Kyla Hadlock

Mr. Taylor and Mrs. Jardine

World History / Literature

February 5th, 2018

Have you ever thought was kind of experiments happened on the prisoners in the

concentration camps during the Holocaust or who were the different doctors? Or how Hitler’s

childhood went and what could’ve been reasons for his future choices? Of course, these

questions originated from the Holocaust. In my essay, I will inform you on both of these things. I

have information about examples of experiments done on the prisoners, who were the doctors

and what did they do, Hitler’s life up until he was 25, and even a little about genocide.

There were many experiments conducted in different camps on the prisoners. Some

experiments were just for torture and there was no reasoning behind it, but most had a purpose

or data they had to find. Some experiments were conducted because of the military and the

soldiers in war. This is because the doctors conducting the experiments wanted to find a certain

cure for something the soldiers were going through or something to make the soldier better and

stronger. One example of this is the Freezing Experiment. In this experiment, the victim was

either put into an ice bath for long periods of time or stripped naked and put outside during

winter. This would give the victims hypothermia and the doctors would try to find a cure for

hypothermia or how long a person could freeze before they died. This was for the soldiers who

suffered on the Eastern Front. Another experiment’s, Bone Grafting, purpose was to find out

more about the human body’s regenerative process. The doctors would take a healthy patient

and cut the bones out of them, putting those bones into a mangled patient. They would study

how the body reacted.

Dr. Josef Mengele, a famous Nazi doctor, worked at Auschwitz and conducted his experiments

there. He is known for his infamous twin experiments. He had an obsession with twins and
would run experiments on them. Those experiments consisted of mass transfusions of blood

from one twin to another, dropping chemicals into their eyes, and many surgeries were

performed without any anesthesia. Mengele also had an obsession with eyes, especially

heterochromia (eyes are different colors). He would collect the eyes of his dead victims because

they were ‘research material’. One experiment that Mengele did involved this obsession. He

would take a patient and injected dye and other chemicals into their eyes to see if the iris would

change color. He did this mainly to see if he could change the eye color to blue.

One Nazi doctor, Dr. Carl Clauberg, conducted his experiments at Auschwitz. Clauberg’s main

experiment’s purpose was to find an easy way and cheap way to sterilize women. In the

experiment, Clauberg would inject gypsy and jewish women with different chemical substances

into their wombs. The women would experience horrible pain, inflamed ovaries, spasms in the

stomach, and bleeding. Another experiment Clauberg conducted was an x-ray experiment. He

would put both men and women in front of an x-ray aimed at their genital area. Most subjects

died or were immediately gassed because of radiation burns, fitting them into the category ‘unfit

for work’.

Dr. Herta Oberheuser worked at the Auschwitz and Ravensbrück concentration camps for three

years. Oberheuser’s experiment was to inject healthy children with evipan and oil. The children

would stay alive for three to five minutes, conscious every second they were alive. Her

experiments mainly focused on inflicting wounds on the subject. To simulate the wounds of a

German soldier in the war, Oberheuser would rub foreign objects into an open wound on the

subject, such as wood, rusty nail, slivers of glass, dirt and sawdust.

Starting with Adolf Hitler’s early years of life, let’s learn about his life and how it might’ve

been an influence on his later life choices/beliefs. Adolf was born April 20, 1889 in Braunau,

Austria. His parent’s names were Alois and Klara Hitler. Adolf had five siblings, but only one,

Paula, survived pass childhood. Adolf’s father was an Austrian customs official and provided

enough for his family that they could live a comfortable life. Adolf’s father also had a bad
temper, attitude, he was obnoxious and conceited, and often took his problems out on his

children. Adolf’s mother, however, was a complete opposite of her husband, but she had no

power in the household, along with the fact that women didn’t have much power to begin with.

She had to deal with an aggressive and dominating husband.

During the time that Adolf was six through eight, he attended two different schools. Adolf

had high marks and good behavior at this time and was rewarded and praised by his teachers.

Eventually, they all settled in Linz when Adolf was nine. He referred to this place as his actual

childhood home throughout his life. When it came time for Adolf to choose a secondary school,

his father wanted him to be a civil servant. However, Adolf wanted to be an artist. His father put

him into a school for civil servants. Although Adolf had amazing marks and grades when he was

younger, at this school, Adolf bounced back and forth from poor and average grades for the rest

of his days at this school.

When Adolf turned 14, his father died. At this time, he dropped out of school and

attempted to get into Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. He failed. When his mother died of breast

cancer, he suffered one of his greatest losses he had ever felt in his life. Shortly after she died,

he moved to Austria to pursue his dream of being an artist. He, again, failed to get into the

academy. Around a year later, when Adolf was nineteen, he sold all of possessions and became

a homeless drifter who slept on park benches and ate at soup kitchens. He did manage to sell

some of his paintings and postcards, but remained homeless and broke. At this time, Adolf

started to get interested in the anti-semitic mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, and in the idea of

German nationalism. This was also when he got his first taste of politics.

At the age of 24, Adolf left Austria to avoid mandatory military service that was required

for all men. However, he did sign up for the military at the start of WWI. He was excited to fight

for Germany and he found a home fighting for the Fatherland. Adolf was also a regimental

messenger, which was not an easy job. His military record consisted of getting awarded the Iron

Cross twice (he had received five medals overall), getting the highest military honor in the
German army, he single handedly captured four French soldiers, and he was blinded by a gas

attack towards the end of the war. I believe that the reason that Hitler made the choices he did

was because of how much loss he experienced. He lost most of his siblings and both of his

parents by the time he was 18. Not only that, but he was denied entrance of two art academy’s.

As he got older, he joined the military, only to have his country surrender.

Genocide is a planned killing, torture, etc. of an ethnic group or race. Genocide became

a term in 1944. It was mainly made because of the Holocaust. Genocide has several parts to

define it. Those parts are: killing members of a certain group, causing serious physical and/or

mental harm, giving them bad conditions to live in, preventing births, and forcing children to

move to a different group. Although, genocide is not over. There are many modern cases of

genocide. There will most likely be future cases because if there are laws on it and people are

still doing it, it most likely won’t stop for a long time. It will eventually stop, though. Everything

had to come to an end.

In conclusion, the doctors of the holocaust had different experiments they were

interested in and there were good reasons for why Hitler did what he did. There were many

different doctors, some were just more well known than others. Hitler had a lot of loss

throughout his life, which could be a reason for his decisions.