Way back in 1980, I had the opportunity to know a Polish American girl in Toledo,Ohio. She and her family are originally from Krakow, Poland. Her mother showed me the horrible scars on her deformed left leg and some presumably whip marks on her back. She told me she was interned in 1944 at the notorious concentration camp in Ravensbruck,Germany which was a concentration camp for women. The horrendous deformity and scars on her left leg were the result of experiments consisting of injecting germs to develop infection down to the bone and testing it with different drugs.
She was lucky she survived in spite of her weighing only 50 lbs at that time. The book "Doctors from Hell" is just appropriate for its title and content. Reading the book brings back memory of that mother and all the horrendous detail of not only her own experience but also those of her fellow inmates in that concentration camp. The book's authenticity is just
summed up by that mother's narration to me, a human being who was actually in and escaped from that "Hell" on earth. I highly recommend it.

I have seen some footage on tv about the horrible things that have happened in WWII, but this book really tells alot due to a strong woman who went over to Germany for the trials of the "horrific" experiments that the drs who were still alive and on trial after the war was over.

This book is a must to read for those interested in Nazi and or WWII history.

~k

This account of the good Doctors is exactly what I`ve been looking for. I have had my fill of reading about other people`s hypotheses regarding why and how they reasoned out their crimes. I have my own capacity to form logical opinion, and it was time somebody had the raw unsullied guts to actually tell us what they *did*. Especially in this warm-fuzzy politically correct yet ultra-selfish capitalist world. But I digress.

Thank you Vivien Spitz.

The value of the book really depends on your aim. If you just wish to have a general factual survey about the Nazi human experiments raised in the Doctor's Trial, the book will serve your need. However, most of the book relating to the Doctor's Trial per se is same as the opening speech of the US Prosecutor (General Taylor) and it is definitely weak at the conversations between the defendants and the lawyers/prosecutors during the trial. As a result, you cannot explore from this book why the defendants can commit such crime (many of them are distinguishing doctors and even the chief prosecutor admitted that some of they were not sadists). In gist, it is a book about "what" but not about "why". If you want to explore the underlying mentality, the book "Karl Brandt: The Nazi Doctor" by Ulf Schmidt may serve as a good start.

Quickly I will say that in buying this book I felt I was going to be reading about the Nazi doctors and their crimes. Instead I read a book about a young lady whom was a court reporter during some of the trials and what she saw/heard.



True some acounts are harrowing and emotional but not enough to live up to the unworthy title of "Doctor's From Hell".



I had a few friends whom stated they wished to read this book when I was done and I told every single one of them that it isn't worth their time. I'll tell you the same. There are plenty of books out on this subject that give you a real sense of what happned and the evil people whom were responsible.



I was really hoping this book was going to live up to expectations but sadly it did not.

Quickly I will say that in buying this book I felt I was going to be reading about the Nazi doctors and their crimes. Instead I read a book about a young lady whom was a court reporter during some of the trials and what she saw/heard.

True some acounts are harrowing and emotional but not enough to live up to the unworthy title of "Doctor's From Hell".

I had a few friends whom stated they wished to read this book when I was done and I told every single one of them that it isn't worth their time. I'll tell you the same. There are plenty of books out on this subject that give you a real sense of what happned and the evil people whom were responsible.

I was really hoping this book was going to live up to expectations but sadly it did not.

