28 December 1942 | Prof. Carl Clauberg began his experiments on female prisoners at Auschwitz II-Birkenau to develop a non-surgical mass sterilization method. In April 1943 Clauberg moved to Block 10 in Auschwitz I.
Under the pretext of performing a gynecological examination, he first made sure that the Fallopian tubes were open and then introduced a specially prepared chemical irritant, which caused acute inflammation. This led to the growing together of the tubes & their obstruction.
These procedures were carried out in a brutal way. Complications were frequent, including peritonitis and hemorrhages from the reproductive tract, leading to high fever and sepsis. Multiple organ failure and death frequently followed.
While some of Carl Clauberg’s Jewish patients died in this way, others were deliberately put to death so that autopsies could be carried out.
Before the Soviet Army approached the Auschwitz camp Clauberg moved to KL Ravensbrück to continue his experiments. Soviet troops captured him there in 1945. In 1948 Clauberg was put on trial in the Soviet Union and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
In 1955, he was released (but not pardoned) by the Soviet Union, with a group of about 10,000 POWs and civilian internees. He returned to West Germany, where he was reinstated at his former clinic based on his prewar scientific output
In 1955, after public outcry from groups of survivors, Clauberg was arrested and put on trial. He died before trial on August 9, 1957.
A drastic example of betrayal of medical ethics is participation of German doctors in the criminal medical experiments in concentration camps. In our podcast Teresa Wontor-Cichy talks about experiments in Auschwitz. anchor.fm/auschwitz-memo…
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25 December 1943 | There were 86,920 prisoners in the entire Auschwitz concentration camp system: Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Auschwitz III-Monowitz camps & sub-camps: 56,596 men and 30,324 women.
The history of #Auschwitz is complex as it combined two functions: a concentration camp and an extermination center. It was used by the Nazi Germany to persecute different groups of people. Our online lesson explains the most important aspects: lekcja.auschwitz.org/en_1/
The podcast tells about the details of the process which led to the creation of the German Nazi Auschwitz camp & about its first prisoners. anchor.fm/auschwitz-memo…
23 December 1900 | Pole Franciszek Jaźwiecki was born in Cracow. A painter.
No. 79042.
He illegally created many portraits of co-prisoners at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and Gross-Rosen camps. He survived.
“Not to see somebody else’s or your own eyes, so horrifyingly hopeless & strange, where, lurching in nearly every pair is the egoistic will to survive even at the cost of others, or at least not to find yourself in the first rank of those going to death.”
(Franciszek Jaźwiecki)
19 December 1941 | A Hungarian Jewish girl, Marta Weisz, was born in Sárköz. During the war, she lived in Szatmárnémeti.
On 31 May 1944, she was murdered in a gas chamber of Auschwitz II-Birkenau.
Marta Weisz was the daughter of Bandi (fate unknown) and Klari. She had an elder brother Robert. Klari and the children were most probably murdered in a gas chamber together.
Zyklon B was a pesticide produced by the Degesch company, initially designated exclusively for eradicating insects in residential quarters, storage space, and special disinfection chambers at the camp.
From the end of the summer of 1941, it was also used sporadically to put to death Auschwitz I prisoners and Soviet POWs; from the spring of 1942 it was used regularly to murder Jews in the Birkenau gas chambers.
9-10 November 1938 | November Pogrom (known also as Kristallnacht), a pogrom against the Jews throughout Nazi Germany. Hundreds killed & died by suicide, 30,000 men arrested, over 1,000 synagogues burnt, over 7,000 Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristalln…
The name Kristallnacht ("Crystal Night") comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings and synagogues were smashed.
In an article on the evening of 11 November, Joseph Goebbels ascribed the events to the "healthy instincts" of the German people: "The German people are anti-Semitic. It has no desire to have its rights restricted or to be provoked in the future by parasites of the Jewish race."
#Auschwitz was the only German Nazi concentration camp where - from some point - the camp numbers were tattooed, first on chests and later on forearms of prisoners. 1/4
In fall of 1941 the camp administration started tattooing Soviet POWs. Initially the number was on the left side of the chest. Polish prisoners transferred to Birkenau from Auschwitz I in March 1942 were tattooed the same way, as well as Jews arriving in the first transports. 2/4
From the spring of 1942 the camp authorities ordered that incoming prisoners be tattooed on the left forearm. Jewish men arriving in new transports were marked in this way, together with Jewish women already incarcerated in the camp. 3/4