Doctors From Hell

May 15, 2005
Spitz reported the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials in Germany from 1946 to 1948 for the U.S. War Department. In writing her book, she worked from a condensed transcript of the 11,538-page court reporters' record, which she helped prepare. Her horrendous story of evil--and ultimate justice--covers the trials of 20 doctors and three medical assistants charged with crimes against humanity and calculated genocide. She recounts experiments in which concentration-camp inmates were forced into high-altitude chambers and sent to 68,000 feet without oxygen; the suffering of inmates forced to undergo freezing experiments in tanks of ice water until they died; malaria experiments on 1,200 inmates; and experiments in which inmates were artificially wounded and infected with mustard gas. There were sulfanilamide experiments conducted on Polish Catholic priests in Dachau, and seawater experiments on Gypsies. Spitz also reports on the judgments and sentences in these trials. The book paints a nightmarish picture of a world without hope that had lost all its values and meaning.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)