1 VII: ROLES OF PHYSICIANS AND NURSES IN THE “MEDICAL” EXPERIMENTS RELATED TO “RACIAL HYGIENE” Professor Susan Benedict UT Health Science Center Houston, Texas, USA 77030
[email protected] 001-713-500-2039 Purpose of the Module: To describe the role of physicians and nurses in experiments that were based upon the notion of furthering the “science” of racial hygiene. Suggested Readings: Strzelecka, I. (2000). Experiments. In Auschwitz 1940-1945, vol. II, eds. Ditugoborski, W. and Piper, F., Oświᶒcim: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, p. 347-369. Shelley, L. (1991). Block 10. In Crimnal Experiments on Human Beings in Auschwitz and War Research Laboratories: Twenty Women Prisoners’ Accounts. San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, p. 22. Benedict, S. and Georges, J. (2006). Nurses and the sterilization experiments of Auschwitz. Nursing Inquiry, 13: 277-288. Suggested Videos: “Healing by Killing”, part 2. Objectives: 1. Discuss the evolution of the sterilization laws into the sterilization experiments. 2. Analyze why the “researchers” obtained written consent from the women in Block 3. Discuss the effects of the sterilization experiments on the population had the outcome of the war been different. Discussion Questions: 1. Why did the Prussian Directive of 1931, mentioned in Module 1, not prevent unethical experimentation? 2. If the physicians who conducted these medical experiments had been brought to trial, what would have been the likely charges and the likely sentences? Synopsis: Among the horrific experiments perpetrated upon concentration camp prisoners were the sterilization experiments. These experiments not only were based upon racial hygiene principles but also had the quasi-military goal of creating a cadre of slave laborers 2 who were to rebuild post-war Germany but who, because they were deemed “inferior,” would not be allowed to reproduce.