Human experimentation during the Holocaust. On paper, it sounds clinical, scientific, even, but in reality, it’s a twisted chapter of history that’s almost impossible to comprehend, and even harder to stomach. It’s about experiments done in the name of “progress,” but at the expense of humanity itself. What drew me to this topic wasn’t just the gruesome details (although those are hard to ignore), it was the bigger question of how people, doctors, no less, could justify such horrors. How did they look at another human being and see not a life, but a tool? That question stuck with me, and I wanted to understand how something so morally bankrupt could happen under the guise of medicine.

Learning about this topic shifted the way I see the Holocaust as a whole. Before, I thought of it primarily as a genocide, a horrifyingly systematic attempt to erase entire groups of people. But the experiments added another layer of cruelty. It wasn’t just about extermination, it was about exploitation. It was about seeing people not as individuals with lives and stories but as objects to be used and discarded. This understanding made the Holocaust feel even more insidious. It wasn’t just about hatred or power, it was about stripping away every shred of dignity. It also made me think about how these atrocities weren’t just confined to history. How often do we see unethical actions today, cloaked in the name of “progress” or “necessity”? The line between science and morality is thinner than I realized, and it’s a line that needs constant vigilance.

But this project left me with more questions than answers. For one, how did someone like Josef Mengele, or any of the doctors involved, live with themselves? Did they truly believe they were contributing to science, or was it just an excuse to justify their actions? And then there’s the bigger question: how did so many people go along with this? Was it fear, apathy, or something else entirely? Finally, how do survivors like Eva Mozes Kor find it within themselves to forgive, to relive their trauma through testimony, and to still believe in the goodness of humanity?

In the end, this topic isn’t just about history, it’s about the dangers of forgetting. It’s about what happens when ethics take a backseat to ambition or ideology. It’s a reminder that progress isn’t progress if it comes at the cost of humanity. And maybe, just maybe, it’s a call for all of us to ask ourselves where we draw the line, and what we’ll do when someone tries to cross it.