Survivor's Testimony Revealed

Testimony uncovered at the Central Zionist Archive in January revealed new details about the extent of the atrocities committed by Nazi physicians in the name of medical experimentation and scientific progress.  In an undated, three-page deposition Heinz Reimer, a survivor of Dachau, Mauthausen and other camps, described the torture he experienced at the hands of the Nazis.  According to Reimer's account, he was purposely infected with both malaria and syphillis so that the physicians could use him as a guinea pig for potential treatments.  Rather than inject him directly with malaria, Reimer testified that  "this inhuman Nazi locked me up every day for two hours in a glass cage" where he was forced to "endure thousands of Anopheles mosquitoes on my body."  He continued his description by stating, "Once I could no longer stand the pain I made an attempt of resistance against the mosquitoes while I assumed that this would not be seen.  But the doctor, if you want to call this beast like this, saw my attempt of resistance in the mirror.  For this I received seven days of strict detention.  But before I was led away to the detention, I received 25 lashes with a leather bullwhip." 

Reimer also describes being forced to take part in the Nazi hypothermia experiments at Dachau in which prisoners were first immersed in ice water and then placed in boiling water to study the rewarming process.  According to a 1990 article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Nazi physicians reported that only two prisoners who were subjected to the hypothermia experiments survived the war, "both of whom became 'mental cases.'"  Reimer's deposition stated that he was "misused as an object of experiments" and "as a vivisection object," further describing the process by which he was infected with malaria: "Dr. [Claus] Schilling infected me three times with malaria tropical bacteria.  He withdrew from my body one and a half liters of blood for serum experiments.  He infected me with syphilis by inflicting a 12-centimeter cutting wound to my leg.  After this I had to undergo cures - I counted 46 injections of Atebrin [a drug used in the treatment of malaria] and other injections."

Sources:

"Brutal Nazi Medical Experiments Uncovered."  1/26/16.  http://virtualjerusalem.com/news.php?Itemid=19466

"Horror of Nazi Medical Experiments Emerges in Holocaust Survivor's Account." 1/26/16.  http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/news/1.699461