Claim: Female inmates at concentration camps given drugs to stop menustration

[Lamprecht]

What do you guys think about this? Apparently the female prisoners at the camps were given birth control drugs. Do most female testimonies mention that their menstruation stopped? You'd think that is something that would be mentioned.

New research provides theory on why women stopped menstruating upon arrival at Nazi death camps

SEPTEMBER 20, 2022

by David McFadden, University of Ottawa

The horrific toll of the Holocaust, with its crimes against humanity amid the state-sponsored mass murder campaign that killed six million Jews and millions of others during World War II, has been scrutinized in numerous academic studies, books, films, and other works over decades.

But one aspect of the extreme cruelty and suffering during this rock-bottom point of human history was never fully examined: Why did roughly 98% of women imprisoned at Nazi concentration camps experience amenorrhea—or the absence of menstruation—shortly after their arrival?

In a new paper published in Social Science & Medicine, lead author Dr. Peggy J. Kleinplatz of the University of Ottawa Faculty of Medicine suggests the sudden cessation of menstruation among Jewish women at concentration camps was too uniform to be effected only by trauma and malnutrition—a set of explanations readily accepted by the late 1940s and rarely investigated further.

Her study, blending historical evidence and the testimony of Holocaust survivors, submits an additional hypothesis: Synthetic steroids were being administered in the daily rations given to female captives in a bid to stop their menstrual cycles and perhaps impair their ability to have children altogether.

"In other horrible mass atrocities in history, this sudden onset of amenorrhea either didn't occur, or occurred slowly in combination with starvation and trauma over a 12- to 18-month period," says Dr. Kleinplatz, a full professor in the uOttawa Faculty of Medicine.

"So, my question was: What was happening to these women in the death camps that was distinctive, causing it to occur immediately, and couldn't be explained fully by the hypotheses of either trauma, or malnutrition, or both? That was when I began to investigate whether there was some deliberate attempt to cause cessation of menstruation in these Jewish women."

Evidence for the theory put forth by Dr. Kleinplatz and co-author Paul Weindling, a historian and professor at Oxford-Brookes University, is backed up by interviews with female Holocaust survivors across the globe. From 2018 to 2021, Dr. Kleinplatz conducted interviews with survivors in four languages: Yiddish, Hebrew, English and French. Ultimately, 93 complete testimonies were collected from female survivors—their average age 92½—or their offspring who could provide complete reproductive histories for the survivors.

The Holocaust survivors told Dr. Kleinplatz they suspected that something in their food rations caused them to suddenly stop menstruating at the camps.

One woman, who had worked in the kitchen at Auschwitz for months when she was a teenager, even described packets of chemicals that were brought each day under armed guard and dissolved into foul soups the female captives were fed so that "women don't get their periods." This narrative of tainted rations is corroborated by findings in a 1969 report that questioned cooks at Auschwitz, the most notorious of the Nazi death camps.

There was long-term impact for the survivors. Nearly all the interviewed women—98%—were unable to conceive or carry to term their desired number of children. The findings report that of 197 confirmed pregnancies, at least 48 (24.4%) ended in miscarriages, 13 (6.6%) in stillbirths and 136 (69.0%) in live births.

"The rates of primary infertility, secondary infertility, miscarriage and stillbirth were disturbingly high and not in keeping with the general population, or even the general population of Jews during those baby boom years," Dr. Kleinplatz says.

Dr. Kleinplatz says the sex steroids, which would have produced immediate amenorrhea, existed in abundance at the time in Germany during the WWII era. This is not a well-known fact. In contrast, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration only approved a hormonal birth control pill in 1960.

The study reports that exogenous sex steroids—which cause an immediate cessation of menstruation—were first synthesized and manufactured in Berlin in 1933 and were available as over-the-counter drugs for the treatment of infertility in Germany. A German pharmacologist and chemist, Adolf Butenandt, was awarded a Nobel Prize in chemistry in the 1930s for his work synthesizing sex steroids.

