Dear Gillian
I am reading a book containing the transcripts of the (1946) Nuremberg Trials regarding the subject of ‘Nazi Medical Crimes’. The (proven) allegation is that the Nazi regime, although highly scientific and advanced in certain areas, nevertheless, practiced ‘pseudoscience’ in the Death Camps. This pseudoscience was cruel and designed prolong the suffering of its test subjects as they were experimented upon until the point of death. The cases I have read so far, were sanctioned directly SS Fuhrer Himmler who took a personal interest in the selection of the ‘Test Persons’(TP’s), the procedures employed, and the results obtained. The justification for these ‘experiments’ was to generate better treatment of war-wounds for German soldier, enhanced survival technique and technology for German airmen and sailors having to survive on the open-sea, and for fighting various illnesses, etc. Jewish (Polish) women would have an arm or a leg forcibly removed and left to die without pain-relief or proper care to see how long they could last. Soviet POWs were slowly frozen to death in large fridges or vats of cooled water, whilst other victims were made to drink sea-water until they died. However, I read last night about an experiment which involved the treatment of deliberately infected sepsis using only homeopathy! The victims chosen for these experiments were selected from the Block reserved for ‘monks and priests’, as Himmler was interested in how the agency of ‘faith’ affected these experiments. Needless to say, no one given homeopathic remedies ‘recovered’, and all the test subjects were left to die! On occasion, one or two victims would recover naturally, but often due to fortunate procedural mistakes. Sometimes, a member of the group slated for death were given the antidote by mistake! These prisoners were a mixture of Catholics and Protestants imprisoned in Death Camps for holding leftist beliefs, or for openly opposing Hitler and his regime. The Catholic Church agreed with their imprisonment as ‘leftist’ views contradicted those of the Pope (Pius XII). The ‘medical’ staff explained that the Christian monks were the easiest to experiment upon, as they stayed true to their calling until the very end, remaining as peaceful as possible in the face of adversity. Polish people occupy a strange niche within Nazi ideology. On the one-hand they are racially inferior ‘Slaves’, but on the other-hand, many Poles are good Catholics, support the rightwing and hold antisemitic views. Poland was already a fascist State when annexed by Hitler, (Poland established a Treaty with Hitler in 1934 which agreed to rounding-up its own Jewish population). Polish Catholic military units actively welcomed the invading Nazi Germans, and joined sides with them. These units became a SS Regiment used during the invasion of the USSR. It seems that the Poles who resisted the Nazi Germans were placed into Death Camps, but even then, many collaborated with the Nazis and became the dreaded ‘Kapo’ or ‘Sonderkommando’ – helping the herding of people into gas chambers and then clearing their bodies, etc. It is ironic that today, the far-right government of Poland is re-writing history and claiming the Nazi Germans were ‘liberators’ and the Soviets ‘invaders.’ All a very nasty business! Homeopathy was used in a raft of experiments designed to prove its effectiveness, and even the Nazis had to admit that it never worked on any illness or injury!
THE SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 