Schering Laboratories

Schering Laboratories is identified in the book as a company that paid a colleague of Josef Mengele to conduct in-vitro fertilisation experiments. Its brief but pointed appearance connects commercial sponsorship of medical research to the broader system of exploitation at Auschwitz, while the account does not specify the colleague, the experimental procedures, or their outcomes.

Identity and Evidence

The company is named among German businesses and institutions implicated in the wartime economy surrounding Auschwitz. The account’s most specific claim about Schering Laboratories is that it paid one of Mengele’s colleagues to carry out experiments in in-vitro fertilisation. This is presented in a passage recalling the camp’s medical and industrial practices, rather than as a separate history of the company.

Research at Auschwitz

The reference to Schering Laboratories sits within a description of research conducted under the coercive conditions of the camp. Elsewhere, the book recounts how Mengele used Miklós Nyiszli in examinations of prisoners, including twins, and describes organs being sent to Otmar von Verschuer’s institute in Berlin. These accounts establish the wider setting of medical research at Auschwitz; they do not establish that Schering Laboratories commissioned those particular examinations or received their materials. The company-specific detail remains limited to its payment for a colleague’s in-vitro fertilisation experiments.

Corporate Context and Significance

In a later outburst, Mengele places Schering Laboratories alongside other firms in a wider indictment of businesses that benefited from Auschwitz. The passage describes industrial companies using prisoner labor and refers to pharmaceutical testing on camp inmates, while Mengele accuses postwar corporate leaders of prospering after the war as he himself remains a fugitive. The narrative thus makes the company’s payment significant not through a detailed account of its internal operations, but as one example of the links it draws between research, commercial interests, and the exploitation of prisoners. It does not provide a separate account of Schering Laboratories’ postwar conduct or establish the company’s specific fate.