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Claims Conference Identifies Additional Victims of Nazi Medical Experiments

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) has identified an additional 704 living Jewish victims of Nazi medical experiments and has issued payments to them today. These recipients are in addition to the 1,778 survivors who were paid by the Claims Conference in January 2004.

The Claims Conference effort to identify victims of medical experiments has uncovered new information about these horrific acts committed by the Third Reich. Research of survivors’ claims for compensation by the Claims Conference led to documentation of experiments that had never before been recorded. From its research for this program, the Claims Conference compiled the most comprehensive list in existence of Nazi medical experiments. The Claims Conference’s documentation of previously unrecorded experiments enabled many of these victims to be declared eligible for payment.

As part of its effort to educate the wider public about this little-known part of the Holocaust, the Claims Conference is making available testimonies of the people who were subjected to medical experiments. The Claims Conference is turning over the new historical information and the testimonies to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington , D.C. , and to Yad Vashem in Israel . Some testimonies have been posted on the Claims Conference website, www.claimscon.org .

The symbolic payments to these survivors result from Claims Conference negotiations with the German government and industry that led to the German Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and the Future.”

About 178 different types of medical experiments were conducted in more than 30 camps and ghettos. The Nazis’ actions were gruesome, and include Dr. Josef Mengele’s infamous experimentation on twins and dwarves. Other examples of experiments, sometimes performed without anesthesia, include injections to attempt to change the color of people’s eyes, sterilization, injection of infectious diseases and poisons, and unnecessary amputations and organ removal, among many others.

Under current guidelines, individuals will receive payment from a DM 50 million fund for Jewish and non-Jewish victims of Nazi experimentation and for children of forced laborers who were in special homes (Kinderheim). Each individual will receive a symbolic payment DM 8,300 (approximately $5,400, or €4,240).

All applications were reviewed and matched up to historical material about medical experiments conducted in concentration camps and ghettos between 1942 and 1945. In addition, an independent reviewer, Judge Jacob Bazak of Israel , approved the cases.