What the contraceptive pill has to do with Auschwitz

16.08.2025 16 August 2025

When the birth control pill came onto the market in 1960, it gave women a measure of freedom. But the foundations for the drug were laid by gynecologist Carl Clauberg, who sterilized female prisoners at Auschwitz.

Renée Düring recalls the intense pain she felt when a prisoner tattooed her camp number at Auschwitz . "Be glad you're getting a number, otherwise you'd end up in the furnace," he said. The Nazis gave her a choice: "Either you go to the Birkenau extermination camp," she was told, "or you make yourself available to us for medical research. That won't kill you."

Renée Düring (1921-2018) chose the latter – and ended up as a human guinea pig in the hands of gynecologist Carl Clauberg. She told her story to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1992. The Cologne Jew was one of hundreds of women on whom the physician conducted sterilization experiments.

Carl Clauberg: Authority in hormone research

Clauberg studied at the Medical Faculty in Kiel and earned his doctorate in 1925. He specialized in gynecology and developed hormone preparations together with chemists from the pharmaceutical company Schering-Kahlbaum. His method for helping infertile women become pregnant made him an authority on hormone research .

On May 1, 1933, Carl Clauberg joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) and the SA ( Sturmabteilung, a paramilitary combat organization of the NSDAP, editor's note ). Like many doctors in Nazi Germany, he hoped for help from those in power to advance his research. Under the Nazis, it was every German woman's duty to bear as many children as possible—preferably blonde and blue-eyed.

Clauberg is also researching a method for sterilizing women. This was entirely in keeping with the inhumane Nazi racial policy, which aimed to deny Jews , Sinti, and Roma the right to have children and to exterminate them.

In 1942, Clauberg sent a request to Heinrich Himmler, the most powerful man in Germany after Adolf Hitler —and responsible for carrying out the Holocaust. The gynecologist stated that he wanted to implement his "new method for the non-surgical sterilization of inferior women" and needed space for this.

In the spring of 1943, the time had come. Although he wasn't given his own institute, he did receive a wing in Auschwitz. Clauberg created his own experimental laboratory in Block 10. The first Jewish women from the neighboring Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp were relocated there.

According to Clauberg, the female prisoners were faceless to him; he was only interested in their abdomens . "In the morning, after we were counted, our numbers were called and we were taken downstairs. We waited in a line outside and then, one after the other, we were taken into a room and laid on a black glass table, which was an X-ray table. While the fluid was injected into our bodies, the X-ray machine ran so the doctor could see what he was doing with the fluid, but this injection burned so terribly," Renée Düring recalled years later of the torture she had to endure.

Neither Renée nor the other women know what's happening to them at the time. Clauberg practices on them what he's previously tested on animals. His instruments aren't sterile, and the doctor uses them multiple times. There's no anesthesia—just the injection. If the contrast agent shows him that the fallopian tubes are permeable, the women return to the table a week or two later. Then he injects a toxic substance into the abdomen, which is supposed to clog and burn the walls of the fallopian tubes. If that doesn't work, he repeats the procedure. "I had to lie down for three days in terrible pain," says Düring.

Purulent peritonitis, blood poisoning, labor-like pain, and terrible burning – these are common side effects of Clauberg's experiments. The women try to hold back their screams, because they are told otherwise they will be sent to the gas chamber in Birkenau.

How is it possible for a doctor to throw all ethical concerns aside and treat people like animals? "Medical and humane considerations play a subordinate role the moment someone assumes and accepts: These are no longer human beings, they are subhuman," historian Prof. Dr. Andrea Löw from the Center for Holocaust Studies in Munich told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung. Clauberg's approach was also characterized by "boundless ambition." "He saw his opportunity to exploit the system to advance his career and achieve fame and glory. He subordinated everything to that."

Himmler wants to know from Clauberg how much time it would take to sterilize 1,000 women. The doctor's answer: A suitably trained doctor alone with 10 assistants should most likely be able to sterilize a few hundred, if not 1,000, Jews in a day.

That never happened. On January 27, 1945 , the Red Army liberated Auschwitz . Clauberg had already escaped to the women's concentration camp Ravensbrück , where he continued his experiments. When the Soviets advanced there in April, he fled. Two months later, he was discovered, arrested, and sentenced to 25 years in a penal camp in Moscow. But in 1955, he was released early from captivity and felt "a truly royal welcome" from his hometown, as documented in the files of the Kiel Public Prosecutor's Office . Clauberg returned to work at the Kiel University Hospital. The medical profession was far from denazified, and his colleague, who had worked in Auschwitz, was most welcome.

But in November 1955, the Central Council of Jews filed charges against Clauberg; there were over 100 witnesses willing to testify against him. He himself spoke of defamation and felt like a victim of the justice system. He claimed he wanted to save the women in Block from death; his facility was a "life-saving institute"; this is what the investigation files state. But Carl Clauberg died on August 9, 1957, before he could be put on trial.

According to records, the doctor sterilized 500 to 700 women . Many of his victims survived – traumatized and infertile. Renée Düring, however, was able to experience a miracle: despite Clauberg's interventions, she became the mother of a daughter.

On August 18, 1960, the first hormonal contraceptive, called "Enovid," was launched in the United States. Clauberg's basic research contributed significantly to the drug's development. The Schering Company, which once financed Clauberg's experiments, was absorbed into the Bayer pharmaceutical company. It markets the birth control pill. "This revolutionary method of family planning became a key factor in emancipation and a turning point for society," the company announced on its website .

The women in Block 10 did not have the choice to decide for or against having a child.