The researchers say they obtained evidence that large amounts of sex steroids were being produced by German factories from 1943-45, ostensibly to treat infertility. "However, such large quantities of sex steroids would have exceeded dramatically the needs of German women seeking infertility treatment. It seems striking that the manufacture of large amounts of exogenous hormones would have been considered a priority during the scarcities of wartime when plainly, their alleged purpose could have easily been filled with much smaller quantities," the study says.

Evidence at the Nuremburg war crimes trial over half a century ago demonstrated that Nazis sought methods of mass sterilization of Jewish women. And it showed that Nazi leadership instructed those tasked with the plan to "sterilize Jewesses" to stop keeping written records.

After roughly 75 years and over 10,000 testimonies of Holocaust survivors in various oral history projects, it took Dr. Kleinplatz and her co-author to connect the dots and provide a fresh examination of this hidden history.

As the living memory of the Holocaust fades with each passing year, Dr. Kleinplatz urges others to investigate further.

"At this juncture, we are left with more questions than answers," she wrote in the study's conclusions. "It is incumbent on medical researchers, other scientists and historians to continue the search for the answers deserved by each of the women interviewed in this study."

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-09- ... death.html | https://archive.ph/IkMQR

[Mongol]

The full paper is behind a paywall and it wasn't available at Sci-Hub, but the free preview of the paper is published in a format where it includes a snippet from the start of each section of the paper. Within the snippets, the only references to the figure of 98% were the following two sentences (neither of which was given a source) (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953622005561):

Nuremburg trial evidence demonstrated that Nazis sought methods of mass sterilization of Jewish women. Immediately upon arrival at the concentration camps, over 98% of women stopped menstruating.

[...]

For decades it has been known that over 98% of Auschwitz survivors experienced amenorrhea immediately upon arrival.

The story that female inmates were given drugs to stop menstruation is mentioned in Olga Lengyel's book "Five Chimneys" (which was originally published in French in 1946) (https://books.google.com/books?id=ImhLEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT120):

The truth is that in the women, obesity was often provoked by menstrual difficulties. After the liberation of Auschwitz, a Moscow professor, who had made many observations during the autopsies in the investigations, concluded that nine out of every ten internees revealed a distinct withering of the ovaries. Dysmenorrhea was almost a general phenomenon here.

This is no place for scientific explanation, but it is necessary to add that a contributing factor was the constant anguish under which we lived.

The mysterious chemical powder with which the Germans dosed our food was probably one cause for the stoppage of menstruation. I personally could not obtain the proof I wanted that the Germans infused the food with chemicals intended to dull our sexual reactions. Be that as it may, the Lageraelteste, the blocovas, and the Stubendiensts, as well as the kitchen employees, none of whom ate the ordinary camp food, were, in most cases, free from menstrual problems.

Indeed, I have good reason to believe that the Germans poisoned us with their mysterious powder. Once I discussed it with an inmate who worked in the kitchen. She confirmed that the order was to mix this substance into all the food given to us.

"For heaven's sake, get me a little of the powder," I pleaded. "If I ever get out of here, it will be another bit of evidence against them."

"I can't get any," she replied. "The S.S. woman mixes it into the food herself. Nobody else is allowed to go near it."

It was appalling to see how the whole physical bearing of the internees changed during their first weeks in the camp. They lost vitality and their movements became slow and apathetic; they walked with their heels turned inward. In winter their adducent muscles contracted from the cold, accentuating their abnormal carriage.

A few pages earlier she suggested that the soap at the camp may have been made of human fat (even though she didn't state it as a fact): "The Nordic Supermen knew how to profit from everything. Immense casks were used to gather the human grease which had melted down at high temperatures. It was not surprising that the camp soap had such a peculiar odor. Nor was it astonishing that the internees became suspicious at the sight of certain pieces of fat sausage!"

However Lengyel's book also mentions that the crematoria at Birkenau had "120 openings, into each of which three corpses could be placed at one time", and that they cremated "17,280 corpses per twenty-four hour shift" (https://books.google.com/books?id=NCxwCwAAQBAJ&pg=PP114):

Above each rose a high chimney, which was usually fed by nine fires. The four ovens at Birkenau were heated by a total of thirty fires. Each oven had large openings. That is, there were 120 openings, into each of which three corpses could be placed at one time. That meant they could dispose of 360 corpses per operation. That was only the beginning of the Nazi “Production Schedule.”

