With flagrant disregard for the accepted principles and ethics of medical
and scientific research, the Nazis used concentration camp inmates to carry
out experiments. Some of these involved subjecting inmates to high altitudes
and freezing water to test the ability of humans to survive under harsh conditions.
The most horrific, however, were the ‘racial’ experiments.
|The name of
‘Dr Josef Mengele’ is synonymous with the barbarism
which characterised Nazi medical experiments.
He earned his reputation as an SS doctor at Auschwitz-Birkenau,
where he personally presided over the selections
of incoming transports. He experimented particularly
on twins and dwarfs, and he was known to have
killed many of them himself to allow dissection
of their bodies. The infamy of Dr Mengele has
tended to overshadow the fact that many other
Nazi doctors and scientists were involved in experimentation
on human beings. At least 70 medical research
projects of various kinds were conducted in Nazi
Female Jewish victim of Nazi medical