Final answer:
Josef Mengele conducted varied and brutal medical experiments at Auschwitz-Birkenau, including disease observation, surgeries without anaesthesia, and eye color change attempts. They aimed to test survival and medical procedures, drugs, and to prove Nazi racial theories.
Step-by-step explanation:
Josef Mengele's Experiments at Auschwitz-Birkenau
The experiments conducted by Josef Mengele at Auschwitz-Birkenau were numerous and reprehensible, falling into several categories, including:
- Making observations and conducting extreme procedures on victims suffering from diseases like noma, typhus, malaria, and tuberculosis.
- Performing barbaric surgeries on both sick and healthy individuals without anaesthesia.
- Injecting chemicals and dyes into the eyes of prisoners in attempts to change their color, as part of a flawed racial theory.
These medical experiments served various purposes. They included attempts to improve survival and rescue operations for military personnel, testing of medical procedures and drugs, and vile efforts to prove the Nazis' racial ideologies. Auschwitz, unlike other camps, did house Jewish prisoners temporarily for slave labor and experimentation before many were sent to their deaths.
Apart from surgeries and eye injections, the victims at these camps were exposed to various atrocities such as icy water immersion, exposure to extreme temperatures, radiation, and rapid altitude changes. Children and pregnant women were also subjected to experiments focused on fertility and diseases, as the Nazi regime aimed to promote health and longevity among those they considered to be of the 'master race.'