The Horrific Nazi Experiments

Nazi human experimentation refers to a series of medical experiments on large numbers of prisoners, including children, by Nazi Germany in its concentration camps in the period between early to mid 1940s, during the duration of World War II and the Holocaust. The majorly targeted populations included Romani, Sinti, ethnic Poles, Soviet POWs, disabled Germans, and Jews from across Europe. The Nazi physicians and their assistants forced prisoners to participate in the medical experiments by risking their lives. The prisoners never wanted to volunteer for such experiments and procedures. Usually, the experiments led to death, trauma, disfigurement or permanent disability, and other kinds of medical tortures. At Auschwitz and other camps, selected inmates were subjected to various hazardous experiments upon the orders of Eduard Wirths. The experiments were designed to help German military personnel in combat situations, to develop new weapons, help in the recovery of military personnel who had been injured, and to advance the Nazi racial ideology. Experiments of like nature were conducted by Aribert Heim at Mauthausen. Ten-year-old Eva Mozes and her twin sister Miriam were forcibly made prisoners and had to abide by the orders of Nazi guards in German. Eva and Miriam were made subjects of a massive, inhumane medical experimentation program at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The program was aimed solely at thousands of twins, many of being children of tender age. The experiments were led by Josef Mengele. During the program Eva and Miriam were turned into medical subjects for experiments that lead to 3,000 children at Auschwitz-Birkenau to disease, disfigurement and torture under the impression of medical “research” that consequently led to illness, human endurance and more. Twins were treated separated. They were isolated from other prisoners and taken to laboratories for experiments. Mengele made use of one twin as a control and subjected the other one to everything right from blood transfusions to forced insemination, injections with diseases, amputations, and murder. Those that could not survive the torture and died were dissected and studied; their surviving twin was consequently killed and subjected to the same experimentation. Mengele believed that identical twins like the Mozes sisters were the perfect research subjects for him. Because the two shared a genome, the scientists understood that any physical or behavioral differences in twins would be because of behavior, and not genetics.

By: Preeti Narula
Content: https://www.history.com/news/nazi-twin-experiments-mengele-eugenics