The 20th of August, 1947, Nuremberg, Germany. After more than 8 months on trial,
23 defendants, who during the Second World War either participated in a deadly Nazi
euthanasia program - killing mentally ill or physically disabled people deemed “unworthy of
life “ ; or who conducted painful and often deadly medical experiments on thousands of
concentration camp inmates without their permission, hear their sentences read.
Thanks to the gruesome testimonies of dozens of witnesses, the world finally learns the truth
about the pseudo-medical experiments, which violated medical ethics by both their means
and their ends and required the approval by the SS chief Heinrich Himmler. One of
those who performed these experiments is an Austrian physician Wilhelm Beiglböck.
Wilhelm Beiglböck was born on the 10th of October, 1905
in Hochneukirchen, then part of Austria-Hungary. Beiglböck studied medicine at the University of
Vienna and in 1932 he received his doctorate. On the following year, while working as an
assistant at the Medical University Clinic in Vienna, Beiglböck joined the Nazi Party.
As with many Austrian Nazis, his main political goal was the annexation
of Austria to the German Reich which became reality in the spring of 1938.
The Anschluss, as it became known, took place over three days between the 11th and 13th of
March 1938 and was the Nazi German regime’s first act of territorial aggression and expansion.
In 1939 Beiglböck made his habilitation and in 1940 he became a top doctor under Hans
Eppinger – a respected Austrian physician known to have travelled to Moscow to treat
Joseph Stalin in 1936 and a year later he was called to treat Queen Marie of Romania.
The Second World War began on the 1st of September, 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland.
During the war, a number of German physicians conducted painful and often deadly medical
experiments on thousands of prisoners which centered around three topics:
survival of military personnel, testing of drugs and treatments,
and the advancement of Nazi racial and ideological goals.
From May 1941 Beiglböck worked as medical officer of the German Air Forces – the Luftwaffe.
In May 1944, the Reich Ministry of Aviation discussed the potability of
seawater in order to be able to rescue the German pilots who were drifting in the sea.
Since the planned human experiments would be painful and life-threatening, concentration
camp prisoners were used as test subjects. For this reason, 40 Roma and Sinti prisoners
from the Buchenwald concentration camp were transported to Dachau.
At first, for ten days, all test subjects received “full flight rations” which was 3,000 calories.
After that, the groups were allowed to eat only the Luftwaffe's emergency rations and
the victims were divided into three groups: The 1st group received pure sea water;
the 2nd group received only chemically prepared seawater with reduced salt content, which was
dark yellow in color; and the 3rd group received salt water with a camouflaged freshwater taste.
The experiment lasted 10 days and resulted in extreme thirst, convulsions, and delirium.
Since seawater deprives the organism of fluids, the prisoners felt very ill,
their bodies dried out and kidneys, intestines and liver failed. The inmates were so desperate
to find the source of fresh water that they started to lick the freshly mopped floor. A
Holocaust survivor named Joseph Tschofenig, who was responsible for using the X-ray machine in
the infirmary, described how victims of the experiments had trouble eating and
would desperately seek out any source of water, including an old floor rag.
After the war, Karl Höllenreiner, a German Roma inmate who survived these experiments,
recalled: “I had terrible thirst attacks, felt very ill and lost a lot of weight. I
finally got a fever and felt so weak that I could not stand up. I clearly remember a
scene where a Czechoslovakian Roma man asked Wilhelm Beiglböck if he couldn't
possibly drink any more water. This man was then tied to a bed by order of Beiglböck who himself
violently poured the lake water down this Gypsy man using a stomach pump. During the experiments,
most of the men received liver and spinal cord punctures. I myself had a
liver puncture and know from my own experience that these punctures were terribly painful.”
Somewhere between the first and second week of the experiments, all inmates were carried out
of the sickroom into the yard on stretchers covered with white sheets. Here their naked
bodies were photographed and shortly after the recordings, numbers were tattooed on their chests.
The surviving prisoners were subsequently used as forced laborers in armament’s production.
These experiments were conducted by Wilhelm Beiglböck and his colleague from Vienna Hans
Eppinger. Two or three of the prisoners died as a result of these experiences
and the rest were severely weakened. In October 1944, Beiglböck presented the
results of his experiments in a comprehensive report at a conference in Berlin. The result
of these experiments was that the method of chemically processed sea water was useless.
In the end, justice finally caught up with Beiglböck when he was arrested by the allies
and tried at the Nuremberg Doctor’s trial. During the trial one of Beiglböck’s Roma
subjects – previously mentioned Karl Höllenreiner – recognized in Beiglböck the man who had tortured
him at Dachau leaving him with poor health for the remainder of his life. Emotionally overwhelmed by
the sight of his Nazi tormentor, Höllenreiner jumped over the barrier of the dock with a
mighty leap and gave Beiglböck a terrible punch in the face while shouting "This rascal has ruined
my life” . The presiding judge then sentenced Höllenreiner to 90 days in prison while he was
still in court and ended the questioning. However, he was released on probation shortly afterwards.
No further witnesses of experiments were present as Beiglböck had removed the names of the subjects
on which he had conducted his experiments. This was in order to prevent the court from locating
them in the future. In addition, he also changed experimental data and clinical case descriptions.
During the trial, Beiglböck insisted that the test subjects were volunteers. However,
his lies did not help him escape justice.
On the 20th of August 1947, the US military court found Wilhelm Beiglböck guilty of war crimes and
crimes against humanity and sentenced him to 15 years imprisonment. However,
his sentence was later reduced to 10 years and in the end, he was released before Christmas in 1951.
Soon after, the German Society of Internal Medicine campaigned for
Beiglböck's rehabilitation. The experts claimed no deaths or long-term damage had occurred among
the test subjects, and claimed that Beiglböck had acted with the best medical intentions. However,
these opinions were based entirely on files submitted to the experts by
Beiglböck's attorney and none of the experts had seen any of the test subjects themselves.
Because Beiglböck’s license to practice medicine had not been revoked,
he became a chief physician at the Hospital of Buxtehude where he worked between 1952 and 1963.
Though for the rest of his life Beiglböck tried to justify the crimes committed in Dachau, his
dark past haunted him until his very end. Wilhelm Beiglböck was 58 years old when he was found dead
in a stairwell on the 22nd of November 1963. Circumstances of his death suggest a suicide,
but rumors of murder arose due to the threatening letters which he received prior to his death.
The main heir of his fortune was Stille Hilfe – meaning “Silent
Help” - an organization for arrested, condemned and fugitive members of the SS.
Even after his death, Beiglböck's supporters continued to claim that the prisoners had
volunteered for his experiments. During his funeral, a state physician representative said
that Beiglböck had been innocent and after the war he was caught up in a wheelwork of hatred
that knew no justice. However, Beiglböck’s victims would most certainly disagree.
There were no tears shed for Wilhelm Beiglböck.
thanks for watching the World History Channel be sure to like And subscribe
and click the Bell notification icon so you don't miss our next
episodes we thank you and we'll see you next time on the channel
foreign