Poison - Nazi Camp Experiments

Emaciated and disheveled Soviet men sit down to their evening meal of potato and turnip soup within the infamous Buchenwald concentration camp. These prisoners are marked for execution due to severe starvation, earning the grim title of "Muselmänner," symbolizing their weakened and apathetic state.

On this particular day, the Nazis have something even more grotesque and heartless planned. As Nazi officers and doctors stand in the distance, clutching clipboards and pens, four prisoners are forced to the ground one by one. The other inmates, their heads shaking in disbelief and thoughts filled with revenge, wonder about the sinister nature of this experiment.

Rumors about the inhumane experiments within the camps have spread among the prisoners. Some who went to see the camp doctor returned with agonizing injuries, and others never returned at all. Thousands of inmates became unwitting subjects in the experiments conducted by Nazi physicians, revealing their complete disregard for medical ethics and eventually leading to the development of the Nuremberg Code.

Today, we will delve into the various types of experiments that transpired at Buchenwald, exploring how and why they took place. We will also uncover the horrifying conditions witnessed by American liberators when they arrived at the camp on April 11, 1945.

Firstly, the term "Muselmänner" may be unfamiliar to you. The singular form, "Muselmann," is the opposite of what it may sound like. It was used to describe prisoners who were so starved, weak, and devoid of hope that they couldn't even stand, let alone perform labor. The origin of the word is debatable but likely has connections to the term "Muslim." A Muselmann represented a Muslim man, possibly due to the resemblance of the prisoners, with their emaciated bodies, to the Muslim practice of Sujud, where Muslims prostrate themselves in prayer.

Another theory suggests that the term is linked to Islamic fatalism, indicating that these men had resigned themselves to a fate they couldn't change. In any case, when prisoners reached such a state, their fate was usually sealed, leading them to the gas chamber, execution, or cruel experiments.

The Soviet men, like the Jews, were considered subhuman by the Nazis and faced extreme mistreatment. The Nazis regarded them as a blight on the Earth that needed elimination. The slightest sign of physical weakness or inability to work would result in their execution. The Germans viewed the war against the Soviet Union as an annihilation war and believed they had the right to eradicate what they perceived as subhuman Slavs. Approximately 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war died while in Nazi custody during World War II, out of an estimated 5.3 million. This death toll far exceeded that of British and American POWs held by the Nazis.

The Nazi regime established over a thousand concentration camps in Germany and German-occupied Europe. These camps often had subcamps, such as Mauthausen, known as a "Russian camp" due to its large population of Soviet prisoners. However, these camps held various groups of people, including Jews, Soviets, homosexuals, Roma, German anarchists, Czechoslovak socialists, Polish Boy Scouts, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others deemed threats by the Nazis. Buchenwald, the camp we will focus on, also housed German criminals who became subjects of medical experiments.

The primary motive behind the concentration camp network's construction was to exploit prisoners as slave labor. Major German companies, including the pharmaceutical giant Bayer, benefited from this system, using prisoners for various forms of labor, often linked to armament production. Many prisoners in camps like Mauthausen worked in the stone quarry under grueling conditions, with some enduring the infamous "Stairs of Death."

While Mauthausen did not have a gas chamber and was not classified as an extermination camp, the prisoners' life expectancy was extremely short, often just a few months due to the harsh conditions and grueling labor. In contrast, the extermination camps, including Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, and Auschwitz-Birkenau, were designed for mass murder, leading to the deaths of millions of Jews.

Buchenwald, which opened in July 1937, was one of the earliest and largest concentration camps, initially detaining communists and suspected communists. During the war, it received an influx of Polish, Slavic, Jewish, Roma, mentally ill, disabled, homosexual, and political prisoners. The camp's notorious reputation stemmed from its horrendous living conditions, food shortages, and summary executions. Around 60,000 of the 280,000 inmates perished in Buchenwald and its 139 subcamps.

The camp held a small number of women in a single barracks, some of whom were forced into Nazi sex slavery. Its primary purpose, however, was to provide private German companies with a cheap labor force, often for armament-related work.

It is essential to differentiate between Nazi concentration camps and prisoner-of-war camps. The latter, typically holding Western POWs, adhered to certain rules concerning food rations, labor, and prisoner rest, in line with the Geneva Convention. In contrast, concentration camps were sites of extreme suffering, and prisoners often faced death through disease, starvation, or experimentation.

The liberation of Buchenwald by American forces on April 11, 1945, revealed the horrors of the camp to the world. Witnessing the emaciated and diseased inmates, the liberators found thousands of prisoners still dying at an alarming rate. The Guardian reported that the inmates cried, vomited, and fainted upon seeing the camp's horrors. Approximately 56,545 inmates died in Buchenwald, with over 8,000 shot, 1,000 hanged, and hundreds subjected to medical experiments.

Survivors had to be carefully reintroduced to a normal diet due to their severe malnutrition. Their stomachs could not handle more than 300 grams of bread daily without risking their lives. Some Americans who witnessed these scenes donated blood to help those in need, while others carried the emotional scars of what they had seen for the rest of their lives.

What became of the doctors and personnel responsible for the suffering and death at Buchenwald? Some, like Gerhard Rose, rationalized their actions, arguing that the prisoners were already sentenced to death, making their participation inconsequential. Rose received a life sentence for his role in the experiments. Other doctors, including Joachim Mrugowsky and Waldemar Hoven, were executed for their involvement. These painful and haunting events stand as reminders of the inhumanity of the Holocaust and the atrocities committed during World War II.