Inside of the Third Reich, a huge network of concentration camps were set up and were
established by the SS.
Inside of these camps, a huge amount of cruelty occurred as the persecution turned to mass
murder and slaughter.
After the Second World War a number of members of staff at former camps such as Bergen Belsen
and Auschwitz were brought to trial accused of crimes against humanity and despicable
evil.
Following the war crimes trials, a number of guards, doctors and other functionaries
were sentenced to death and were executed.
But a large amount of staff were never brought to justice or seemingly received a lenient
prison sentence which did not add up to their actions during the war.
Today we look at a doctor who performed medical experiments inside of Auschwitz, but she would
only serve a number of years in prison despite being involved in horrific crimes.
Join us today as we look at ‘The Disgusting Crimes of Hertha Oberheuser, Doctor Death
of Ravensbruck.’
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Herta Oberheuser first received her medical degree in 1937 after studying in Bonn and
she specialised in the field of Dermatology.
However around this time she also joined the Nazi Party and became an intern, and then
served as a doctor inside of the League of German Girls.
The female youth groups would teach girls how to become mothers and complete domestic
roles inside the home.
The Nazis wanted women to have as many children as possible for Hitler’s empire.
But after working with the youth group for a few years, Oberheuser was promoted and was
working as an assistant to Karl Gebhardt.
Gebhardt at the time was the Chief surgeon of the SS, and was Heinrich Himmler’s personal
doctor.
Gebhardt’s involvement in there crimes of the Third Reich is immense, and he was involved
in conducting a huge number of experiments.
He would later be sentenced to death and would be executed for his horrific crimes, being
hanged inside of Landsberg Prison on the 2nd June 1948.
Herta Oberheuser would go along with Karl Gebhardt whilst he conducted some of his most
brutal experiments inside of Concentration Camps.
The pair accompanied by other doctors and went to Ravensbruck in 1942 to conduct experiments
on the prisoners there.
Inside of Ravensbruck, the camp was an all female prison.
Inside here was also a female SS guards training camp, in which some of the most sadistic guards
of the camps were trained by women such as Maria Mandl.
Here they were schooled in brutality and violence and were taught how to install reigns of terror.
But also in Ravensbruck a huge number of medical experiments took place.
At the camp, Oberheuser and Gebhardt worked to experiment on prisoners with the goal of
finding better ways of treating infections.
These experiments were performed by a number of doctors including Oberheuser who became
known as the Hohenlychen group, and Oberheuser would study patients after they had operations,
and was involved in the post operative care of the victims.
Initially the group faced opposition for their experiments from the Camp Commandant Fritz
Suhren, but he was forced to allow the group to continue.
At the camp, Gebhardt carried out experiments with Oberheuser in which they deliberately
broke the legs of prisoners, and then infected them with various different infections and
diseases, and then wanted to prove the best way of treating gas gangrene.
These experiments were rather futile and pointless, and the group also tried to transplant the
limbs from camp victims to German soldiers who were wounded on the eastern front.
The prisoners received little or no nursing care, and Oberheuser was noted by witnesses
and patients for providing literally no aftercare for patients and actually made the injuries
worse.
One witness named Stefania Lotocka stated how Oberheuser refused to provide water and
hydration to many of the victims, and when she did this she mixed in vinegar with the
water, ultimately poisoning and making the patients sick.
Also she and her other doctors would insert wood and glass into injuries to bring along
infection, which was very dangerous.
Many of the wounds treated by the group she belonged to were infected with Sulfonamide,
and 86 women were experimented on, and a number of these died because of the experiments.
Another witness said that, ‘Oberheuser at first promised to dress my wounds, and smiling
went out of the ward and we saw no more of her that day,’ leaving prisoners to just
suffer.
It was also said by another victim that, ‘Oberheuser told us herself that she could give nothing
to alleviate out pains.’
She would also refuse to give patients morphine despite their screams, and a number of women
were also executed after their involvement in the trials.
Inside of Nazi Germany, the fact Herta Oberheuser was a woman and a doctor was a rarity, especially
one who worked inside of the SS and the concentration camps.
From this we can deduce that she must have been favoured by the Nazis, as many women
were sacked from their medical jobs inside of the Third Reich, in favour of them performing
domestic roles in the house.
After the war, Herta Oberheuser was captured, and was brought to stand trial at the Doctor’s
trial at Nuremberg. 20 of the 23 defendants were medical doctors, and were accused of
being involved in the Nazi human experimentation and the program of mass murder and euthanasia.
Oberheuser was the only woman who stood trial in the proceedings, and after the proceedings
a number of high ranking doctors including Karl Brandt and Viktor Brack were sentenced
to death and executed.
Inside of the court room she was accused with ‘special responsibility and participation
in the medical crimes at Ravensbruck.
Despite witnesses coming forward to testify about her brutality, Herta Oberheuser was
sentenced to 20 years in prison, however she would only serve a few of them.
Her sentence was later reduced to 10 years, and she was actually released in 1952, just
7 years after the war had come to an end.
What was incredibly shocking about Oberheuser was that after her release, she returned to
practising medicine and returned to being a doctor inside of Germany.
She became a family doctor in Stocksee in West Germany, and this outraged the British.
Her medical license was later revoked after a Ravensbruck survivor recognised her and
appealed for her to be sacked.
She appealed a number of times but this was rejected, and she would never practice medicine
again and was fined.
It’s not known what she did with the rest of her life, but it’s clear that she would
have been rather unhappy.
She died in 1978 inside of a nursing home.
Because of her involvement inside of medical experiments at Ravensbruck, dozens of women
who were experimented on by Herta Oberheuser were left with life long suffering and disabilities.
She was involved in the killing of some of these women, and she actively denied help
to a number of them.
She was a Nazi who had joined the party, and what makes her a rare case is the fact that
there were very few female Nazi doctors who were actually brought to trial or actually
practiced inside of the Third Reich.
Despite her crimes, she only served around 6 years imprisonment by the allies, but her
superior Gebhardt would be executed for her crimes.
Today many of Herta Oberheuser’s crimes remain untold.
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