The Unethical Medical Experiments Performed on Female Concentration Camp Prisoners

The “Rabbits” of Ravensbrück

Female prisoners at Ravensbrück. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

One of the many atrocities to come out of the Holocaust was the unethical medical experiments performed by Dr. Mengele, the “angel of death”, a man known for selecting twins out of lineups and experimenting on them. But unfortunately, Dr. Mengele’s experiments were not the only ones performed on concentration camp prisoners.

Ravensbrück was the largest concentration camp exclusively for women, and by 1945, had more than 50,000 female prisoners from 30 countries.

But the medical experiments began three years earlier, in 1942. Nazi doctors claimed the experiments were to test treatments for war injuries, but it is widely believed these medical experiments served to further Hitler’s own personal agenda.

Years earlier, Hitler’s good friend, Reinhard Heydrich, died of injuries sustained during a car bombing. And the operating physician, Dr. Karl Gebhardt, refused to use sulfa drugs, a decision that Hitler believed led to his friend’s death. The medical experiments performed on the women in Ravensbrück were designed by Gerhardt and Heinrich Himmler, a high-ranking SS officer, to prove to Hitler that the decision to avoid sulfa drugs was the right choice.