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In a letter from April 5th 1942 between Dr. Sigmund Rascher and Heinrich Himmler, Rascher explains the results of a low-pressure experiment that was performed on people at Dachau Concentration camp in which the victims were suffocated for to death while Rascher and another unnamed doctor took note of his reactions. The person was described as 37 years old and in good health before being murdered. Rascher described the victim’s actions as he began to loose oxygen and times the changes in behavior. The 37 year old began to wiggle his head at 4 minutes, a minute later Rascher observed that he was suffering from cramps before falling unconscious. He describes how the victim then laid unconscious breathing only 3 times per minute until he stopped breathing 30 minutes after being deprived of oxygen. The victim then turned blue and began foaming at the mouth. An autopsy followed an hour later.

In a letter from September 10th 1942, Dr. Sigmund Rascher describes an experiment on intense cooling performed in Dachau where people were dressed in fighter Pilot uniforms and submerged in freezing water. Doctor Rascher had some of the victims completely underwater and other only submerged up to the head.

M.D. William E. Seidelman is a professor from the University of Toronto who in collaboration with Dr. Howard Israel of Columbia University published a report on an investigation on the Medical experimentations performed in Austria under the Nazi Regime. In that report he mentions a Doctor Hermann Stieve, whom used the war to experiment on live humans. Dr. Stieve specifically focused on the reproductive system of women. He would tell women their execution date in advanced, and he would evaluate how their psychological distress would affect their menstruation cycles. After they were murdered, he would dissect and examine their reproductive organs. Some of the women were even raped after they were told the date when they would be killed, so that Dr. Stieve could study the path of sperm through their reproductive system.

Holocaust survivor named Joseph Tschofenig wrote a statement on the seawater experiments at Dacha. Joseph explained how while working at the medical experimentation stations he gained insight into some of the experiments that were performed on prisoners, namely one where they were forced to drink salt water. Joseph described how victims of the experiments had trouble eating and would desperately seek out any source of water including old floor rags. Joseph was responsible for using the X-ray machine in the infirmary and describes how even though he had insight into what was going on he was powerless to stop it. He gives the example of a patient in the infirmary who was sent to the gas chambers by Dr. Sigmund Rascher because simply because he witnessed one of the low-pressure experiments.

The table of contents of a document from the Nuremburg military tribunals prosecution, includes the titles of sections that document medical experiments revolving around: food, seawater, epidemic jaundice, sulfanilamide, blood coagulation and phlegmone.

On August 12th 1946 a survivor named Jadwiga Kaminska gave a deposition about her time at Ravensbrueck and describes how she was operated on twice. Both operations involved her leg and although she never describes knowing exactly what the procedure was she explains that both times she was in extreme pain and developed a fever post surgery yet was given little to no care. Kaminska describes being told that she had been operated on simply because she was “young girl and polish patriot”. She describes how her leg oozed puss for months after the operations.

In a letter from Heinrich Himmler to Dr. Sigmund Rascher on April 13th 1942, Himmler orders Rascher to continue the high altitude experiments and to continue experimenting on prisoners condemned to death and to “determine whether these men could be recalled to life”. If a victim could be successfully resuscitated, Himmler ordered that he be pardoned to “concentration camp for life”.

Other documented transcriptions from Heinrich Himmler include phrases such as “These researches… can be performed by us with particular efficiency because I personally assumed the responsibility for supplying asocial individuals and criminals who deserve only to die from concentration camps for these experiments.”