The Doctors of Death or Doctors of Hell . Book based on the chilling horrors and a cruel testimonial account of the experiments that the Nazis practiced with humans in World War II . Made by the author and witness Vivien Spitz who worked as a stenographer in Nuremberg in 1946.
Summary
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- 1Sinopsis
- 1 Literary argument
- 2 Summary of the book
- 2 Other relevant data on this historical fact
- 1 Facts about German Doctors in the Nazi era
- 2 Mass Sterilizations
- 3 Principles of Nazi medicine
- 4 La T4 Aktion
- 5 Euthanasia as a compassionate solution to a painful problem
- 6 Nazi psychiatry and the mentally ill
- 3 Author information
- 4 Sources
- 5 external links
Synopsis
Chilling story about human depravity and its punishment, told for the first time by an eyewitness: a stenographer of the process of Nazi doctors, framed within the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.
This account of torture and murder committed in the name of scientific inquiry and patriotism includes trial transcripts that have not previously been available to the public and unpublished photographs used as evidence against the prosecution during the trial.
literary argument
The author takes us to the courtroom to hear dramatic testimonies and witness the reactions of the accused. Witnesses speak of experiments in which they were deprived of oxygen, frozen, inoculated with diseases, amputated healthy limbs, or forced to drink sea water. The shocking testimony of the author constitutes a valuable contribution to the knowledge of the abysses of evil to which Nazism was capable of falling.
book summary
The author acted as a stenographer in Nuremberg in 1946. After World War II, the United States, France , Great Britain and the USSR brought the main Nazi leaders to trial on charges of crimes against humanity and genocide. It is probably less known that there was another trial in which twenty doctors and three assistants were tried for: conspiracy, war crimes, crimes against humanity (murder, brutality, humiliation, torture, atrocities) and belonging to a criminal organization (the SS ).
He relates in the form of memories the great interest he had in being part of the team of stenographers that took notes at the trials, and the shock he felt when he learned firsthand about the murders carried out by the doctors and their assistants. He recounts in the first chapters his impressions of arriving in a country in ruins and a beautiful city completely destroyed by war.
The book continues with transcripts of the interrogations carried out on the Nazi doctors. They describe the experiments carried out on prisoners of war, Jews, Slavs, and patients suffering from advanced diseases. Especially dramatic is the reference to the experiments that simulated extreme atmospheric conditions, both high altitude and exposure to frozen water.
These people were placed in low-pressure chambers to quantify the time it took to die or the symptoms they presented when changing altitude or pressure. Another experiment involved immersing naked people in ice water to calculate the time it took for them to stop breathing or the best rewarming methods.
The objective of these actions, carried out by Sigmünd Räscher, was to find out the best methods to treat German airmen who were shot down by the allies and fell into very cold areas. The list of experiments carried out without any type of consent, or even with unfulfilled promises about their release or improvement of living conditions, is terrifying.
They were inoculated with poisons, toxins, mustard gas, typhus bacilli, malaria, serum from hepatitis patients, they were forced to drink salt water. Wounds were artificially caused and infected with earth, pieces of wood or glass to reproduce the typology and contamination of war wounds.
Amputations and sections of bones and tendons were performed. Experiments were made with antibiotics and coagulating drugs, performing live amputations or cold-blooded shots to check whether or not bleeding occurred. Thousands of people were sterilized, and the lives of the sick, disabled, and carriers of congenital defects were ended, with the socially accepted argument that they represented a cost to the state. The horrors did not end with death. Some of the skeletons and brains were preserved for later study.
The trial resulted in different sentences: death sentence for four doctors and three collaborators, life imprisonment for five defendants and prison for another four. Seven defendants were found not guilty and released. It is striking that there were so few defendants and such limited sentences when there is evidence of the active and even enthusiastic participation of many medical professionals in the atrocities of the Nazi era. The existence of a veritable conspiracy of silence on the part of medicine in post-war Germany has been suggested.
The absolute contempt of the Nazi doctors for human life is striking in the interrogations. In his closing argument, Karl Brandt, Hitler’s personal physician and architect of the T4 Aktion, says:
“It is irrelevant whether the experiment is done with the consent or against the will of the person concerned (…) The intention is the motive: loyalty to the community (…) Ethics in all its forms are decided by an order or by the subjection to an authority.
Spitz’s work is very easy to read and contains the expert reports used in the trial, as well as an article by the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Elie Wiesel, in the prologue. Finally, the author talks about her experiences as a lecturer and draws attention to the currents of Holocaust denial.
Other relevant data on this historical fact
Facts about German Doctors in the Nazi era
- Of 52,000 registered doctors in Germany , 8,500 were Jewish (16%).
- 44% of doctors joined the Nazi Party.
- 7% of all SS members were doctors .