Three hundred and sixty corpses every half hour, which was all the time it took to reduce human flesh to ashes, made 720 per hour, or 17,280 corpses per twenty-four hour shift. And the ovens, with murderous efficiency, functioned day and night.

However, one must also take into account the death pits, which could destroy another 8,000 cadavers a day. In round numbers, about 24,000 corpses were handled each day. An admirable production record—one that speaks well for German industry.

Lengyel also wrote (https://books.google.com/books?id=NCxwCwAAQBAJ&pg=PP49):

What went into the soup was undoubtedly varied according to the season. But the flavor never changed. This did not make it any less a "surprise" soup. From it we fished buttons, tufts of hair, rags, tin cans, keys, and even mice. One fine day somebody retrieved a tiny metal sewing kit, containing thread and an assortment of needles!

[Butterfangers]

The claim that any impact to menstruation was due to Nazi sterilization scheming is bogus. A summary and analysis of testimony related to 'Holocaust menstruation' was presented as a Masters Thesis at the University of New Brunswick and the insight contained within is of interest, here. While many women reported their perception of a Nazi effort to sterilize them, it is quite clear there were other significant variables to consider:

"For many women like Doris, the loss of a menstrual cycle came almost immediately after internment in the Nazi camps. The combination of malnourishment, harsh physical labour, and extreme environmental conditions forced the women’s bodies to deteriorate mentally, physically, and emotionally." (p.59)
https://unbscholar.lib.unb.ca/islandora ... lar%3A9846

Indeed, it is well-known that prolonged or chronic stress can halt menstrual cycles, perhaps indefinitely. From MayoClinic:

"Mental stress can temporarily alter the functioning of your hypothalamus — an area of your brain that controls the hormones that regulate your menstrual cycle. Ovulation and menstruation may stop as a result. Regular menstrual periods usually resume after your stress decreases."
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-con ... c-20369299

Nonetheless, a huge proportion of female Holocaust 'survivors' insist in their certainty that "brom" or "broma" (bromide) was regularly added to their food and coffee and that it is this addition that caused the cessation of their menstrual cycles (also known as "amenorrhea" in the medical literature). From the same thesis cited earlier:

"Despite the plethora of oral testimonies that reference ‘brom,’ there remains a massive gap on this topic in the secondary literature. Many historians have opted for an explanatory footnote when they use an oral testimony that mentions it. However, there has been no complete work on the subject and in part this could be due to the fact that no one has yet found evidence that the Nazis actually used bromide." (p.70)

It is perhaps admissible that some Nazis in some camps might have tried to prevent menstruation and its associated problems (independently and not as part of some official policy), despite a lack of evidence for this view. Even if this is true, however, it is likely that the prisoners of those camps, themselves, would have demanded it:

"However, for many women the deterioration resulted in the disappearance and subsequent absence of a menstrual cycle and spawned a sign of relief. Most of these women viewed the loss positively because they no longer feared the implications of bleeding in front of fellow prisoners and guards without any sanitary napkins, or access to adequate bathrooms and sanitary conditions." (p.59)

"...due to the to the lack of bathrooms, adequate sanitary napkins, and proper hygienic practices, experiencing a monthly cycle while imprisoned resulted in an extremely gendered form of terror. Women were made to feel humiliated and betrayed by their own bodies and went to extreme lengths to reduce their menses. [...] First, the testimonies revealed that protection provided by sanitary napkins or discarded pieces of newspaper could subside the embarrassment and humiliation of bleeding in front of fellow prisoners, specifically male prisoners. Furthermore, they could relieve the women from having to work, sleep, and socialize while covered in their own blood, and thus it returned some dignity to the women who felt completely dehumanized by their own bodies." (p.87)

Long-story short, extreme labor and other difficult wartime conditions while imprisoned in concentration camps would be sufficient to affect menstruation in women, most likely halting it entirely in the majority of them. For those that were menstruating, they often desperately wished it would stop. If extreme measures to inhibit menstruation were implemented unofficially by some 'Nazis' acting independently (given there is zero evidence of any official policy), it most likely would have been in response to repeated demands coming from the female prisoners, themselves.