Tag Archives: Auschwitz

Titanic

Himmler Orders Medical Experiments on Auschwitz Prisoners (7 Jul 1942)

Heinrich Himmler, 1942
German Federal Archives (via Wikimedia Commons)

On 7 July 1942, Heinrich Himmler orders that experimentation on women at the Auschwitz concentration camp begin and also to investigate extending this to males. How and why did this happen? Let’s find out.

Himmler, as head of the Schutzstaffel (SS), believed in exterminating all European Jews. As head of the SS and the assistant chief of the Gestapo, he controlled all the police forces in Germany. This allowed him the power to carry out Hitler’s Final Solution and why he was the one who called for a conference that would devise how these experiments would be conducted. The conference attendees included SS General Richard Glueks (hospital chief), SS Major-General Karl Gebhardt, and Professor Karl Clauberg (a leading German gynecologist) and members of the Concentration Camp Protectorate.

Gate to Auschwitz I with its Arbeit macht frei sign (“work sets you free”), 2010
Image credit: xiquinhosilva
Flickr via Wikimedia Commons

The conference decided that medical experimentations would take place but also done in a way that the women would not know what was being done to them. The experiments would be to devise methods of sterilizing Jewish women using massive doses of radiation and uterine injections. It was also decided to examine if X rays could be used to castrate men and use it on male Jewish prisoners. Adolf Hitler agreed to this, but it was kept top secret as they were concerned many would object (it had happened before when they tried exterminating disabled and those in hospitals with severe mental conditions). This program would further the Nazi’s aims to rid the world of Jews outside of their extermination camps. They knew that in time they would get control of countries where setting up extermination camps would not be practical, so developing means to sterilize Jewish men and women (and others they didn’t like as well) would allow them to continue eliminating Jews but under the guise of using medicine to eliminate them.

Sources

Himmler decides to begin medical experiments on Auschwitz prisoners.
History.com
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/himmler-decides-to-begin-medical-experiments-on-auschwitz-prisoners
Original Published Date: November 16, 2009
Last Accessed on: July 8, 2024

Nazi Medical Experiments
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-medical-experiments
Last Accessed on July 8, 2024

The Holocaust: Nazi Medical Experiments
JewishVirtualLibrary.org
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/nazi-medical-experiments
Last Accessed on July 8, 202

 

History

Remembering History: Auschwitz Liberated by Soviet Army (27 Sep 1945)

Child Survivors of Auschwitz, 1945
Public Domain (via Wikimedia)

On 27 Jan 1945, Soviet Union troops liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. In doing so, it revealed the horrors the Germans had perpetrated there. Auschwitz was a series of camps designated I, II, and III with also smaller satellite camps. Auschwitz II at Birkenau was the place where most of the exterminations at Auschwitz were done. Using four “bath houses,” prisoners were gassed to death and cremated. Prisoners were also used for ghastly medical experiments overseen by the infamous Josef Mengele (the “angel of death”).

As the Red Army approached, the SS began a murder spree and blew up the crematoria to try to cover up the evidence. When the Red Army finally got there, they found 648 corpses and 7,000 starving camp survivors. They also found six storehouses full of men’s and women’s clothes and other items the Germans were not able to burn before they left.

News Articles

How a Catholic pastor saved hundreds of his Jewish neighbors in the Warsaw Ghetto (Catholic News Agency, 27 Jan 2021)

For More Information:

Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial & Museum
Brittanica.com
History.com
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Yad Vashem

,,

History

Himmler Orders Medical Experiments on Auschwitz Prisoners (7 Jul 1942)

Heinrich Himmler, 1942
German Federal Archives (via Wikimedia Commons)

On 7 July 1942, Heinrich Himmler orders that experimentation on women at the Auschwitz concentration camp begin and also to investigate extending this to males. How and why did this happen? Let’s find out.

Himmler, as head of the Schutzstaffel (SS), believed in exterminating all European Jews. As head of the SS and the assistant chief of the Gestapo, he controlled all the police forces in Germany. This allowed him the power to carry out Hitler’s Final Solution and why he was the one who called for a conference that would devise how these experiments would be conducted. The conference attendees included SS General Richard Glueks (hospital chief), SS Major-General Karl Gebhardt, and Professor Karl Clauberg (a leading German gynecologist) and members of the Concentration Camp Protectorate.

Gate to Auschwitz I with its Arbeit macht frei sign (“work sets you free”), 2010
Image credit: xiquinhosilva
Flickr via Wikimedia Commons

The conference decided that medical experimentations would take place but also done in a way that the women would not know what was being done to them. The experiments would be to devise methods of sterilizing Jewish women using massive doses of radiation and uterine injections. It was also decided to examine if X rays could be used to castrate men and use it on male Jewish prisoners. Adolf Hitler agreed to this, but it was kept top secret as they were concerned many would object (it had happened before when they tried exterminating disabled and those in hospitals with severe mental conditions). This program would further the Nazi’s aims to rid the world of Jews outside of their extermination camps. They knew that in time they would get control of countries where setting up extermination camps would not be practical, so developing means to sterilize Jewish men and women (and others they didn’t like as well) would allow them to continue eliminating Jews but under the guise of using medicine to eliminate them.

