Dutch
During the Second World War a lot of things were invented. Unfortunately, not in a very pleasant way. In this period there were several concentration camps in which scientific research on humans was carried out. The same experiments were not performed in all camps, but they all looked alike a lot. These experiments differed from very cruel to quite mild. One of the most famous and probably the worst doctor was Nazi-doctor Josef Mengele, also called the Angel of Death. He got this name because of the work he did in concentration camp Auschwitz.
Mengele performed all his experiments unprincipled, except the ones with twins, which, according to eyewitnesses, he treated well. It was the task of Mengele to do research on human heredity, to reveal the genetic secrets and, in this way, to get a start in the making of the German super race.
He used twins to examine the subject of heredity and whether being one had an effect on how certain diseases develop. One example of this was the injection in one twin of a disease and then to study the effect on both cases. Also the blood of one twin was put into the body of the other to see what effect this had. After he had done this he injected the twins with chloroform in the heart causing death. Mengele would then dissect the corpse.
Mengele had his own scientific ideas; he tried to find out what a Siamese twin exactly was by sewing the backs of a normal twin together with the intention of creating his own Siamese twin.
The doctors also sterilized humans on a large scale. They used the excuse that these humans did not deserve to reproduce. The sterilization was usually done by operation and using corrosive substances. He castrated a boy without the use of any kind of anaesthesia. We know of a case where he, in this own horrible way, sterilized a group of Polish nuns, so they eventually were left with terrible mutilations and burns. Doctors also developed a manner of sterilizing using x-rays, although this did not work. All the human being on whom this method was tested died, if they did not die during the process they were sent to the gas chambers because they were no longer able to work.
To establish if someone’s eye colour could be changed, from dark to blue, Mengele directly injected colouring in the eyes. This very painful treatment resulted in the eyes becoming inflamed and very often led to blindness. If during such a treatment a twin died, Mengele had the weird habit of pulling out their eyes and hanging them, as a kind of trophy, on the wall of his laboratory.
They also tried to discover how they should treat people in the army whose body temperature was far below normal or who were even frozen. These experiments consisted of two parts. Firstly, the doctors tried to find out how long it takes for the body to get its temperature so low that the victim dies. And secondly they tried to find out what was the best way to reanimate the body. The victims were put in a tray of ice-cold water for several hours. The people who were tested on were sometimes kept naked outside, with a temperature below freezing point, to let them freeze. The ice tray seemed to reduce the body temperature as fast as possible. For this research usually young, healthy Jews or Russians were used. It turned out that most victims became unconscious when their body temperature reached 25 degrees Celsius, and that they died if the temperature got much lower.
On the ones who survived this horrible destiny several heating methods were carried out. People were put under a sun lamp which was so hot that their skin started to burn. Internal irrigation was probably the cruellest way to warm someone up . The victim had boiling water poured into his stomach, bladder and intestines against his will; nobody seems to have survived this method. The only way turned out to be a hot bath, at which the body temperature got gradually back to normal. If this went too fast the victim died of a shock.
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