Nazi Science

Abstract

Between August, 1942 and May, 1943 male prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp were forced into an ice-water bath as part of a medical research protocol on hypothermia. The victims were held in the freezing water for periods lasting as long as seven hours. Pain from contact with ice-cold water is excruciating and must have lasted until consciousness was lost. Postwar testimony disclosed that

“It is our deep obligation to all peoples of the world to show why and how these things happened. It is incumbent upon us to set forth with conspicuous clarity the ideas and motives which moved these defendants to treat their fellow men as less than beasts. The perverse thoughts and distorted concepts which brought about these savageries are not dead. They cannot be killed by force of arms. They must not become a spreading cancer in the breast of humanity. They must be cut out and exposed, for the reason so well stated by Mr. Justice Jackson in this courtroom a year ago’ The wrongs…have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated.’ ”¹