The Holocaust: Unethical And Ethical Experiments During The Holocaust

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Most scientists conduct experiments towards a productive, humanitarian goal with the aid of volunteers. However, during the Holocaust, scientists experimented on forced subjects that usually resulted in the loss of their lives. By not acquiring permission of these subjects and causing their deaths, they participated in unethical and immoral activities. Although some prisoners of the Holocaust were not experimented on, they also experienced corrupt treatment in their everyday lives. Many immoral situations occurred during the Holocaust and a few of these can be seen in Tadeusz Borowski’s This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. Borowski recounts various unethical situations and feelings that he witnessed and experienced that correlate with …show more content…
While most scientific experiments in the Holocaust left the subjects scarred or dead, Dr. Mengele took interest in a certain family and caused them no physical problems. This was a rather large family of dwarfs, the Ovitzs, and since Dr. Mengele “had only one family of dwarfs, he was careful not to put their lives at risk” (Koren 33). To prevent the Ovitz family from being trampled to death or catching illnesses, the family had its own living space and a “washbasin” and “chamber pot” all to themselves. They were also allowed to keep their own clothes, had people helped them dress and get into bed, and were carried to experimental clinics (Koren 33). While the Ovitz’s were most likely happy about having better living conditions, the immorality of the reasoning behind why they received better conditions runs deep. The Ovitz family’s better living conditions were Dr. Mengele’s unconscious way of attempting to make up for preforming scientific experiments on them and humiliating them in public. It is immoral to believe that providing better living conditions repays the physical and psychological problems he caused the Ovitz family. While the Ovtiz’s received special treatment in the form of, what some may call, pampering, Canada men similarly obtained special treatment in their amounts of food. Both of these situations are immoral in the reason as to why …show more content…
Besides the most unethical deed of the Holocaust of killing innocent people, children were more susceptible to unusual deaths for their lack of understanding in how to behave in their new environment. Borowski retells an incident in which a young girl falls out of the transport train’s window and does not know what to do so she walks in circles while waving her arms and whining. This displeases an S.S guard so the young girl is shot to death (Borowski 25). Instead of being able to spend the last hours of her life with her family, she is murdered prematurely in front of an audience. She was not given the chance to plead for her life or to say good bye to her family because she was unaware of how to correctly act in her unfortunate situation. Taking a young girl’s life away for her juvenile ignorance to an impossible situation is immoral, even for Nazi standards. Even though adults did not know exactly how to act when confronted by guards, they knew more than children and were at least able to temporarily attempt to defend themselves from the guards’ violence. Children were too frightened and did not know how to act. Guards and scientists took advantage of the children’s fear to justify killing them and experimenting on them. Dr. Mengele had a preparation room with fourteen Gypsy twins who were crying from the fear of their fate

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