"The Rabbits of Ravensbrück"

“Persevere and help others survive!"

In early July 1942, prisoners were ordered to keep away from the operating theatre as new equipment was being installed. Within a few weeks, Karl Gebhardt, Fritz Fischer, and Herta Oberheuser, Ravensbrück's doctors, began their experiments.

75 of the youngest and fittest women from a recent transport from Lublin, Poland were selected as "rabbits" (called such because they were used like laboratory animals). The young women had been members of a Polish underground resistance against the Nazi Regime. They had been caught by the Gestapo, and sent to Ravensbrück. 

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Description of the aftermath of experiments from Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women by Sarah Helm

"The Nazis had used their limbs to recreate war wounds and infected those wounds with aggressive bacteria, wood chips, and glass, trying to cause gas gangrene. They also experimented with removing and damaging nerves, muscles, and bones in the legs" (rememberravensbruck.com). 

The women stuck together to keep each other alive after their surgeries. "Krysia nursed Wanda. Friends offered food. Alfreda Prus, a quiet, gentle girl, a student at the university of Zamosc, near Lublin, threw Wanda her daily bread ration" (Helm, 218). One secret group within the camp was dedicated to helping others. Their mission, "persevere and help others survive," was based on their oath as Girl Guides (Girl Scouts in the US). The women risked their lives for those in the experiments "secretly bringing them food, water, and even medications to help them survive" (rememberravensbruck.com).

In describing Herta Oberheuser, prisoners say, "Her face is a mask, her eyes glassy. She shows no shadow of pity and leaves wounds undressed for day, so the women feel they are rotting away inside the plaster, but when at last the dressings are changed it is the worst torture of all" (Helm, 219).

On the left is an excerpt from Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women by Sarah Helm describing an all too familiar scene after the sulphonamide surgeries. 

By the end of October, Oberheuser rarely walked through the ward. Oberheuser and the other doctors had lost interest in the sulphonamide experiments. In November, operations of three kinds began: bone-breaking, bone grafts, and bone splinters. 

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On the right is an excerpt from Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women by Sarah Helm describing bone surgeries (pg 229). 

Trials

Several of the women 'rabbits' survived and were able to testify in the Medical Case. The case was one of twelve heard before an American tribunal (part of the subsequent Nuremberg Trials).

Gebhardt, Fischer, and Oberheuser were among the sixteen doctors and nurses prosecuted for their participation "in the killing of physically and mentally impaired Germans and who had performed medical experiments on people imprisoned in concentration camps. Sixteen of the defendants were found guilty. Of the sixteen, seven were sentenced to death for planning and carrying out experiments on human beings against their will" (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Oberheuser was found guilty of "performing sulfanilamide experiments, bone, muscle, and nerve regeneration and bone transplantation experiments on humans, as well as of sterilizing prisoners" (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). 

Gebhardt was sentenced to death and executed on June 2, 1948. Fischer and Oberheuser were sentenced to prison, but they were released in 1954. Oberheuser subsequently set up a medical practice in Schleswig, Holstein.

After the trials, the Nuremberg Code was created which lists ten points that must be followed in permissble medical experiements. Although its legal force is questionable, "it remains a landmark document in medical ethics" (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).