2005. No compensation was paid to the victims for the physical or mental damage.

See also

literature

  • Norbert Frei : Careers in the Twilight. Hitler's elites after 1945. Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt 2001.
  • Hans-Joachim Lang : The women of Block 10: Medical experiments in Auschwitz . Hoffmann and Campe, 2011, ISBN 978-3-455-50222-0 .
  • Matthias Meusch: Human experiments in National Socialism. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 970 f.
  • Robert N. Proctor: Blitzkrieg Against Cancer. Health and Propaganda in the Third Reich. Klett-Cotta Verlag, 2002.
  • Winfried Suss: The People's Body in War Health Policy, Health Conditions and Sick Murder in National Socialist Germany 1939–1945. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2003.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gerhard Baader: Human experiments in concentration camps in medicine in the Third Reich . 2nd Edition. Deutscher Ärzte-Verlag, 1992, ISBN 3-7691-0262-2 .
  2. ↑ Rudolf Kalmar : Time Without Mercy. Metroverlag, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-902517-84-5 , p. 137 ff.
  3. ↑ Torsten Passie: Mescaline research in Germany 1887–1950 - basic research, self-experiments and abuse . Consciousness State.de; accessed on February 15, 2015.
  4. ^ Ekkehart Guth: Military doctors and medical services in the Third Reich. An overview. In: Norbert Frei (Hrsg.): Medicine and health policy in the Nazi era. R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1991 (= writings of the quarterly books for contemporary history . Special issue), ISBN 3-486-64534-X , pp. 173–187, here: pp. 184 f.
  5. ^ Paul Weindling: "Our own, Austrian way" ". The seawater drinking experiments in Dachau in 1944 . (PDF) In: Yearbook Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance , 2017, pp. 133–177.
  6. ↑ Statute for the International Military Tribunal of August 8, 1945 (PDF)
  7. ↑ a b Stefanie Michaela Baumann: Human attempts and reparation: The long dispute over compensation and recognition of the victims of National Socialist human experiments . Oldenbourg, 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-58951-1 .
  8. ↑ The murderers are still among us . In: Der Spiegel . No. 28 , 1988 ( online ).