Herta Oberheuser

Herta Oberheuser
Oberheuser in 1946 or 1947
Born(1911-05-15)15 May 1911
Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, German Empire
Died24 January 1978(1978-01-24) (aged 66)
Linz am Rhein, Rhineland-Palatinate, West Germany
NationalityGerman
Occupation(s)Physician, field in dermatology
Years active1937–1945, 1952–1958
Known forPerforming medical atrocities on prisoners at the Ravensbrück concentration camp
Political partyNazi Party
Criminal statusDeceased
Conviction(s)War crimes
Crimes against humanity
TrialDoctors' trial
Criminal penalty20 years imprisonment; commuted to 10 years imprisonment; served only 5 years (released for good behavior)

Herta Oberheuser (15 May 1911 – 24 January 1978) was a German Nazi physician and convicted war criminal who performed medical atrocities on prisoners at the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp.[1] For her role in the Holocaust, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison at the Doctors' Trial, but served only five years of her sentence. A survivor of Ravensbrück called Oberheuser "a beast masquerading as a human".[2]

Education and Nazi Party membership

In 1937, Oberheuser obtained her medical degree at the University of Bonn, Germany, having specialized in dermatology.[3] She had a residency in the department of dermatology of the University of Düsseldorf.[4] Soon thereafter she joined the Nazi Party as an intern, and later served as doctor for the League of German Girls.[3] In 1940, Oberheuser was appointed to serve as an assistant to Karl Gebhardt, then Chief Surgeon of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and Heinrich Himmler's personal doctor.[3]

War crimes

Oberheuser and Gebhardt were posted to Ravensbrück in 1942 in order to conduct experiments on its prisoners, with an emphasis on finding better methods of treating infection.[3] The experiments were performed by a group of doctors known as the 'Hohenlychen group'.[5] The group conducted gruesome medical experiments, without anaesthetic, such as infecting wounds with rusty nails, broken shards of glass, dirt or sawdust; treating purposely infected wounds with sulphonamide;[6] and removing or amputating bone, muscle, and nerve tissue to study regeneration.[7]

The experiments were conducted on 86 women, 74 of whom were Polish political prisoners.[8] Five of the prisoners died as a direct result of the experiments[9][10] and those who survived were often crippled for life.[11] They were cruelly referred to not as human beings but as "guinea pigs" or "rabbits".[12][13]

Oberheuser "did a great deal of the actual work".[14] Her duties included conducting humiliating gynaecological examinations on women arriving at the camp,[15] selecting young, healthy Polish inmates for the human experiments to be conducted on,[16] infecting wounds, and assisting in all surgical procedures.[17] She was also one of the group members responsible for post operative care of the victims, but is recalled by witnesses as having done not much other than making the injuries worse.[5] For example, one survivor Stefania Lotocka remembers Oberheuser refusing to provide water to many victims and, when she did, mixing it with vinegar.[5] She also ordered that victims were not to be given medicine to relieve their pain. Oberheuser later tried to justify her inhumane actions and claimed that Germans had the right to experiment, because the victims were members of the Polish underground resistance against the Nazi Regime.[18]

Trial

Oberheuser during sentencing to 20 years of imprisonment, Doctors' trial, Nuremberg, August 1947.

When 22 medical staff from the concentration camps were on trial in the Nuremberg "Doctors' trial" in 1948, Oberheuser was the only female defendant.[19] She commented of her gender that "being a woman didn't stop me being a good National Socialist. I think female National Socialists were every bit as valuable as men in keeping alive what we believe."[20]

Oberheuser pleaded not guilty at her trial, but admitted in her affidavit that "I have myself dispensed five or six injections."[21] She was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to 20 years in prison.[22][23] Her sentence was commuted to 10 years in January 1951.[24] She benefited from the massive protests by West German citizens and politicians over the upcoming executions of the remaining 28 war criminals who were on death row under U.S. military law[25] and from directly petitioning the Advisory Board.[26]

Later life

Oberheuser served her sentence at Landsberg Prison, and was released after just five years[23] in April 1952 for good behaviour. She became a family doctor in Stocksee, near Kiel, in West Germany.[3] She lost her position in August 1958 after a Ravensbrück survivor recognized her, and the interior minister of Schleswig-Holstein, Helmut Lemke, revoked her medical license and shut down her practice.[27] Oberheuser appealed to the Schleswig-Holstein administrative court, which rejected the appeal in December 1960. She never practiced medicine again and was fined.[28][29] She died in a German nursing home in 1978.[3][5]

