...decisions made at the Nuremberg trials. Primary sources as the partial transcript of the Doctor’s trial were used to evaluate the contribution of the verdicts made at the trials to human rights. Documents will be analyzed in regards to their origin, purpose, value, and limitations in order to properly evaluate the evidence. B. Summary of Evidence On December 9, 1946, an American military tribunal opened criminal proceedings against twenty-three leading German physicians and administrators for their willing participation in war crimes and crimes against humanity. Officially called United States of America v. Karl Brandt et al, the trail was the first of twelve similar proceeding against Nazi doctors held by the United States following World War II. During the reign of the Third Reich, Nazi physicians planned and enacted the “Euthanasia” Program – the systematic killing of those they...
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...Nazi Death Camps Nazi Death Camps Arbeit Macht Frei Arbeit Macht Frei 2012 Joseph Frimpong Western Civilization 2 11/2/2012 2012 Joseph Frimpong Western Civilization 2 11/2/2012 Arbeit macht frei; when translated into English means labor makes you free. This was the first thing many Jews in the 1940’s saw as the banner above the gates of the place they’d likely die read. (Wachsmann) German soldiers fed Jews false hope, thinking that the harder they worked the closer freedom would be when in reality freedom could only come with death. The world changed forever when an estimated 20,946,000 people died due to the world war ignited by Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. The Third Reich was the name for Nazi Germany under Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) when it was a totalitarian state. Totalitarianism is a political system where the state holds total authority over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life wherever necessary. (Dictionary) Soldiers were killed in battle, Civilians in cross fire, and by starvation but nothing compares to the systematic execution and elimination demonstrated by the Third Reich sponsored death camps. Before the organized concentration camps that are well known throughout the world to have killed a countless number of people there were camps built in the early 1930’s when the Nazi’s first came into power. Earlier camps were temporary and were set up to confine, interrogate, torture, and weaken...
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...treaties. The second: murder, ill treatment, the killing of hostages; plunder of public or private property; the destruction of cities and towns. The third: crimes against humanity, which include persecution on racial, political, or religious grounds either before or during a war. All of these violations were raised on Germany's actions. Trials of the Nazi leaders begun on October 18, 1945, and lasted for 10 months. Trials of Japanese leaders began on May 3, 1946 in Tokyo and ended on November 12, 1948. There were more than 2,000 lesser trials accusing Nazi leaders of wrong doing. Even more took place in the Soviet Union. Most of the war criminals were convicted, and many were also executed. The Nuremberg Trials, one of the more substantial trials, accused 22 German Nazi leaders of war crimes. Altogether 12 were sentenced to death, including Keitel, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg, Bromann (who was tried in absentia), and Goering (who committed suicide). Only three, including Hess were given life sentences. Just four, including Doenitz and Speer were sentenced to up to 20 years of prison. Amazingly, three including Papen and Schacht were acquitted. These trials brought some anger and sadness. The prosecution took almost four months to present their case to the jury. Each man who was being tried was a major part of the whole Nazi power. Albert Speer (1905-81) was a German architect and public official who became Hitler's number one architect. Albert devised a system of slave ...
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...Even 70 years after the events, the atrocities committed by physicians in Nazi Germany during Hitler’s Third Reich and the influences it has made on bioethics today are still widely debated. Who were these doctors and did they view what they were doing as wrong, or did they simply view themselves as healers for what they considered the superior race? To understand how to react to such a ruthless period of time, one must first understand who these alleged physicians were and attempt to analyze the psyche and supposed justification as “medical research”. While society today can agree that the actions relating to medical treatment and human experimentation were inexcusable, some people believe it is ethical for medical researchers to utilize data...
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...The history of research ethics begins with the tragic history of research abuse by Nazi doctors during World War II. A total of sixteen German physicians practiced unethical medical experiments on Jews, gypsies, and political prisoners. These experiments on thousands of concentration camp prisoners were done without their consent. Unethical medical experimentation carried out during the Third Reich may be divided into three categories. The first category consists of experiments aimed at facilitating the survival of Axis military personnel. In Dachau, physicians from the German air force and from the German Experimental Institution for Aviation conducted high-altitude experiments, using a low-pressure chamber, to determine the maximum altitude from which crews of damaged aircraft could parachute to safety. Scientists there carried out so-called freezing experiments using prisoners to find an effective treatment for hypothermia. They also used prisoners to test various methods of making seawater drinkable. The second category of experimentation aimed at developing and testing pharmaceuticals and treatment methods for injuries and illnesses which German military and occupation personnel encountered in the field. At the German concentration camps of Sachsenhausen, Dachau, Natzweiler, Buchenwald, and Neuengamme, scientists tested immunization compounds and sera for the prevention and treatment of contagious diseases, including malaria, typhus, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, yellow...
