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Dachau prisoner A prisoner during low-pressure experimentation at Dachau, 1942.
What if you knew just how much victims of the experiments suffered?

"One cannot fully confront the dilemma of using the results of Nazi experiments," the attorney and ethicist Baruch Cohen has written, "without sensitizing one's self to the images of the frozen, the injected, the inseminated, and the sterilized." [26] One could add without sensitizing oneself to eyewitness testimony. Obviously, the hundreds who died at the hands of Nazi death-camp doctors cannot tell their story of unfathomable fear, unbearable pain, and senseless death. One must rely on those who survived and those who witnessed the execrable atrocities that occurred in the concentration camps. Here is some of that testimony:
"The third experiment ... took such an extraordinary course that I called an SS physician of the camp as witness, since I had worked on these experiments all by myself. It was a continuous experiment without oxygen at a [simulated] height of 12 kilometers [39,283 feet] conducted on a 37-year-old Jew in good general condition. Breathing continued up to 30 minutes. After four minutes the experimental subject began to perspire and wiggle his head, after five minutes cramps occurred, between six and ten minutes breathing increased in speed and the experimental subject became unconscious; from 11 to 30 minutes breathing slowed down to three breaths per minute, finally stopping altogether."
—From a report by Dr. Sigmund Rascher to Heinrich Himmler dated April 5, 1942 concerning his high-altitude experiments on prisoners at Dachau concentration camp [27]

"Fifteen girls aged 17 to 18 years old. The girls who survived the following operations are in German hands and little is known about them. The subjects were placed in an ultra-short-wave field. One electrode was placed on the abdomen and another on the vulva. The rays were focused on the ovaries. The ovaries were consequently burned up.

Owing to faulty doses several had serious burns of the abdomen and vulva. One died as a result of these burns alone. The others were sent to another concentration camp where some were put in hospital and others made to work. After a month they returned to Auschwitz where control operations were performed. Sagittal and transverse sections of the ovaries were made.

The girls altered entirely owing to hormonal changes. They looked just like old women. Often they were laid up for months owing to the wounds of the operations becoming septic. Several died as a result of sepsis."
Sterilization experiment at Auschwitz, as described by two Dutch doctors who had been prisoners there [28]

"It was the worst experiment ever made. Two Russian officers were brought from the prison barracks. Rascher had them stripped and they had to go into the vat naked. Hour after hour went by, and whereas usually unconsciousness from the cold set in after 60 minutes at the latest, the two men in this case still responded fully after two and a half hours. All appeals to Rascher to put them to sleep by injection were fruitless. After the third hour one of the Russians said to the other, 'Comrade, please tell the officer to shoot us.' The other replied that he expected no mercy from this Fascist dog. The two shook hands with a 'Farewell, Comrade' ... These words were translated to Rascher by a young Pole, though in a somewhat different form. Rascher went to his office. The young Pole at once tried to chloroform the two victims, but Rascher came back at once, threatening us with his gun ... The test lasted at least five hours before death supervened."
—Testimony given at the "Doctors Trial" at Nuremberg by Walter Neff, an Auschwitz prisoner who served as Dr. Sigmund Rascher's medical orderly during hypothermia experiments [29]
Based on what you now know, do you think doctors and scientists should be able to use data from Nazi death-camp experiments?
Yes | No


References
26. Cohen, p. 2.
27. Katz, Jay. "Abuse of Human Beings for the Sake of Science." In Caplan, p. 233.
28. Gilbert, p. 374.
29. Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960, p. 987.


Photo: National Archives, Courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives

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