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Herta Oberheuser

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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

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In 1937, Oberheuser obtained her medical degree in Bonn, having specialized in dermatology.[3] 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

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Oberheuser and Gebhardt came 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'.[4] The group conducted gruesome medical experiments (treating purposely infected wounds with sulphonamide, as well as bone, muscle, and nerve regeneration and transplantation) on 86 women, 74 of whom were Polish political prisoners. Five of them died as a direct result of the experiments.[5][6]

Oberheuser's duties included selecting young, healthy Polish inmates for experiments to be conducted on, without their consent,[7] and assisting in all surgical procedures.[8] 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.[4] For example, one survivor Stefania Lotocka remembers Oberheuser refusing to provide water to many victims and, when she did, mixing it with vinegar.[4] She also ordered that victims were not to be given pain relief medicine. Prisoners who survived were often crippled for life.[7]

Oberheuser later tried to justify her actions and claimed that Germans had the right to experiment, because the victims were members of the resistance.[9]

Trial

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

Oberheuser was the only female defendant in the Nuremberg "Doctors' trial", where she was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to 20 years in prison.[10] Her sentence was commuted to 10 years in January 1951,[11] a benefit of 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.[12]

Later life

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Oberheuser served her sentence at Landsberg Prison, and was released in April 1952 for good behaviour. She became a family doctor in Stocksee, near Kiel, in West Germany. 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. Oberheuser appealed to the Schleswig-Holstein administrative court, which rejected the appeal in December 1960. She never practiced medicine again and was fined.[13][14] She died in a German nursing home in 1978.[3][4]

References

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  1. ^ Kravetz, Melissa (2019-03-11). Women Doctors in Weimar and Nazi Germany: Maternalism, Eugenics, and Professional Identity. 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 Mikaberidze, Alexander (2013-06-25). Atrocities, Massacres, and War Crimes: An Encyclopedia [2 Volumes]: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781598849264.
  4. ^ a b c d "Human Experimentation at Ravensbrück Concentration Camp". University of Kent School of History's Centre for the History of Medicine, Ethics and Medical Humanities blog. 13 December 2016.
  5. ^ 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.
  6. ^ 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.
  7. ^ a b 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.
  8. ^ Spitz, Vivien (2005). Doctors from Hell: The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans. Sentient Publications. p. 116. ISBN 978-1-59181-032-2.
  9. ^ Weindling, Paul Julian (2004-10-29). Nazi Medicine and the Nuremberg Trials: From Medical Warcrimes to Informed Consent. Springer. p. 14. ISBN 978-0-230-50605-3.
  10. ^ Spitz, Vivien (2005). Doctors from Hell: The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans. Sentient Publications. p. 265. ISBN 978-1-59181-032-2.
  11. ^ Fulbrook, Mary (2018). Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice. Oxford University Press. pp. 266–267. ISBN 978-0-19-881123-7.
  12. ^ 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. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 105. ISBN 978-0-19-977226-1.
  13. ^ Cymes, Michel (2015-01-14). Hippocrate aux enfers - Chapitre 13 - "Elle n'était pas mauvaise" - Herta Oberheuser (in French). Éditions Stock. ISBN 9782234078413.
  14. ^ Wodenshek, Haley (2015-04-01). "Ordinary Women: Female Perpetrators of the Nazi Final Solution". Senior Theses and Projects.
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