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...nazification of the German medical community through social, economic, and political views. He guides us through the years before and after Hitler’s regime with chapters full of statistical data, graphs, and tables demonstrating what it was like to be a doctor during this time. When preparing to read this book, I expected to read about a collection of twisted doctors under Hitler’s rule, performing atrocious “medical” experiments. Although this was discussed, the book detailed more on the entire medical profession under Hitler, and its primary focus being on the fortune and fate of physicians as one of the most significant specialized groups under the Nazi party. Kater states that, “doctors became Nazified earlier and more thoroughly than members of other professional groups and worked hardest to serve the regime (4).” Kater makes his thesis known within the first few pages of the book, saying that “physicians become Nazified more thoroughly and much sooner than any other profession, and as Nazi’s they did more in the service of the nefarious regime than any of their extra professional peers (4-5). He breaks this statement down into chapters, filled with sections of information regarding the organizational and socioeconomic setting of doctors at the end of the Weimar Republic, and Nazi organizations like the Nazi Physicians League. He then proceeds into the dilemma of women physicians, medical faculties in crisis, and the infection of medical science with Nazi ideology. Finally he...
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...members of The Holocaust History Project. It is not a complete bibliography but represents our opinion as to what are the most useful starting places for research. Since this list concentrates on works that are easily available and useful to a person unacquainted with the history of the Holocaust, many excellent books which are rare or out of print are not listed. Another class of books that are not included is works that are controversial because of their contents or the unusual theories they propose. Some of these are excellent works, others are not. But we feel that the reader for whom this list was compiled would not have the knowledge needed to evaluate these discussions of the legitimate controversies about the Holocaust. Just as a medical student must learn anatomy before he or she is taught surgery, someone studying the Holocaust must know the factual background before some of the more technical studies can be understood. As well as general works we have included books of specialized interest concerning the matters about which we at The Holocaust History Project are most frequently asked. Many of these books deal with more than one subject, but in the interest of brevity we have not cited a book more than once. General history of the Holocaust The Holocaust was not just an event. It was a process that continued for over a decade and involved millions of people. No single book could cover every aspect of the Holocaust. Those listed below will give the reader a general idea...
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...Dachau Concentration Camp Established on March 22 by Heinrich Himmler, Dachau was first of the Nazi concentration camps to open in Germany, and was in operation the longest from 1933 to 1945; all twelve years of the Nazi regime. Dachau is located on the grounds of an abandoned World War I munitions factory. The first buildings served as the main camp until 1937, when prisoners were forced to expand the camp and demolish the original buildings. The new camp, completed in mid 1938, included 32 barracks and was designed to hold 6,000 prisoners; however, the camp population was usually over that number electrified fences were installed and seven watchtowers were placed around the camp (20th Century History 19) . At the entrance of Dachau was an iron gate with the infamous phrase, "Arbeit Macht Frei" ("Work Will Make You Free”). The first commandant of Dachau, Hilmar Wäckerle, was replaced in June 1933 after being charged with murder of a prisoner. Although Wäckerle’s conviction was overruled by Hitler, who stated that Dachau and all other concentration camps were not to be subjected to German law, Heinrich Himmler wanted to bring in new leadership for the camp. Dachau’s second commandant, Theodor Eicke, established a set of regulations for daily operations in Dachau that would soon become the model for all Nazi concentration camps. A variety of SS officers trained under Eicke, most notably future commandant of the Auschwitz camp system...
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...Despite all that we know about the Holocaust and death camps, Dachau was never a death camp like Auschwitz. ¨ Dachau - The significances of the name will never be erased from Germany history. It stands for all concentration camps which the Nazis established in their territory.¨ (This quote was from Eugen Kogon a historian and also a survivor of the holocaust.) Hundreds of thousands of people died at Dachau not only from gas chambers but also by getting shot, diseases and starvation. The Dachau concentration camp was established in March 1933. It was the first regular concentration established by the National Socialist ( Nazi ) government. During the first year, the camp held 4,800 prisoners. The number of jewish prisoners at Dachau rose....
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...estimated killings of over one-million people, specifically Jews. There were about 45 satellite camps around Auschwitz also, where the Jews were kept to die and work for the Nazi Third Reich. Many of the prisoners were exterminated by fire in the crematory fire which burned hundreds of thousands of bodies. Others died by gas chambers, disease, starvation, medical experiments, individual executions and overworked labor. Elie was a teenager in the book. He went in a boy, and came out a man that was changed forever. His whole mentality changed, he neglected God and hated him for everything that happened. He was desensitized by all the death around him, he became non-human. He grew to know how much Jews were hated by the Germans. Elie had many personal things taken away from him, his foot, gold fillings, his father, and most of his family. He saw death with his own eyes, dead baby being burned in fires, he contemplated suicide himself. The book gave you a first hand look at the holocaust which I believe Elie was trying to expose the reader to. I believe that was the theme of the book, to set the reader right there and expose to them the horror of it all. Elie wanted the reader to remember the holocaust and to not forget about all the dead victims. He tried to really show the reader the true evil of the Third Reich. I personally think this book should be require to be read by students in school regardless if they don’t want to or find it offensive. It is an event in world History that...