First off, how in Hades does a trifle like this manage to get a blurb from Bill "der Schlickmeister" Clinton, Al "dropped out or thrown out of law school" Gore, and Christpher "Ted Kennedy's henchman" Dodd? Plus, sort of a forward by Elie Wiesel! I thought the book would be in the spirit of Lifton's book on Nazi Doctors, etc., but it is not. Its the story of a 21 or 22 year old court reporter who went over in 1946 to take down testimony at the Nazi Doctor's trials. Ms. Spitz, who I am sure is a very nice lady, learned all the right lessons from the trials and says all the right things. But she is sure no historian, or even a professional writer. She gives absolutely no insight into any of the men charged in the crimes, and is extremely disjointed about what she tells the reader about the trials. Sometimes she quotes the transcripts at some length, sometimes there is almost no discussion of a certain gruesome experiment. The big question, what the Hell were these guys thinking, is completely untouched. In addition, Ms. Spitz's knowledge of WWII is almost nil, and she seems to know little of the first Nuremburg trial. For example, she implies that Goering hid a cyanide capsule in his mouth (the whole time), while we now know that it is likely that an American guard (unwittingly?) smuggled the ampule to him. The quotes from the transcripts are often gripping & harrowing, but that is a credit to the trials, not to the author. Really, the only thing interesting in the book by way of the author is her discussion about living arrangements in 1946 Nuremberg, and the fact that in 1947-1948 there were still pro-Nazi terrorists. Do not spend $24 on this book (or the $16 it cost me) if you are expecting a professional discussion of the Nazi medical experiments. Its worth maybe $2 as a fast read by someone of average intelligence who was at the trials of the sicko Nazi physicians.

This book is a real shocker, to think that people can have no empathy for another human beings feelings is beyond belief. "How could they do this" in no way begins to describe the horror and torture they inflicted on these poor defenceless souls. A real eye-opener but a "must" read book. Very well written.

The reader of this book quickly learns that the gruesome experiments conducted against helpless victims were not just done by a few "warped" Nazi ideologues, such as the infamous "Angel of Death" Josef Mengele, but by a large cadre of German doctors. One also quickly realizes that the victims were not limited to Jews, but included members of various nationalities. Every imaginable grotesque experiment was performed. Perhaps the most instructive part of the book is chapter 14, which discusses forced sterilization. The Germans found that physical castration was too slow and costly. X-radiation often made the victims ill or killed them outright. A drug derived from a certain Brazilian plant induced sterility, and was tried on inmates.

What was said to be ultimately needed was a method of sterilization that could easily be employed en masse and was preferably one in which the victim did not know that he or she was sterilized. Obviously, mass sterilization was intended for very large target of victims. In fact, defendant Rudolf Brandt cited Heinrich Himmler (pp. 191-192), who stated that forced sterilization was to be used to exterminate not only Jews but also Russians and Poles. So, although the author Spitz does not develop this further, Himmler's statement adds proof to the fact that after the Jews, most of the Slavs were next in line for genocidal extermination. Mass shootings and gassings were useful for killing a few million people (Jews and Polish intellectuals), but mass sterilization was much more practical for the eventual extermination of tens of millions to hundreds of millions of people (Slavs as a whole). Just as a small number of sterilized Jews were kept alive for forced labor, so also a remnant of the Slavic peoples would be kept alive as slaves of the German Reich. It is high time that educational Holocaust materials include focus on the fact that the Slavs were also victims of genocide. Only the end of the war spared most of the Slavs from forced sterilization, and eventual extermination.

Josef Mengele is a name that even people with a small knowledge about the Second World War knows about, or at least has heard mentioned sometime. He was the Nazi doctor who performed the most gruesome experiments on humans (especially twins) in the name of Nazi science, and after the end of the war he managed to escape the Allied forces and hid in South America, among other places, until his death.

But he was not the only one.

There were more men like him. Many more.

In 1946, a young Vivien Spitz was hired by the American war department to go across the Atlantic and attend the war trials in Nuremberg and report, document, and save to the world what the criminals confessed and didn't confess. She wasn't new to criminal world, having worked on trials in the U.S., and thus she thought she wouldn't have any problems doing what she was supposed to do. But Nuremberg after the end of the war was a bombed-out city, a wasteland with no hot water and filled with German terrorists who gladly attacked any representative of the Allied forces.

And if that wasn't enough, Spitz volunteered to (without really knowing what she was getting herself into, one must guess) to report from the interrogations with those Nazi doctors who had performed macabre experiments on humans (or "materiel" as they themselves referred to the inmates) in the many concentration camps around Europe. She wasn't naïve, she knew very well that horrible stories and descriptions were to be part of her daily routine, but she still wasn't able to remain untouched.

