Medical examinations consisted solely of the prisoner stripping naked and walking past a doctor (Aroneanu 67). These medical examinations were purely a form of humiliation and discomfort for the prisoners. They did absolutely nothing to prevent the spread of disease or acquire treatment for those who were ill.
Medical experiments also helped to spread disease. Prisoners were injected with tuberculosis or typhus so that experiments could be performed to test treatments. Often, the treatments caused death. Vaccinations were also tested. Prisoners would be selected, then half given the vaccine. All selected prisoners would then be injected with the illness. If any prisoners injected with the vaccine lived, the experiment would be repeated. If any prisoner used in these experiments lived, they were killed and cremated (Aroneanu 85-87).
Many experiments were also performed on women. Women in the camps were selected for artificial insemination. They were also injected with sex hormones that caused abscesses. Hysterectomies were performed. Pieces of healthy uterus were removed for research. The women were often injected with experimental medications that caused extreme pain. They even selected girls who were on their periods to test the effect of bad news on menstruation. The girls who were selected were told they had four days to live, and then were observed to see if the news affected their period (Aroneanu 89-91).
Most people exterminated during the Holocaust were killed in the gas chambers. When there were too many people for the gas chambers, people were burned alive. The people could be heard screaming all the time. Bodies were kept in mass graves, and later just thrown into huge piles (Lewin 12-13). People sent to the gas chamber were often lied to and then killed in large numbers. In the book Remembering to Forget, by Barbie Zelizer, one reporter describes the scene as follows:.