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...subjects in the Nazi medical experiments endured those things. According to Baruch C. Cohen’s “The Ethics Of Using Medical Data From Nazi Experiments,” during the Nuremberg trials after World War II, twenty doctors were convicted and charged with “War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity...revealed evidence of sadistic human experiments conducted at the Dachau, Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen concentration camps” (15). The Nuremberg trials brought fourth the attention to the ethics of the doctors while conducting these experiments. Ethics was a big issue, because there was and is clearly a fine line between research and the well being of a person. Evidently the Nazi doctors did not find what they were doing to be unethical, however the courts obviously disagreed. During the trials many of the Nazi doctors referred to there experiments as purely “research.” This had many scientists and other doctors question whether or not the “research” could still be used after the fact. After World War II, the use of the data and research found from the Nazi’s medical experiments is ethical, even though the process to obtain the data and research was unethical. This idea led to a lot of controversy on whether or not the data was unethical or ethical due to the Nazis breaking the ethics code of medicine. After the triumph of Hitler in 1933 the Nazi’s formed three medical programs in order to have “racial cleansing” (Proctor 36-38). From the book Medicine, Ethics an the Third Reich: Historical...
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...to take a broader look at the entire Nazi camp system. In all, there were more than nine thousand concentration camps: transit camps, prisoner-of-war camps, slave-labor camps, camps for “work-education,” camps for political prisoners, camps for police detention, camps for children whose parents were inmates of labor camps, and camps for killing. Six of these camps were primarily killing centers: Chelmno, Sobibor, Belzec, Treblinka, Majdenek, and Auschwitz. Auschwitz is the largest death center the world has ever seen” (Soumerai 171). Auschwitz was a terrible concentration camp because many people died and many people are still haunted by the memories. The concentration camp known as Auschwitz was established on May 20, 1940. Auschwitz was divided into three camps: Auschwitz 1, for resistance fighters; Buna, which was for slave laborers; and Birkenau, which housed the crematoria, medical laboratories, gas chambers, and barracks for the waiting victims (Soumerai 171). Built on approximately eighteen square miles of land that is located in Poland, the camp was “owned” by the Reich SS. In all, Auschwitz comprised three large camps. It was guarded by 6,000 men in twelve companies of SS Death’s Head Units (Soumerai 174). Auschwitz 1, a concentration camp for political prisoners and non-Jews, contained two- and three-story brick buildings, some of which were barracks and others of which housed laboratories for some of the medical experiments conducted under the supervision of Mengele...
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...Spent two and half years in Auschwitz Food rations were calculated precisely in a way that people would live for about six weeks, and whoever lived longer was stealing Inmates caught trying to escape were hanged Winkels of different colors were used to specify which class prisoners belonged to: Jehovah’s witnesses= purple, homosexuals=pink, political prisoners and poles=red, criminals=green, and refusers to work in the Third Reich=black All priests, judges, and lawyers were brutally beaten and killed upon arrival Every single prisoner was ridden with lice, especially those in the hospital Only one parcel per year, received during Christmas time, but could not contain food A healthy stomach was vital- when sick, a prisoner had...
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...action so the twenty-two leading Nazi officials would be put to punishment for their horrific actions (Holocaust: The Aftermath). The International Military Tribunal put the twenty Nazi officials up against four charges (Holocaust Timeline: Aftermath). The first charge was the conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity (Angela Wood, 92). The second, third, and fourth were crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes against peace (Holocaust Timeline: Aftermath). Conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity is the attempt is the attempt of or taking a little part of committing these crimes. Crimes against humanity are crimes involving murder, enslavement, deportation, of a civilian population, and persecution on political, racial, religious, and other inhuman act of people (Angela Wood, 31). War crimes are violations of customs laws of war, improper treatment of people and prisoners of war (Holocaust Timeline: Aftermath). Crimes of peace are crimes that involve planning, preparing, starting, or waging wars of aggression or wars in violation of the international agreement (Holocaust Timeline:...
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...aggressive war crimes. These crimes included invading other nations, violating the Treaty of Versailles and most significantly, "crimes against humanity". These crimes were what later became known as the Holocaust, in which millions of innocent victims were deported, enslaved and systematically executed. The victims were primarily Jewish however many other victims suffered at the hands of the Nazis such as: Poles, Gypsies, the handicapped and the elderly. The Nuremberg Charter "defined war crimes as violations of the laws or customs of war"(Rosenbaum p, 30). Including killing of hostages, ill-treatment of civilians, use of forced labor and looting of public and private property and racial persecution. The International Military Tribunal, the prosecutors consisting of lawyers and judges from the United States, France, England and the Soviet Union had countless evidence of these crimes committed by the Nazis, however to serve justice to every individual for their inhumane actions was impossible. The Nuremberg Trials prosecuted twenty one defendants (all of whom were Nazi officers) and six major Nazi organizations. Although three organizations were declared criminal by the Tribunal and the defendants were convicted, justice was not completely served to many other organizations and individuals. Literally thousands of men who willingly participated in massive genocide evaded justice and lived comfortable lives in other countries. The Nuremberg Trials were...
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