Explore the Medical incidents of this artwork.
The German authorities also incarcerated a number of children in concentration camps and transit camps. Physicians and medical researchers of the Schutzstaffel (SS), a Nazi paramilitary organization, used children, especially twins, in concentration camps for medical experiments that often resulted in the deaths of the children.
In their "search to retrieve 'Aryan blood'", or the perfect race, SS race experts ordered hundreds of children in occupied Poland and the occupied parts of the Soviet Union to be kidnapped and transferred to the Reich to be adopted by racially suitable German families. Although the basis for these decisions was "race-scientific," often blond hair, blue eyes, or fair skin was sufficient to merit the "opportunity" to be "Germanized." On the other hand, female Poles and Soviet civilians who had been deported to Germany for forced labor were often forced into sexual relations with a German man; many cases resulted in pregnancy, and the women were forced to have abortions or to bear their children under conditions that would ensure the infant's death, if the race experts determined that the child would have insufficient German blood.
concentration camp Schutzstaffel Soviet Union Nazi