Karl Genzken

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Karl Genzken as a defendant in the Nuremberg medical trial

Karl Edmund August Genzken (born June 8, 1885 in Preetz ; † October 10, 1957 in Hamburg-Blankenese ) was a medic, SS group leader and head of the medical office of the Waffen SS . Genzken was involved in medical experiments on prisoners from several concentration camps .

Life

Genzken passed the Abitur in 1905 after attending secondary school in Preetz and high school in Kiel . On April 2, 1906, he joined the Imperial Navy . He finished his medical studies at the universities of Tübingen , Marburg , Munich and Kiel in 1911. During his studies, he became a member of the Tübingen fraternity in 1906, Derendingia . On November 18, 1912 he was promoted to naval assistant doctor and on November 15, 1913 to senior naval doctor. From 1914 Genzken served as a doctor at III. Sea battalion in Tsingtau . At the outbreak of World War I , he was available to the provinces Jiaozhou Bay , and as district doctor of the Iltis - Battery commanded. On September 19, he was promoted to naval staff doctor and deployed in the fortress hospital and in Taitungschen. After the siege of Tsingtau and the capture of the city by the Imperial Japanese Army , Genzken was not taken into Japanese captivity as a medic , but was able to leave for Tientsin in November 1914 . From there he went to Shanghai and continued to San Francisco in June 1915 . From there he returned to Germany and there again joined the medical forces . From July 1915 he was fort physician for the Schilling Battery of the II Naval Artillery Department in Wilhelmshaven . His doctorate in Kiel also dates back to 1915. From October 1915, Genzken then served in various positions, including as a ship's doctor . During this time he also built up the medical services for the submarines and worked at the shipyard hospital in Wilhelmshaven. After the end of the First World War, Genzken was released on November 28, 1919 and he then settled as a general practitioner in his home town of Preetz.

On July 7, 1926, Genzken joined the NSDAP ( membership number 39,913); on November 5, 1933 he became a member of the SS (SS No. 207,954). In 1934 he worked for a short time as a substitute sea officer at the Reichswehr Ministry; then he worked for a year as a medical examiner at the hospital in Greater Berlin. On February 1, 1937, Genzken took over as the successor to Friedrich Karl Dermietzel as head of the medical department of the SS skull and crossbones associations . Associated with this was the office of senior physician with the leader of the SS-Totenkopfverband and inspector of the concentration camps , Theodor Eicke . In this function he was responsible for the medical care of the prisoners in the concentration camps. The on-site doctors in the concentration camps reported monthly to Genzken about the conditions in the infirmary as well as the number of sick inmates. Correspondence received proves that the drugs and bandages requested by the on-site doctors at Genzken were only partially delivered. During Genzken's service, the forced sterilizations were extended to the concentration camps in accordance with the “ Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Offspring ”. The Würzburg psychiatrist Werner Heyde prepared reports on this, which Genzken forwarded to the hereditary health courts and which formed the basis for their decision on the sterilization or castration of the prisoners.

From autumn 1939 to spring 1940 Genzken built up the medical service of the Totenkopf Division . From April 1940 until the end of the Second World War , Genzken was responsible for medical experiments on prisoners in the concentration camps as head of the medical office of the Waffen-SS. To Erwin Ding-Schuler , of the Buchenwald concentration camp experiments with vaccines against typhus carried out, was Genzken in personal contact. Genzken was promoted several times in the SS; Most recently he was SS group leader and lieutenant general of the Waffen SS from 1943 .

After the end of the war, Genzken was a defendant at the Nuremberg doctors trial . On August 20, 1947, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. The sentence was later reduced to 20 years. On April 17, 1954, Genzken was released early from the Landsberg War Crimes Prison . At the funeral service for his funeral (1957) an "obituary" composed by himself was read out. A friend from university reports that, after other ideas had fulfilled him during his time in the SS , Genzken reverted to the Christian faith of his childhood and found strength in prayer in difficult hours.

See also

literature

  • Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians, Part 7: Supplement A – K, Winter, Heidelberg 2013, ISBN 978-3-8253-6050-4 . Pp. 366-367.
  • Johannes Tuchel : Concentration Camp. Organizational history and function of the "Inspection of the Concentration Camps" 1934-1938. (= Writings of the Federal Archives. Volume 39) Harald Boldt Verlag, Boppard am Rhein 1991, ISBN 3-7646-1902-3 .
  • Judith Hahn: Grawitz / Genzken / Gebhardt. Three careers in the medical service of the SS. Klemm & Oelschläger, Münster 2008, ISBN 978-3-932577-56-7 .
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007. ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 . (Updated 2nd edition).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 178.
  2. ↑ Excerpts of the correspondence are quoted in Tuchel, Concentration Camp , p. 287.
  3. ↑ Sydnor, Charles W .: Soldiers of Death. The 3rd SS Division "Totenkopf" 1933-1945, p. 43.
  4. ↑ Alexander Mitscherlich, Fred Mielke: Medicine without humanity. Documents of the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial . 16th edition, Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2004. ISBN 3-596-22003-3 , p. 149.
  5. ↑ Erich Drescher in Birkholz, The Derendingia fraternity 1945-1949 . Tübingen 1965. p. 130.
  6. ↑ Review: J. Hahn: Three Careers in the Medical Service of the SS .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Genzken, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Genzken, Karl Edmund August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chief of the medical office of the Waffen-SS, defendant in the Nuremberg medical trial
DATE OF BIRTH June 8, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Preetz
DATE OF DEATH October 10, 1957
Place of death Hamburg-Blankenese