Sources:

Himmler decides to begin medical experiments on Auschwitz prisoners.
History.com
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/himmler-decides-to-begin-medical-experiments-on-auschwitz-prisoners
Original Published Date: November 16, 2009
Last Accessed on: July 8, 2024

Nazi Medical Experiments
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-medical-experiments
Last Accessed on July 8, 2024

The Holocaust: Nazi Medical Experiments
JewishVirtualLibrary.org
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/nazi-medical-experiments
Last Accessed on July 8, 2024

History

Remembering History: Auschwitz Liberated by Soviet Army (27 Sep 1945)

Child Survivors of Auschwitz, 1945
Public Domain (via Wikimedia)

On 27 Jan 1945, Soviet Union troops liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. In doing so, it revealed the horrors the Germans had perpetrated there. Auschwitz was a series of camps designated I, II, and III with also smaller satellite camps. Auschwitz II at Birkenau was the place where most of the exterminations at Auschwitz were done. Using four “bath houses,” prisoners were gassed to death and cremated. Prisoners were also used for ghastly medical experiments overseen by the infamous Josef Mengele (the “angel of death”).

As the Red Army approached, the SS began a murder spree and blew up the crematoria to try to cover up the evidence. When the Red Army finally got there, they found 648 corpses and 7,000 starving camp survivors. They also found six storehouses full of men’s and women’s clothes and other items the Germans were not able to burn before they left.

News Articles

How a Catholic pastor saved hundreds of his Jewish neighbors in the Warsaw Ghetto (Catholic News Agency, 27 Jan 2021)

For More Information:

Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial & Museum
Brittanica.com
History.com
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Yad Vashem

 

History

Remembering History: Prof. Carl Clauberg Began His Experiments on Female Prisoners at Auschwitz (28 Dec 1942)

Carl Clauberg 1942 at Auschwitz
Source: www.auschwitz.org.pl via Wikimedia Commons

Professor Carl Clauberg (1898-1957) after serving in World War I studied medicine and became the doctor-in-chief to the gynaecological clinic at Kiel University. In 1933 he joined the Nazi party and was a supporter of its ideology. He would also become professor for gynaecology at Koenigsberg University that same year. At Koenigsberg he did research on female fertility hormones and the use for infertility treatments. This got him recognition in 1937 and Himmler was made aware of his work. He also received the rank of SS-Gruppenführer (equivalent of a 2 -star general) in the Reserve.

In 1942 Clauberg asked Heinrich Himmler about doing research on mass sterilization of women. Himmler sent him to Auschwitz in December 1942 where he was given part of Block 10 in the camp to do his experiments. Clauberg was looking at cheap and effective ways to this. He used both Jewish and Romani (Gypsy) women who were often injected without anesthetics in their uterus. Some of the women died from the experiments and others were killed so they could do autopsies. By 1943 he reported to Himmler that he had perfected the procedure. It would require 10 people and well stocked office that could sterilize hundreds up to a 1,000 women per day.

The procedure he used required the injection of a chemical irritant that caused from the resulting inflammation, the growing of the fallopian tubes together causing obstruction. The experiments were brutal and often had complications for the women. Peritonitis and hemorrhages often resulted in high fever and sepsis. Organs failed as well resulting in death. It is believed 700 women were sterilized in these experiments.

He had to flee Auschwitz as the Russian army closed in and ended up in Ravensbruck where he continued his experiments. He was captured by the Russians, put on trial, and sentenced to 25 years in jail. He was released to Germany as part of the 1955 Adenauer-Bulganin prisoner exchange agreement. He ended up back at his old clinic but his bizarre behavior where he bragged about what he did at Auschwitz got him noticed. He was arrested in 1955 after a public outcry but died in 1957 before he stood trial.

Sources

Carl Clauberg
Auschwitz.org, Retrieved 12/28/22

Carl Clauberg
Jewish Virtual Library, Retrieved 12/28/22

Carl Clauberg
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Retrieved 12/28/22

History

Remembering History: Auschwitz Liberated by Soviet Army

[Updated 28 Jan 21 to include a news story about a priest who saved Jews in Warsaw.]

Child Survivors of Auschwitz, 1945
Public Domain (via Wikimedia)

On 27 Jan 1945, Soviet Union troops liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. In doing so, it revealed the horrors the Germans had perpetrated there. Auschwitz was a series of camps designated I, II, and III with also smaller satellite camps. Auschwitz II at Birkenau was the place where most of the exterminations at Auschwitz were done. Using four “bath houses,” prisoners were gassed to death and cremated. Prisoners were also used for ghastly medical experiments overseen by the infamous Josef Mengele (the “angel of death”).

As the Red Army approached, the SS began a murder spree and blew up the crematoria to try to cover up the evidence. When the Red Army finally got there, they found 648 corpses and 7,000 starving camp survivors. They also found six storehouses full of men’s and women’s clothes and other items the Germans were not able to burn before they left.

News Articles

How a Catholic pastor saved hundreds of his Jewish neighbors in the Warsaw Ghetto (Catholic News Agency, 27 Jan 2021)

For More Information:

Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial & Museum
Brittanica.com
History.com
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Yad Vashem

,,