On March 22, 1933, the first concentration camp in Nazi Germany began to operate in Dachau. It was the first "experimental range" in which the system of punishments and other forms of physical and psychological abuse of prisoners was worked out. Until the outbreak of World War II, Dachau contained political opponents of the Nazi regime - first of all, communists, socialists, clergymen who came into opposition to the regime …
The modern world community condemns any attempts at testing on humans of a medical nature. Today, such actions are severely punished, since the norms of morality and law are not consistent even with harmless experiments conducted on a person without his personal consent.
A column of prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp on the march in the Munich suburb of Grunwald, on the Nördliche Münchner Straße highway. After the offensive of the allied forces, the Germans began a massive movement of concentration camp prisoners inland. Thousands of prisoners died on the way - everyone who could not walk was shot on the spot. In the photo, the fourth prisoner from the right is Dmitry Gorky, born on August 19, 1920 in the village of Blagoslovskoye, USSR. During the war, he spent 22 months in the Dachau concentration camp. (Photo
The trial of the German killer doctors revealed the terrible facts about tens of thousands of tortured prisoners of Nazi concentration camps. The idea of creating a super warrior came to Hitler long before the start of the Second World War. The Dachau Specialized Camp was established back in 1933. The territory of more than two hundred and thirty hectares was surrounded by a powerful high wall that reliably hid inhuman experiments from prying eyes. Prisoners of one of the very first and most terrible camps were not only Russians. Here Ukrainians, Austrians, Germans and other prisoners of war and political prisoners died in torment.
Initially, the camp was intended to fight the opponents of the Third Reich; it opened a few months after Hitler came to power. As the commandants and persons supervising the work of Dachau said, its purpose was to cleanse the Aryan race of dangerous elements and "genetic impurities." These included the Nazis Jews, communists and socialists, persons with asocial behavior, including prostitutes, homosexuals, drug addicts, alcoholics, vagabonds, mentally ill people, as well as clergy opposing the existing government.
The bodies of prisoners who died on the train on the way to the Dachau concentration camp. (photo
In a small Bavarian town, there is a legend that a concentration camp was built near the city as punishment for residents who unanimously voted against Hitler's candidacy in the elections. The fact is that the chimneys of the camp crematorium were installed taking into account the wind rose in such a way that the smoke from the burning bodies was supposed to cover the city streets.
The Dachau camp was located near Munich and consisted of thirty-four separate barrack blocks. Each of the buildings housed the latest equipment for experiments on people, and graduated specialists worked. The bloody craft was justified by the needs of medicine, and the criminals who faced the international court conducted their inhuman practices for 12 years. Of the two hundred and fifty thousand, very few survived, about seventy thousand healthy and young people were killed by pseudo-doctors. Today, the facts of the tragedy that played out for a long period of time outside the walls of Dachau are known not only from the materials of the case, but also from the testimonies of the surviving prisoners.
Certain differences were introduced among the prisoners. So, political prisoners had red triangles on their clothes, Jews - yellow, homosexuals - pink, criminals - green, and so on. Soviet prisoners of war were used as targets for training recruits to shoot, often left to die on the training ground, or sent to the crematorium oven while still alive. Hundreds of prisoners have become teaching aids for inexperienced surgery students. Healthy prisoners were often punished and tortured, trying to suppress the will and prevent protests and unrest. There were special machines for punishment in the camp, the prisoners were not spared, since the barracks were constantly overcrowded.
A pile of corpses of prisoners in the crematorium of the Dachau concentration camp. The bodies were found by members of the US 7th Army. (photo
In this regard, the descriptions of life in Dachau by Anatoly Soy, who became a prisoner of the camp in his youth, are informative in this regard. Hitler paid special attention to research into the capabilities of the human body, his goal was to create an invincible army consisting of soldiers with superpowers. The creation of Dachau was due precisely to the task of elucidating the limits of the human body. Prisoners for the camp were selected exclusively healthy aged 20 to 45, but there were also separate age groups. Anatoly Soya was part of a group of subjects from 14 to 16, designed to create a super-soldier. Adolescents were also needed to figure out the ability to regulate human growth. However, unexpectedly Anatoly fell ill and entered the block for experiments. In a barrack specially designated for these purposes, there were those infected with rare tropical diseases. Only the boy's surprisingly strong body allowed him to live to receive antibiotics. The researchers noticed that the child's immunity was still resisting the virus and decided to test a treatment on him, which, fortunately, proved to be effective.
According to Soy's testimony, there was a box in Dachau for monitoring the development of tuberculosis, where seriously ill people were lying with tubes to drain pus. Doctors deliberately allowed the disease to develop in order to find an antidote that would be effective in the most critical situation.