References

  1. ^ Kravetz, Melissa (2019-03-11). Women Doctors in Weimar and Nazi Germany: Maternalism, Eugenics, and Professional Identity. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. p. 169. ISBN 978-1-4426-2964-6.
  2. ^ Kater, Michael H. (1987). "The Burden of the Past: Problems of a Modern Historiography of Physicians and Medicine in Nazi Germany". German Studies Review. 10 (1): 31–56. doi:10.2307/1430442. ISSN 0149-7952. JSTOR 1430442. PMID 11653789.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Mikaberidze, Alexander (2013-06-25). Atrocities, Massacres, and War Crimes: An Encyclopedia [2 Volumes]: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781598849264.
  4. ^ Weyers, Wolfgang (1998). Death of Medicine in Nazi Germany: Dermatology and Dermatopathology Under the Swastika. New York: Ardor Scribendi. p. 297. ISBN 978-1-56833-122-5.
  5. ^ a b c d Docking, Kate (13 December 2016). "Human Experimentation at Ravensbrück Concentration Camp". University of Kent School of History's Centre for the History of Medicine, Ethics and Medical Humanities blog.
  6. ^ Rubenfeld, Sheldon; Benedict, Susan (2014-06-30). Human Subjects Research after the Holocaust. Springer. p. 42. ISBN 978-3-319-05702-6.
  7. ^ Roland, Paul (2018-07-31). Nazi Women of the Third Reich: Serving the Swastika. London: Arcturus Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78888-726-7.
  8. ^ McGill, Mary (2017-07-31). "The Forgotten Horror of Ravensbrück, the Nazi Concentration Camp for Women". VICE. Retrieved 2024-09-21.
  9. ^ Dawson, Mackenzie (2016-05-08). "After Hitler's pal died, Nazis recreated his injuries in a sick experiment". New York Post. Retrieved 2017-06-19.
  10. ^ Półtawska, W. (6 September 2016) "Experimental operations at Ravensbrück concentration camp." In Bałuk-Ulewiczowa, T., trans. Medical Review – Auschwitz. https://www.mp.pl/auschwitz. Originally published as “Operacje doświadczalne w obozie koncentracyjnym Ravensbrück.” Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim. pp. 90–97. Retrieved 6 May 2022.
  11. ^ Malick, Robert W. (2017-01-16). "Oberheuser, Herta". In Frankenburg, Frances R. (ed.). Human Medical Experimentation: From Smallpox Vaccines to Secret Government Programs. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. ISBN 979-8-216-09982-6.
  12. ^ Galberg, Jenna. (2020) "The 'Rabbits' of Ravensbrück: Medical Experimentation at the Nazi Concentration Camp for Women". Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 1572.
  13. ^ ""The Rabbits of Ravensbrück"". digitalgallery.bgsu.edu. Retrieved 2024-09-21.
  14. ^ Trials of war criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals under Control Council law no. 10, Nuremberg, October 1946-April, 1949. v. 2. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1949. p. 295.
  15. ^ Docking, Kate (2021-05-17). "Gender, Recruitment and Medicine at Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, 1939–1942". German History. 39 (3): 419–441. doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghab021. ISSN 0266-3554.
  16. ^ Weindling, Paul (2015-02-12). Victims and Survivors of Nazi Human Experiments: Science and Suffering in the Holocaust. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 89. ISBN 978-1-4725-7993-5.
  17. ^ Spitz, Vivien (2005). Doctors from Hell: The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans. Boulder, Colorado: Sentient Publications. p. 116. ISBN 978-1-59181-032-2.
  18. ^ Weindling, Paul Julian (2004-10-29). Nazi Medicine and the Nuremberg Trials: From Medical Warcrimes to Informed Consent. New York: Springer. p. 14. ISBN 978-0-230-50605-3.
  19. ^ Roland, Paul (2014-08-15). Nazi Women: The Attraction of Evil. London: Arcturus Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78428-046-8.
  20. ^ Whittock, Martyn (2011-06-23). "The Nazi Impact on Society: Women and the Third Reich". A Brief History of The Third Reich: The Rise and Fall of the Nazis. Little, Brown Book Group. p. 194. ISBN 978-1-84901-816-6.
  21. ^ Mitscherlich, Alexander; Mielke, Fred (1962). The Death Doctors. Elek Books. p. 202.
  22. ^ Spitz, Vivien (2005). Doctors from Hell: The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans. Boulder, Colorado: Sentient Publications. p. 265. ISBN 978-1-59181-032-2.
  23. ^ a b Heathcote, Gina; Bertotti, Sara; Jones, Emily; Labenski, Sheri A. (2022-08-25). The Law of War and Peace: A Gender Analysis: Volume One. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 194. ISBN 978-1-78699-669-5.
  24. ^ Fulbrook, Mary (2018). Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 266–267. ISBN 978-0-19-881123-7.
  25. ^ Mitscherlich, Alexander; Miekle, Fred (1992). "Epilogue: Seven Were Hanged". In Annas, George J.; Grodin, Michael A. (eds.). The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code: Human Rights in Human Experimentation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 105. ISBN 978-0-19-977226-1.
  26. ^ Hutchinson, Robert (2022-01-01). After Nuremberg: American Clemency for Nazi War Criminals. Yale University Press. p. 279. ISBN 978-0-300-25530-0.
  27. ^ Docking, Kate (31 July 2018). "Who Worked at Ravensbrück? | History Today". www.historytoday.com. Retrieved 2024-09-21.
  28. ^ Cymes, Michel (2015-01-14). Hippocrate aux enfers - Chapitre 13 - "Elle n'était pas mauvaise" - Herta Oberheuser (in French). Éditions Stock. ISBN 9782234078413.
  29. ^ Wodenshek, Haley (2015-04-01). "Ordinary Women: Female Perpetrators of the Nazi Final Solution". Senior Theses and Projects.
  30. ^ Kelly, Martha Hall (2014-07-16). "Herta Oberheuser, one of the main characters in Lilac Girls". Martha Hall Kelly. Retrieved 2024-09-21.
  31. ^ Kelly, Martha Hall (2022-01-20). The Lilac Girls of Ravensbrück.