Belz

Ryan Belz
Professor Wertz- Orbaugh
UWRT 1103
21 March 2016
Multimodal Remix
My Holocaust related topic of choice was Nazi doctors & their experiments, medical war
crimes, human experimentation in war and concentration camps. I will dive further into the most
notorious doctors of the time, including the alleged angel of death, as well as the specific
experiments detailed by some surviving subjects themselves. My inquiry research included
sources both primary and secondary, as well as popular culture magazine articles, books written
by historians, YouTube testimonies, and finally scholarly articles. My very general inquiry
question was a jumping point of sorts. It is as follows: What human medical bio-experiments

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were conducted by Nazi doctors in the camps?

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Through the book, Children of the Flames it was immediately apparent the importance
that twins played in the concentration camp experimentation. I found that the most notorious
doctor, Dr. Josef Mengele, used one twin as a controlled variable in an experiment to compare
the the twin that was experimented on. One experiment in particular that stuck out to me was the
attempts made to create an Arian race. The so called angel of death and his surrounding
physicians allegedly injected patients through their eyes with various experimental formulas in
hopes to change their eye color to the desired blue. (Children of The Flames).
Perhaps my most valuable source was the testimony I found via YouTube. It was a
speech/ testimony given by a surviving twin of the Auschwitz experiments. This video was far
more valuable to me than the books because these books were written by historians. The actual

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stories from survivors themselves helped me find the exact information I was looking for. I read
about a specific experiment where two twins were sewn together, back-to-back. When I stumbled
upon the Kor twins, I chose to focus in more on them and their lives. Eva and Miriam Kor were
from a small village in Romania in the 1940s. They were taken at 10 years old to participate in
Dr. Mengeles experiments. (Eva Kor Survivor of the Holocaust and Nazi Experiments on
Twins) & (CBN: Holocaust Twins Survival Story).

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Eva survives her sister Miriam, though they both made it out alive. She died of health
complications related to the concoctions she was injected with in Auschwitz. Eva and Miriam
were injected with an unknown substance and both became very sick. Dr. Mengele himself
proclaimed that they only had a few weeks to live, but they refused to accept this verdict. They
both fought through. In the 1980s, Miriam developed an infection resulting from her first
pregnancy. The doctors studied her and realized that, not only did her kidneys never grow past
that of a 10-year-old, but something in the injection had combined in her body to develop cancer
in the perfect match kidney transplanted to her by her sister Eva. Not only did it develope
cancerous pylops, but it was also rejected. (Time Magazine: What It Was Like to be

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Experimented on During the Holocaust). Eva now travels the world meeting with other
experimented-on survivors, as well as speaking to the public and media about her experiences.

Dr. Josef Mengele, also known as the angel of death was in a medical madmans heaven.
He was born into wealth in 1911. Early in his life, he studied philosophy until his application and
acceptance into the Nazi party and later into the SS. At this point in his life, he began studying
medicine at the University of Frankfurt. In July of 1983 he was awarded a degree in medicine
from the University of Frankfurt (Mengele Medicus). His studies brought him down the path of
genetics and physical anthropology. Before his reign of medical terror over Auschwitz, he
published significant work regarding genetic abnormalities and racial variation. He was a very
bright mind indeed.

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Originally, he was put in a reserve corps unit, ready to fight. But an injury deemed him
unfit for combat despite being promoted to captain. He served as a medical officer within the SS
during WWII. An SS medical researcher developed the vaccine for Typhus, a disease that spread
rampantly during times of war. (Murderous Medicine). His reign and true medical feats began
here, becoming known notoriously as the angel of death. His death toll soared above 400,000,
and he got away with all of it. Dr. Mengele allegedly fled to South America, successfully
avoiding the Nuremburg trials. In response to this gross violation of human rights by
physicians, the Nuremburg military tribunal, which investigated and prosecuted the perpetrators
of the Nazi war crimes, established 10 principles of ethical conduct in medical research in 1949
(The Holocaust and Medical Ethics). The experiments performed by the Nazis during WWII
sparked a revolution of increased ethical behavior in medicine, giving way to many new rules &
regulations around the world.

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Works Cited
Baumslag, Naomi. Murderous Medicine: Nazi Doctors, Human Experimentation, and Typhus.
Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005. Print.
"Eva Kor - Survivor of the Holocaust and Nazi Experiments on Twins." YouTube. YouTube. Web.
24 Feb. 2016.
"Eva Kor: What It Was Like to Be Experimented on During the Holocaust." Time. Time, 16 Dec.
2014. Web. 24 Feb. 2016.
"Holocaust Twins' Survival Story." CBN.com (beta). Web. 24 Feb. 2016.
Jotkowitz, A.. The Holocaust and Medical Ethics: The Voices of the Victims. Journal of
Medical Ethics 34.12 (2008): 869870. Web...
Lagnado, Lucette, and Sheila Cohn. Dekel. Children of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the
Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz. New York: Morrow, 1990. Print.
Seidelman, William E.. Mengele Medicus: Medicine's Nazi Heritage. The Milbank Quarterly
66.2 (1988): 221239. Web...