The Ravensbruck, and other concentration camps by
The Ravensbruck camp was the site of bone-grafting experiments including nerve regeneration and bone transplantation from one person to another. Sections of bones, muscles, and nerves were removed from the patients, as a result victims suffered mutilation and permanent disability. On August 12, 1946 a survivor of Ravensbruck concentration camp, Jadwiga Kaminska gave a deposition and describes her operations. Both operations had involved her legs and she doesn’t remember what exactly the procedure was she explains when she woke up after surgery she was in pain and had a high fever. She was given no care and she describes how she was operated on because she was a young girl and a Polish patriot. This further shows how no matter the age or gender of a victim they were all treated with horrendous conditions even after they survived the medical experiments.
In addition to all these experiments that tried to help the German military and find different treatments to diseases, the Doctors at concentration camps also worked with sterilization and euthanasia. Beginning in 1933, The Law for the Prevention of Genetically Defective Progeny was passed, which legalized involuntary sterilization of a person with diseases that claimed to be hereditary like insanity, blindness, and physical deformities. This law encouraged the growth of the Aryan race because of the sterilization of people who fell under the requirements of being genetically defective. Sterilization experiments were conducted at Auschwitz, Ravensbruck, and other concentration camps by Dr.
Carl Clauberg. These experiments were conducted by X-ray, surgery and various drugs where thousands of victims were sterilized and around 400,00 people were sterilized by the Nazi government. Injections of solutions containing iodine and silver nitrate were successful, but had unwanted side effects such as vaginal bleeding, severe abdominal pain, and cervical cancer. Therefore, radiation treatment became the favored choice of sterilization preventing a person to produce ova or sperm but people would suffer from severe radiation burns.
An Auschwitz survivor, Ima Spanjaard, who was taken to a concentration camp and forced to participate in medical experiments as well as participate as a nurse. Spanjaard writes “My number is still visible, 42646, and beside it, a triangle, which meant to be gassed,” which further emphasized how the doctors would treat the patients inhumanely and would even mark them to be killed. In addition Spanjaard gave descriptions about the women who were experimented on and describes the conditions they were forced to endure