- 200 physicians participated in unethical research.
Mass Sterilizations
- 300 special courts of justice were created, made up of two doctors and a judge to rule on who was subject to sterilization.
- 25% of German doctors collaborated in the mass identification and sterilization process.
- 400,000 Germans were forcibly sterilized between 1934 and 1939.
- To protect the Germanic race, marriages between “healthy people” and people considered genetically impure were prohibited. All behaviors that attempted against procreation ( abortion and homosexuality ) were persecuted.
- Sterilization of [[mentally deficient, carriers of hereditary diseases.
- Schizophrenia, congenital deafness and blindness , PMD, epilepsy, chorea, alcoholics, mestizos, mulattos.
Principles of Nazi medicine
- Medicine has to defend the Germans “with a healthy genetic heritage”. The doctor must seek the care of the healthy person.
- Not all people are of interest for the “medicine of the healthy” but only the Aryan German, and the doctor is obliged to take care of his health.
- The patient and the disease is not the objective of Medicine .
- Medicine should not cure the inferior patient, the healing of these patients is an “anti-human” action.
- There is no place in the world for “unnecessary and unproductive consumers” and therefore they should not be deprived of death.
Hartheim Castle, Austria
- The role of the Physicians is to select the weak and sick destined to die.
- The purpose of the Inquiry is to serve Nazi Policy and its Worldview.
- The annihilation process is part of the treatment.
La T4 Action
The program was camouflaged under the euphemistic name of ” euthanasia “, when the proper title would have been murder: disabled, sick and members of minorities were victims by hundreds of thousands of Nazi racism.
Hartheim Castle (Austria), a euthanasia center where the physically and mentally handicapped were exterminated by gas and lethal injection. (date uncertain).
To carry out the organizational tasks were created, closely linked and subordinate to the Führer’s Secretariat:
- one The « National Society of Work in Sanatoriums and Cure Centers »
- two The “Public Utility Company for the Transportation of the Sick”
- three The « Public Utility Foundation for the Care of Establishments ».
Euthanasia as a compassionate solution to a painful problem
Karl Brandt, Nazi doctor responsible for the euthanasia program
- The Nazis considered genetically ill people such as: schizophrenics, epileptics, manic depressives, blind and genetically deaf, chronic alcoholics, senile insane, paralytics, syphilis, and all those with symptoms of mental retardation and physical deformities.
- Asphyxiation with carbon dioxide was chosen as the method of death.
- An agency was established to make a registry of hereditary and congenital diseases. Physicians were required to report all births of invalids or deformed.
- The commissions (which included two children’s doctors and a psychiatrist) analyzed one hundred cases a day.
- Children sentenced to death were transferred to one of 20 special hospitalization departments.
- 6 Euthanasia centers directed by Viktor Brandt were established (Bernburg, Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Hadamar, Hartheim, and Sonnenstein), The Role of Physicians was:
- Create a calm and relaxing medical environment.
- Review and registration of patient data.
- Open the gas keys .
- Issue false death certificates (the family was informed that they had died of natural causes).
- In the Euthanasia Program, 70,000 Germans were killed
Tables of deaths in the euthanasia plan
Nazi psychiatry and the mentally ill
With the outbreak of World War II, the pressure to eliminate the chronically incurable mentally ill grew drastically. The army needed hospital beds, and the psychiatrists offered no resistance.
The sterilizations of German mental patients (1934-1939) resulted in a balance of 350,000 sterilized people and several hundred deaths during the practice.
Research was conducted on various forms of mental retardation and epilepsy. The idea was to exhaustively evaluate and study patients in life, for years, both from a psychological and physiological point of view. They were then discreetly killed and their brains studied. The investigations had to be suspended, since after the defeat of Stalingrad most of the doctors who participated in it were called up.
The mentally ill waited naked to be executed in a room disguised as a laundry. The task of opening the valve of a carbon monoxide tank fell to a psychiatrist. In August 1941 the murder of the mentally ill by gas was suspended.
Patients who should die after the medical opinion were marked in the questionnaire with an “X”. Soon the popular term Kreuzelschreiber (Writers of X) emerged. The murder of the mentally ill was carried out in different ways: sterilization, lethal injections, malnutrition, gas, or injecting low doses of barbiturates , which favored the appearance of pneumonia that was generally terminal.
The killing of the mentally ill was a discreet euthanasia for chronic patients with no hope of effective treatment.
Author information
Vivien Spitz . American writer . (1924 – April 1, 2014), born Vivien Ruth Putty, was an American court reporter at the Nuremberg trials after World War II . From 1972 to 1982, she was a lead reporter for debates in the United States House of Representatives. She was the first woman to serve as a stenographer in the US Senate and as such she has recorded the words of four presidents before Congress.
