[DISABILITIES IN CHILDREN BORN TO VICTIMS OF MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS]

Between 2001 and 2005 the Claims Conference administered the Fund for Victims of Medical Experiments on behalf of the German Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future." A small percentage of claimants to the Fund, all of whom were victims of fertility experiments performed predominantly in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Ravensbrück, noted on their applications that their children were born with physical or mental disabilities. All claimants attributed the disabilities to the sterilization, hormone and pharmaceutical experiments that were performed on them. To date there has been no comprehensive research into the extent to which these experiments might have led to physical or mental disabilities in the children of survivors. In order to close this gap, the Claims Conference analyzed 1,363 applications to the Fund for Victims of Medical Experiments, 559 of which were clearly categorized as fertility experiments. Of the 559 claims, approximately 8% noted on the application form that their children were born with disabilities, ranging from congenital problems to fertility issues. This figure is significantly higher than the average 2-3% rate of newborns with disabilities. And the actual percentage of claimants bearing children with disabilities is presumed to be substantially higher, given that the majority of sterilization experiment victims were rendered infertile as a result of the experiments. Most second-generation victims are children of claimants that were subjected to the well-researched sterilization experiments, in particular Dr. Carl Clauberg's intrauterine sterilization experiments and Dr. Horst Schumann's x-ray castration experiments. Another group of female applicants claimed pharmacological experiments causing amenorrhea and subsequently, long-term effects.