Background of the Holocaust
The Holocaust was the organized state-sponsored victimization and murder of around six million Jews by the Nazi's. The Nazi's, who had come to power in Germany in January 1933, had believed that the German's were more "racially superior." The Nazi's saw Jews as "racially inferior" and they also blamed them for Germany's problems surrounding WWI. People of the Jewish faith weren't the only ones targeted by the Nazi's, other groups were targeted as well such as: Gypsies, the disabled, Slavic (Poles, Russians, and etc.). Other groups of people were also targeted in the Nazi's persecution based on their ideological, political, and behavioral grounds, among those groups were: Socialists, Communists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals.
What was the holocaust?
In 1933, over nine million Jewish people lived in Europe. By 1945, the Nazi's and their associates would kill nearly two out of every three European Jews as a part of the "Final Solution" policy. The "Final Solution" was the German policy of exterminating all Jewish people because they deemed them as a danger to Germany. Other groups of people were also targeted by the Nazi's. Roughly 200,000 Gypsies were targeted by the Nazi regime. At least 200,000 mentally or physically disabled patients living in institutional settings, mainly Germans, were murdered in the Euthanasia Program. Prisoners of war were also victimized by the Nazis. The Germans and their collaborators murdered between two and three million Soviet POWs. Most were killed by starvation, neglect, disease, or maltreatment. Polish scholars were also targeted regardless if they were Jewish or not. Polish and Soviet civilians were deported by the thousands to Germany or in occupied Poland to work in forced labor camps. German authorities persecuted people who's behaviors did not suit recommended social norms. German officials also targeted political opponents (communists, socialists, trade unionists) and religious protestors (like Jehovah's Wittnesses).
the Final Solution
The Nazi government during it's early years, established a series of concentration camps to confine actual and possible political and ideological adversaries. years prior to the war, SS and police arrested Jews, Gypsies, and others, and put them into concentration camps. In order to monitor the Jewish population and facilitate their eventual deportation, the Germans and their associates created ghettos, transit camps, and forced-labor camps. German authorities also created multiple forced-labor camps in occupied-German territory and German speaking countries (like Austria), for non Jews whose labor the Germans wanted to utilize. In June 1941, the Soviet Union was invaded by mobile killing units (Einsatzgruppen) and eventually by battalions of Order Police officials who carried out the mass-murder operations of Jews, Gypsies, as well as Soviet state and communist officials. More than a million Jewish men, women, and children, and hundreds of thousands of others were murdered by the Waffen SS and Wehrmacht (German armed forces). Between 1941 and 1944, millions of Jews were deported from Germany, occupied territories, and from countries of many of its allies; where they were sent to ghettos and to extermination camps where they were systematically murdered.
End of the Holocaust
With the end of the war looming near, SS guards moved camp prisoners by train or on forced "death marches." These "death marches" were an attempt by the Nazi's to prevent the Allied forces from liberating large numbers of prisoners. With some prisoners unfit for the marches, the SS guards left them alone in the camps to die. The Allied forces moved across Europe, they encountered countless camps with thousands of dying prisoners inside. The Allied forces were able to liberate these prisoners as well as prisoners en route by forced death marches. The marches stopped on May 7, 1945, when the German armed forces surrendered unconditionally.
Concentration camps
Human experimentation
Sulfanilmide experiments were done to see if wounds infected during war time, could be treated without becoming gangrenes. Wartime wounds were recreated on healthy prisoners so that a new drug could be tested. Wounds of the subject were deliberately caused so that bacteria could be placed onto he wound so that way it would become infected. The circulation of the blood had to simulate a battlefield wound so both ends of the blood vessels were tied off. As a result most patients' limbs turned septic and would cause them to die.
Poison experiments were also done on prisoners in concentration camps. Buchenwald concentration camp developed an individual method of execution by injecting phenol gasoline and cyanide into prisoners. The whole experiment revolved around seeing how fast the test subjects would die. Literally there was no real scientific finding other than that the chemical cocktail was bound to kill the prisoner, they just were curious about how fast or slow it took.
One of the most well known method of experimenting would have to be twin experiments. Experiments on twins were done by Doctor Joseph Mengele at Auschwitz. Mengele quiet often would attempt to sew twins together in order to see the affects it had on their organs. He believed since they looked the same then their organs must function the exact same way. If one twin died he would have the other twin killed right away in order to see the affects the surgery had on their organs.
Doctor Joseph Mengele worked mainly at Auschwitz. Mengele had a strong fascination with eye color. His fascination was so great, that he even attempted to changed the color of prisoner's iris's with chemical injections. He would have them strapped down where he would then use a needle to jab into their eye so that harsh chemicals could be injected. While all that was going on the prisoner was wide awake and screaming in pain because no anesthetic was ever used.
High altitude experiments were done in order to determine the best option of rescuing downed pilots that had landed in high altitudes and had abandoned their planes. Oxygen masks were necessary sometimes depending on how high or low the pressure is. In 1942, Doctor Rascher used a decompression chamber to simulate what it would be like in high altitudes. 200 prisoners were subjected to the experiment. Most of the time Rascher would dissect his victim's brain while they were still alive in order to show that high altitude sickness was caused by the formation of tiny air bubbles in the blood vessels of the brain. Of the 200 that he tested only 80 survived the test, the remaining 80 were then all executed.