ROME (JTA) — More than 150 medical instruments possibly used to conduct experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz were donated to its memorial museum.
A museum spokesman announced the donation of the collection on the Auschwitz museum’s website.
The collection, which was found near the Nazi death camp in Poland following its liberation in 1945, had been held in private hands for more than 60 years.
"This is a great event, quite unusual," museum director Piotr Cywinski said. "There are very few items related to the SS doctors’ pseudoscientific experiments. Evidence of their crimes were either destroyed or consistently sent to the depths of the Reich."
The museum said the collection included mainly gynecological and surgical instruments, and there was a "very high probability" that they were used in the camp.
"Presumably they belonged to the SS doctors who, because of the experiments they conducted, could be in possession of such medical instruments," said Piotr Setkiewicz, the manager of the museum research department.
Setkiewicz said it was it was possible that the instruments had been owned by SS Dr. Carl Clauberg, who carried out experiments on the sterilization of women in Auschwitz block 10, or three other Nazi doctors — Eduard Wirths, Horst Schumann or Bruno Weber — who also used female camp prisoners in their experiments.
