"The Rabbits of Ravensbrück"
Over the course of WWII, the Nazis carried out horrific and unethical medical experiments on prisoners in concentration camps.
Hitler approved of the experiments on the prisoners saying they "ought not to remain completely unaffected by the war while German soldiers are being subjected to almost unbearable strain" (Helm, 213).
The experiments can be categorized into three types; two of which were conducted at Ravensbrück:
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Experiments to test military personnel survival: For example, scientists and doctors at Dachau concentration camp subjected prisoners to freezing tempatures to test hypothermia.
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Experiments to further Nazi ideologies: At Ravensbrück, "Scientists tested a number of methods in an effort to develop an efficient and inexpensive procedure for the mass sterilization of Jews, Roma, and other groups Nazi leaders considered to be racially or genetically undesirable" (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
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Experiments to test drugs and treatments: "Physicians at Ravensbrück conducted experiments in bone-grafting and tested newly developed sulfa (sulfanilamide) drugs" (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
“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.
"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.
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).
Rabbits, desperate to be heard, found ways to smuggle out messages and take photos of themselves to document and tell those on the outside what was happening to them. One woman, Krysia Czyz, going as far as writing a letter with her own urine.
Maria Bielicka, who had been rejected as a test subject, befriended three Czech girls while working in the bookbinding workshop. The girls worked next door and were responsible for sending clothes of executed prisoners back to their families. They devised a way to send the clothes of prisoners who were not executed and snuck letters in the clothes. Maria sent a letter to her parents who were in the Polish underground.
"These messages eventually made it to the Polish underground radio network in England, which broadcast the news of the experiments and mass murders at Ravensbrück - and warned specific camp leaders of their fate should such activities continue" (rememberravensbruck.com).
On February 4, 1945, the young women learned the SS were coming for them in the morning.
"Overnight, as the Rabbits stayed up writing good-bye letters, the inmates came up with a plan to grab and hide the Rabbits in the predawn hours, during roll call – and right in front of the SS. And it worked.
The Rabbits were successfully hidden that morning – and then kept hidden for nearly three months - until liberation. And the international group of inmates in Ravensbrück gave them food and water, protected them from the constant SS searches, and devised ways of getting them out of the camp. Amazingly, not one of the 63 Rabbits was ever betrayed. As one surviving “Rabbit” put it, 'You could say that the entire camp helped us, hid us, protected us.'" (rememberravensbruck.com).
"I received the most love and care and help, in the form of food, because I was the youngest. They often gave up their food to give it to me, so that I would survive. That’s what it looked like: those who received [food], shared it with the ones who did not. It was not pity. Because someone could say that we did it out of pity. That’s not true. It was not pity. It was us working together, cooperating, fighting together to survive. Friendship has an amazing value. Believe me.”
— Stanisława Śledziejowska-Osiczko, "Stasia"
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).