Preliminary communication
MEDICAL TREATMENT AND MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS IN THE CONCENTRATION CAMP DACHAU
Daniela Claudia Angetter
; Institute of Medical History, Vienna, Austria
Abstract
During the Third Reich many German physicians supported the Nazis. Physicians took part in torture and killing of the enemies of the Nazi regime. Killing of the mentally disabled persons was a common practice. Concentration camps internees were used for medical experiments and were often tortured to death in process. The aim of the experiments was to improve the medical treatment of the German soldiers and to help them survive at the battlefield. But the results of the experiments were either well-known or totally useless. In the concentration camps ill or injured internees were not medically treated. Either they recovered on their own or they died. Hygienic conditions in the camps were deplorable. Water was scarce and unclean, lice and fleas infested the crowded barracks and thousands of people died of typhus or other infections without receiving any medical help. No matter, how tired, weak or ill internees were, they had to hide it they wanted to survive.
Various medical experiments were conducted in the concentration camp Dachau. The research projects performed concerned diverse subjects as the efficacity and side effects of new drugs, the effects of chemical weapons and the efficiency of new methods of sterilization. Prisoners were subjected to extremely low atmospheric pressure and profound hypothermia in order to discover the limits that a body could tolerate. Furthermore prisoners were infected with bacteria in order to assess the efficacy and side effects of sulfonamides. The number of people who did not survive the experiments was extremely high. After the war several physicians who conducted the medical experiments were sentenced to death. Other were sentenced to various prison terms. But a lot of them were freed after several years and were able to continue working as physicians.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
208546
URI
Publication date:
1.12.2001.
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