Here are some of the stories she was told in the court room:
People were forced to stand for hours in freezing water, so the doctors could see how long time it took until their death (which was interesting to the Luftwaffe in case their pilots were shot down over open water).
Malaria-experiments where people were infected with the virus (for troops fighting in foreign countries).
Amputations of arms and legs, burning of the skin, and other mutilations of the body (in order to simulate the injuries a soldier could suffer on a battlefield).
Poisoning of food (simply so the doctors could see how long it took for the ones eating it to die).
Different sterilizations (since Jews and Gypsies and other "non desirable materiel" were welcome to work but not reproduce).
People who had to live on nothing but seawater for days in a row, which resulted in both madness and death.

And so on. It's a scary book to read, especially when one reads about how the doctors explain it all away as duty and fighting for their Fatherland. But the book is also, here and there, quite boring with long sections of witnessing that don't really say anything interesting. Furthermore, considering how bizarre the experiments were, it would have been interesting to learn more about WHY the doctors did what they did, that is, how they as doctors could become such devoted Nazis. It's a well-known fact that some of the most brutal Nazis were "just like you and me" in their private life, but Doctors From Hell doesn't touch this aspect. It's an important and informative book but it would have been easy for Spitz to make it ever MORE important and MORE informative.

This book is divided into chapters based upon the experiments performed by "doctors" who used human prisoners as guniea pigs in Hitler's Germany. This book is rather difficult to read for several reasons, not the least of which the transcripts are fairly clinical and rather unemotional given the horror inflicted on the victims. An interesting historical document.

Vivien Spitz is half German by heritage but, she strongly indicts her countrymen in this chilling account of horrific "medical experiments" that Nazi doctors and medical assistants performed on innocent people. The descriptions of what was done is creepy but the story must be told. Ms. Spitz was the youngest court reporter during the Nuremberg trials as she transcribed the testimony in the trals of medical personnel. She documents a dozen types of experiments and, some truly had no medical value but were done only for the sake of perpetrating inhumanity to non Arians, most of whom were Jews and Gypsies. There were other vicitms as well, such as Russians. Among the defendants, some were sentenced to death, others to prison terms of varying legnths and a total of seven were acquitted. The acquittals were probably due to the court leaning over backwards to make the trials look fair.

An example of an experiment that was done with no possible scientific value was to force victims to drink brackish seawater to see the effects. Of course this made the victims sick and drove them mad. Most did not survive. Another awful experiment was to amputate limbs and attempt to transpant them to others. Without modern microsurgery and anti rejection medication, this could never have possibly worked but these ghouls killed and permanently maimed people in the name of science. Even if this experiment could have worked, the real purpose was to do the most horrible acts of brutality on the victims, not to accumulate medical knowledge. Horrible diseases, such as malaria were deliberately introduced to vicitims. Another horrible experiment was to lock victims into vaultlike chambers where the atmospheric conditions of 68,000 feet in altitude could be simulated.

Ms. Spitz is truly a wonderful person as she makes sure that holocaust deniers don't get away with their revisionism. She has confronted them and, importantly, she has written this book. The book is difficult to read because of the horrors that are documented. Still, it should be read so that we never forget.

The first-hand testimony, taken from trial transcripts, paints a gruesome portrait of the doctors involved in horrific experiments on humans in the Nazi death camps. (I reluctantly call these men "doctors" after reading this disturbing book.)

Accurate documentation of their unbelievable deeds provides the reader with a nightmare look at this dark time in history.

An essential reference for students of history.

Written by skilled journalist Vivian Spitz, who counts being the youngest court reporter at the Nuremberg Trials among her many accomplishments, Doctors From Hell: The Horrific Account Of Nazi Experiments On Humans presents literal testimonies of Nuremburg war crimes trials specifically pertaining to murderous medical experiments performed on living people. A bleak, stark, and severe account; the dry yet thoroughly detailed testimony speaks for itself. Information concerning the conviction and sentencing of defendants is also included. The author offers closing chapters about adapting to a normal life after her role in bearing witness to unspeakable atrocities, including her encounters with poisonous and sometimes threatening Holocaust deniers. A straightforward primary source appreciable to scholars and lay readers alike, and a welcome contribution to Holocaust Studies and reference shelves.