Soldiers from the American 42nd Infantry Division at the car with the bodies of prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp (Dachau). (photo
From the materials of the investigation of the organizers of the criminal experiments, it is known that outside the Dachau Wall both tests of new drugs and treatment methods were carried out, and the state of the human body was investigated under the influence of various environmental factors. Each experiment brought severe suffering to the test subjects.
For example, throughout the Great Patriotic War, Dr. Schilling conducted experiments, infecting prisoners with malaria. Some of the test subjects died from the disease itself, many from unsuccessful methods and means of treatment. Cruel experiments were staged by Sigismund Roscher, placing the unfortunate in a pressure chamber with different pressures and changing the load, simulating extreme conditions. The subjects tore their hair out, disfigured their faces in an attempt to relieve pressure, many died, and the survivors went mad. On the doors to the gas chambers, signs with the words "Shower" were installed, so the prisoners understood what was happening to them only during the experiment itself. In special chambers, the effects of poisonous gases and other toxic agents were tested, the research, as a rule, ended with the autopsy of corpses and the fixation of the results. The organs of the unfortunate were sent for research to institutes and laboratories. Goering expressed his gratitude to Himmler for such mockery and the results obtained in the course of Roscher's work. All of them were actively used for military purposes, therefore neither funds nor "human material" were saved for their implementation.
The corpse of a prisoner of the Dachau concentration camp, found by Allied soldiers in a railway carriage near the camp. (photo
Rosher is also known for his research in the field of freezing people. The unfortunate were left in the cold for tens of hours, some were periodically doused with ice water. Many extreme situations were also simulated with subjects immersed in cold water and their body temperature dropped to 28 degrees. Anesthesia was hardly used by the doctor because it was considered too expensive. The researcher's victims either died during the experiment, or became disabled and later killed in order to avoid spreading information about what was happening in Dachau. All developments were classified, Rosher even asked to move the place of experiments to a more secluded place, since the frozen ones screamed loudly. The doctor suggested using Auschwitz for this, fearing the spread of information about inhuman research in society and the press. Narcotic drugs were used as pain relievers only during the most terrible tortures and only for reasons of secrecy.
At the end of 1942, the results of the shocking research were presented in a secret report for discussion by graduates in Nuremberg. Together with Roschen, Professor Holzlechner and Dr. Finke took part in organizing the experiments. All the experts involved in the discussion understood the cruelty and unlawfulness of such treatment of people, but none of them spoke out against or even touched on this topic. Roshen continued to pursue his own research, which ended only at the end of the spring of 1943. Holzlechner and Finke withdrew from the subsequent participation, as they considered their implementation inappropriate.
Soldiers from the 157th American Infantry Regiment shoot the SS guards from the German concentration camp Dachau. In the center of the photo is the calculation of the 7.62 mm Browning M1919A4 machine gun. (photo
Roshen, on the instructions of Himmler, conducted experiments on warming up frostbite, including immoral methods using captured women. The doctor himself was skeptical about the "animal heat" method, but the results of the research were successful. Sexual intercourse that occurred from time to time between the test subjects during rewarming was also recorded, and the effect of them was compared by Roshen to a hot bath. An indicator of the attitude of doctors towards prisoners is their requirement to remove the skin from individuals for further processing and use as a material for saddles, inserts into garments. The prisoners were perceived as animals. It was strictly forbidden to use the skin of the Germans. The unfortunate were slaughtered like cattle, the bodies were digested and skeletons were isolated for creating models and visual aids. The mockery of the corpses was carried out systematically; separate units and even installations were created for such operations.
One of the criminal researchers was Dr. Brachtl, who experimented with the functioning of internal organs and various operations. A huge number of prisoners died as a result of taking a liver puncture from them, which was also performed without the use of anesthesia.
In Dachau, a variety of life situations were simulated, including a person getting into the sea. To determine the body's ability to adapt to salt water, about ten test subjects were housed in an isolated chamber and given exclusively salt water for five days.
German concentration camp Dachau, view from the plane. (photo
The prisoners themselves told a lot about the release. One of them, Gleb Rahr, describes his arrival from Buchenwald the day before. According to him, for a long time the prisoners were not allowed out of the walls of the camp, since there were still battles around and the unfortunates could become victims of the Nazis, who were trying to destroy the witnesses of their crimes. By the time the American troops came to Dachau, there were over thirty thousand prisoners. All of them were subsequently taken to their homeland, they were also paid large compensation, which can hardly compensate for the horror experienced.
US military officials prepare to hang a German tropical medicine specialist, Dr. Claus Karl Schilling, with a black bag over his head. On December 13, 1945, Schilling was sentenced to death by a tribunal on charges of conducting medical experiments on more than 1,000 prisoners at the Dachau camp. From 300 to 400 people died from the injections from malaria, and many of the survivors suffered irreversible damage to their health. (photo
