Spory o eksperymenty medyczne w hitlerowskich obozach koncentracyjnych

Spory o eksperymenty medyczne w hitlerowskich obozach koncentracyjnych

Disputes about medical experiments in Nazi concentration camps.

Agnieszka Złota

Biological mass extermination of the population regarded as racially interior was carried out gradually. The consecutive stages of its practical implementation were anthropological examinations, mass sterilization for eugenic reasons and the euthanasia programme. Racist trends started to rise at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, which resulted in creation of numerous racist and anti-Semitic works. The policy of negative eugenics was very diversified in the past, ranging from mass segregation in the United Stated through mass sterilization in Sweden to extermination of population in the Third Reich. Experiments into mass sterilization were performed during the war by Carl Clauberg and Horst Schumann, mainly in Auschwitz and Ravensbrück, to a limited extent in other camps. The longest eugenic programme was implemented in Sweden, which became the first country where racial hygiene acquired the status of official science and institutional base supported by the state. Compulsory sterilization procedures were performed in that country until the 1970s. The Scandinavian countries took up the most advanced pursuits of legalization of sterilization on the European continent. The final stage of implementation of the extermination programme was euthanasia, the aim of which was to kill people unworthy of living. The Euthanasia Action was code – named T – 4, later, when it was transferred to concentration camps, its code name was changed to 14 f 13. One of the methods of implementation of this programme were medical experiments. Disputes concerning those medical experiments focus on three categories: legal aspects, terminological and classification disputes, which still remain unresolved and require further research.

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