The hospital situation at Auschwitz was atrocious. The sick were forced to lie together on cots, covered by one blanket, and padded with straw that had been soiled and was never changed. There was excrement and vomit on the ground, and usually patients were merely left to die. Some prisoners who had medical backgrounds were allowed to work in the hospitals, and they did what they could to help relieve and preserve the life of their patients, but if they were caught helping others they were usually punished. Prisoners usually avoided the hospitals at all costs, a trip to the hospital could very easily result in a trip to the gas chambers.
Besides the awful medical conditions certain doctors made useful the thousands of prisoner at their disposal and experimented upon people with no regard to need, health, sanitation, and least of all the Hippocratic Oath.
Block 10:
This Block was the main experimentation block. All of the prisoners here were Jewish women. The whole point of their placement was to provide subjects for the doctors. These women were to become lab mice in the Nazi search for a quick and easy way to sterilize the Jews. Despite the horror of Block 10 women who were assigned there had a better life expectancy than those on the outside. They still were constantly hungry, and, if they survived they were usually maimed or haunted for the rest of their lives because of the experiments.
Carl Clauberg:
Block 10 was also known to most as "Clauberg's Block", his main goal was to find a cheap easy way to do mass sterilizations. Clauberg during his experiments developed Progynon and Prolutin, these are both used to help with infertility. He also created a test for measuring the action of Progesterone. Clauberg's goal was to set up an institute to research the causes and treatment of infertility, and to develop a non-surgical means of sterilization. Himmler gave Clauberg the job of finding out how long it would take to sterilize 1,000 Jewesses. Basically he would inject a substance into a woman's cervix, this would cause the fallopian tubes to become blocked. He would then x-ray them. Over a few months the tubes would become fully obstructed. He wanted to wait a year and then match a woman with a male patient to test the success rate, but the war ended before he could do this.
Horst Schumann:
Schumann was also connected to the x-ray sterilizations. He experimented on both men and women, he wanted to see if x-ray alone could sterilize someone. Women were placed between 2 plates that covered their stomachs and backs, while men were made to place their penis and scrotum on a plate. Many of these victims received very bad burns because of the direct exposure for minutes at a time to the x-rays. Immediately after the x-rays the patients were sent to Dr. Wladislaw Dering, who removed women's ovaries and castrated the men to test if the x-ray had done what they wanted. A group of Polish men were given a higher frequency of x-ray, this caused their genitals to rot away.
Eduard Wirth:
Wirth's experiments were a little more tasteful. He experimented with contagious diseases, if he could find cures then the soldiers could be protected. Wirth's is most known for having developed the selection system, he also supervised the killings at Auschwitz. His main interest, which he studied prior to the war, dealt with pre-cancerous growths on the cervix. He would apply a solution to the cervix, if a change was noticed he would remove the entire cervix (not perform a much simpler biopsy). Many of his experiments on the cervix resulted in infection, hemorrhaging, and death.
Josef Mengele:
Mengele is probably the most famous Doctor form Auschwitz. He was interested in genetics. Because of this area of research twins were of great interest to him. In transports special calls were made for twins (especially identical twins). These twins really lived in better conditions than any other prisoners in Auschwitz. They were given more food, and even milk was provided for them. Even a special numbering system was created for the twins (their numbers began with "ZW"). Mengele measured every part of their bodies to compare it to the other. Mengele often drew large amounts of blood from the twins as well. It is thought that one of his interests might have been to discover the cause of multiple births in order to help increase the Aryan race. He also did experiments to test whether the ideal could be reached through experimental extremes. He often would inject a solution into the eye to see if he could change the color to blue, this usually just caused pain and loss of sight though. One experiment of his involved sewing a set of twins together, even connecting their arteries, the unsanitary conditions caused the wound to become infected and later a nurse found a way to get some morphine to ease their suffering permanently.
