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Child Victims of Nazi Medical Experimentation

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Child Victims of Nazi Medical Experimentation Child Victims of Nazi Medical Experimentation A Child’s Lamentation Jeffrey Daniel Mucha University of Amsterdam Master’s Thesis in Holocaust and Genocide Studies 30 June 2017 2 Master’s Thesis I History: Holocaust and Genocide Studies University of Amsterdam By: Jeffrey Daniel Mucha Word count: 19874 Student number: 11314346 Date: 30 June 2017 Adviser: Prof. Dr. Karol Berkhoff Second Reader: Prof. Dr. Johannes Houwink ten Cate 3 Contents …As a guinea pig… ......................................................................................................................................... 4 Abstract ..................................................................................................................................................... 5 …Into the fire… .............................................................................................................................................. 7 Introduction .............................................................................................................................................. 7 Conflagration ................................................................................................................................................ 9 Life Unworthy of Life ................................................................................................................................. 9 Nazification of German Medicine ........................................................................................................... 12 Euthanasia and Detachment ................................................................................................................... 13 “The Most Simple Method” .................................................................................................................... 15 Foundations of the Holocaust ................................................................................................................. 16 Incineration ................................................................................................................................................. 18 The Means to the End ............................................................................................................................. 18 Beginnings of Human Experimentation .................................................................................................. 19 The Case of the AHNENERBE .................................................................................................................. 20 Paradox of Using Sub-Humans for Experiments ..................................................................................... 24 A Children’s Story ........................................................................................................................................ 27 Advent Children .................................................................................................................................. 27 Ruminations ........................................................................................................................................ 31 Immolation .................................................................................................................................................. 33 The “Lucky Ones” .................................................................................................................................... 34 The Experience of the Experiments ........................................................................................................ 38 Notes and Measurements ................................................................................................................... 38 The Blood Lab ...................................................................................................................................... 40 “Dirty Blood” ....................................................................................................................................... 41 Extended Isolations ............................................................................................................................. 42 Reactions to Stimuli ............................................................................................................................ 42 Injections ............................................................................................................................................. 43 Eye Color Experiments ........................................................................................................................ 45 Pathogens and Inoculations ................................................................................................................ 45 Psychological Experiments .................................................................................................................. 48 Lamentations .............................................................................................................................................. 50 …the Broken Dolls… .................................................................................................................................... 50 4 The Fate of Newborns ......................................................................................................................... 50 The Grievous Experiments ...................................................................................................................... 52 Starvation and Child Cannibalism ....................................................................................................... 52 Forced Sex Changes ............................................................................................................................ 53 Creating Conjoined Twins ................................................................................................................... 53 Lethal Injections .................................................................................................................................. 53 Surgeries Without Anesthesia ............................................................................................................ 55 Mutilation ........................................................................................................................................... 57 Body Harvesting .................................................................................................................................. 58 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 59 Reflections .............................................................................................................................................. 59 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................ 62 …As a guinea pig… I was the only one picked that day personally by Mengele and his assistant. They took me to his [laboratory], where I met other children. They were screaming from pain. Black and blue bodies covered with blood. I collapsed from horror and terror and fainted. A bucket of cold water was thrown on me to revive me. As soon as I stood up I was whipped with a leather whip which broke my flesh, then I was told the whipping was a sample of what I would receive if I did not follow instructions and orders. I was used as a guinea pig for medical experiments.1 1 “Mrs. M”. Testimony for The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. She requested that her real name not be used. http://www.claimscon.org/about/history/closed-programs/medical-experiments/personal- statements-from-victims/ last accessed: 6/22/17 5 Abstract During the Nazi era, some 1.5 million children were murdered. This number includes over one million Jewish children, along with hundreds of thousands of German children with various disabilities, tens of thousands of Sinti and Roma children, as well as thousands of others deemed Lebensunwertes Leben (life unworthy of life).2 Although virtually all of the children were killed outright by bullets or gas chambers, or by starvation and privation in the ghettos and concentration camps, a select few, however, were chosen for medical experimentation. While much has been researched and written about the Nazi doctors themselves and their experiments, little attention has been paid to the child victims of Nazi medical research. This thesis seeks to answer the questions of how and why children were selected as human test subjects, and whether this represents a nadir in humane medical practices. Further, this thesis will examine the experiences of such medical experiments from the perspectives of the children and what they understood to be happening to them. To answer the questions how and why I will discuss the development of human testing. For the scope of this paper I will be following the vein as it pertains to the ethics of human medical testing progressing from animals to adult males to females and finally into experimenting on children. To shed light on the experiences of the children I will discuss their suffering for each procedure and experiment as a narrative created from the testimonies of the survivor themselves. 2 Lifton, Robert Jay. The Nazi doctors: Medical killing and the psychology of genocide. Basic Books, 2000. Pg. 46. As translated and cited from
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