a “Whenever the number of patients in the infirmary rose, the doctors paid a visit to the infirmary block. There, all the patients, naked, had to file past the SS doctor, who was not interested in the nature of the illness but only in the sick man’s appearance. On that basis, he selected prisoners for extermination.”
(Antoni Makowski: “Organisation, Entwicklung und Tätigkeit des Häftlings-Krankenbaus in Monowitz (KL Auschwitz III).” In: Hefte von Auschwitz 15 (1975), pp. 113–181, here p. 137. (Transl. KL))
b “The camp physician Dr. Hellmuth VETTER conducted typhus experiments on prisoners in the hospital in Monowitz.”
(Leon Staischak [Stasiak], affidavit, September 3, 1947, NI-10928. Archive of the Fritz Bauer Institute, Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, Case VI, PDB 75 (e), pp. 181–186, here p. 184.)
c Oszkár Betlen testified in a trial: “Dr. Entress also conducted experiments at that time, and in such a way that he gave healthy prisoners blood transfusions from prisoners who had typhus. Then the healthy prisoners also came down with typhus.”
(Oszkár Betlen, examination by the judge on September 18 and 19, 1962, in Frankfurt am Main, Auschwitz Trial, LG Frankfurt am Main, 4 Ks 2/63. Archive of the Fritz Bauer Institute, FAP-1, HA-72, pp. 13587–13595, here p. 13588. (Transl. KL))
d In his autobiographical novel, Oszkár Betlen describes these experiments with typhus infections:
“The next day, two prisoners were brought to us from Birkenau. One was a Czech and a driver by occupation, the other was a Polish butcher. Both had been in the camp for only a few days and were healthy and muscular [...] We were directed to give them as much food as they could hold [...] The two healthy patients were as happy as if they'd won a big lottery. To be fed like that here, in the realm of hunger! Did they really not suspect that they had been brought here for some special purpose? Two days later, Entress came back. He did a blood transfusion. The blood of two typhus patients was pumped into the veins of the two healthy men. The experiment obviously was an attempt to determine whether typhus was transmitted through blood and how intense the resulting illness would be. After the experiment was over, only four patients were left in the infirmary: the two men whose blood had been drawn and the two subjects of the experiment. The others were taken away. In the quarantine blocks, no one else reported sick. Those in isolation had noticed that the patients were not cared for, but merely taken away […] Four days after the blood transfusion, one blood donor died. His corpse had to be carried out through the room in which the two test subjects lay in bed. They looked at each other aghast, as if asking in which of them the dead man’s blood was circulating. Suddenly their good mood was at an end. They lost all appetite. Their bread lay untouched. Then the fever appeared.”
Both were sent to Birkenau at Entress's command after the experiment was concluded.
(Oszkár Betlen: Leben auf dem Acker des Todes (Berlin: Dietz, 1962), pp. 88–89. (Transl. KL))
e Julius Paltiel, a Norwegian Jewish survivor, reports: “Mengele har en teori om at ondt skal ondt fordrive. Derfor beordrer han innsprøytninger med 96 prosent alkoholi alle mine ledd. Noe slikt er ikke forsøkt tidligere. De fremmede leger står over meg med sine enogtyve sprøyter. De fører nålene inn i ledd etter ledd, og fyller meg med alkohol. Det svir. Det brenner. Det etser. Kroppen står i en bue av smerter. Jeg kan ikke ligge stille i sengen, klarer ikke å ha teppet over kroppen […] Det gjør så umenneskelig vondt i hele kroppen. Langt borte hører jeg min egen hulking.”
(“Mengele believes in the theory that bad drives out bad. That's why he orders injections of 96-percent alcohol into all my limbs. That kind of thing has never been tried before. The foreign doctors stand over me with their 21 syringes. They insert the needles in my limbs and fill me with alcohol. It hurts. It burns. It cauterizes. My whole body is one giant pain. I can’t lie quietly in bed, I can’t stand to have the blanket on my body […] My whole body hurts in an ungodly way. Far away, I hear my own sobbing.”)
(Vera Komissar: På Tross av Alt. Julius Paltiel – norsk Jøde i Auschwitz [1995] (Trondheim: Communicatio, 2004), p. 80. (Transl. KL))
f “By agreement and with the knowledge of Fischer, the camp doctor who was interested in this, they also started to cure mental patients from the subcamps of the Auschwitz III concentration camp and from Auschwitz II-Birkenau, women, too […] This was undoubtedly a success for the prisoners who were physicians: they made healing possible for numerous mental patients and kept them alive at least for the time being [...]”
(Antoni Makowski: “Organisation, Entwicklung und Tätigkeit des Häftlings-Krankenbaus in Monowitz (KL Auschwitz III).” In: Hefte von Auschwitz 15 (1975), pp. 113–181, here p. 164. (Transl. KL))
g Ernest W. Michel, a prisoner nurse, recalls: “Honzo and I went inside. There was a number of SS-doctors standing around, among them the notorious Dr. Mengele. I remembered him from the first day of our arrival, during the selection at the tracks. […] They were conducting medical experiments on women! I put two and two together. It explained the look on those women’s faces. They were mentally disturbed. […] They did the experiments with eight women. Three were dead. The others were in various stages of stupor or agitation.”
(Ernest W. Michel: Promises to Keep. One Man’s Journey against Incredible Odds (New York: Barricade Books, 1993), pp. 70–72.)