Human Experimentation
An Experimentation Victim Fights for Recognition: Jakob Bamberger
Born to a Sinti family in Königsberg, East Prussia (today Kaliningrad), Jakob “Jonny” Bamberger
(1913–89) developed into one of Germany’s most important amateur flyweight boxers in 1933/34. But because of their racist ideology, the Nazis expelled him from the German squad for the 1936 Olympic Games. In both 1938 and 1939, Bamberger achieved second place in his weight class at the German boxing championships.
He was sent to Flossenbürg Concentration Camp in 1942. Transferred to Dachau in February 1943, he was subjected to seawater drinking experiments conducted by the internist Dr Wilhelm Beiglböck. In November 1944, the SS transported Bamberger to Buchenwald, where he found his father. That camp was liberated by the US Army in April 1945. A large part of Bamberger’s family had been killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau. For the rest of his life, he suffered long-term effects from his camp incarceration. The seawater drinking trials had caused severe kidney damage, which was not recognized as a camp injury until 1969. Jakob Bamberger became active in the Sinti and Roma civil rights movement early on. In 1980, he took part in a hunger strike at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site to protest against ongoing discrimination against Sinti and Roma.
![Wilhelm Beiglböck during his interrogation at the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial (9 December 1946 to 20 August 1947), 6 June 1947. Photographer unknown | <span class=prov>National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD, Collection of World War II War Crimes Records, 1933–1949, Record Group 238, File Unit Tribunal I [1] – Medical Trial – Defendants</span>](/site/assets/files/1206/final_wilhelm_beiglboeck_on_witness_stand_during_the_doctors_trial.2000x0.jpg)
Callous Doctors, Deadly Experiments
At concentration camps, prisoners were at the mercy of doctors. In addition to the inadequate medical care, they were also subject to camp doctors’ medical experiments, including Dr Mengele’s “operations” conducted without anaesthesia on twins at Auschwitz, deliberate typhus infections at Natzweiler and Buchenwald, and seawater drinking experiments at Dachau. The latter were conducted on behalf of the Luftwaffe to see whether saltwater could be made drinkable. They were searching for ways to improve the survival chances of German airmen who had been shot down over the sea.
The Austrian internist Dr Wilhelm Beiglböck (1905–63) selected more than forty prisoners as test subjects, who were starved for days and received nothing to drink except either salt water or desalinated seawater. Although there were no deaths, the experiment often left subjects with lifelong suffering due to permanent damage. In 1947, Beiglböck was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment, but was pardoned in 1951. He worked as a doctor again until his death.