Helmut Poppendick

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Helmut Poppendick during the Nuremberg Trials

Helmut Poppendick (born January 6, 1902 in Hude ; † January 11, 1994 in Oldenburg ) was a German physician. He was the head of the personal staff at the Reichsarzt SS and Police and was sentenced as a defendant in the Nuremberg doctors trial in 1947 to ten years imprisonment.

Life

Poppendick passed his Abitur at the Oberrealschule Oldenburg in 1919 and then studied medicine at the Universities of Göttingen , Munich and Berlin . In December 1926, he passed the state examination in Berlin and received his medical license on February 1, 1928 . After four years as an assistant doctor, mainly at the Charité's I. Medical Clinic , the doctor of medicine was licensed as an internist in 1932 . After a few months as a rescue doctor for the city of Berlin, Poppendick was senior physician at the Virchow Hospital there from June 1933 to October 1934 .

Poppendick joined the NSDAP ( membership number 998.607) and the SS (membership number 36.345) in 1932 and most recently achieved the rank of SS Oberführer. After the National Socialist “ seizure of power ”, he received a year-long training as a “ racial hygienist ” at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology . In the Reich Ministry of the Interior he served as adjutant to Arthur Julius Gütt and was head of staff in the SS Office for Population Policy and Hereditary Health Care, which was incorporated into the SS Race and Settlement Main Office (RuSHA) in 1937 . In the RuSHA Poppendick headed a main department in the clan office and was also a staff leader.

At the beginning of the Second World War Poppendick was drafted into the army and was involved in the German attack in the west as an adjutant in a medical department . In January 1941 he was released from military service and from then on headed the scientific service of the Reich doctor of the SS, Ernst-Robert Grawitz . As early as August 1, 1939, Poppendick had switched to the Reichsarzt of the SS with the entire main medical department of the RuSHA. Admitted to the Waffen SS in November 1941 , Poppendick was appointed by Grawitz to head his personal staff in March 1943. In February 1945, Poppendick, as the lead researcher, forwarded a request from Ludwig Werner Haase to provide eight prisoners sentenced to death in the Neuengamme concentration camp for human experiments that could result in death. Heinrich Himmler , however, refused to give his consent.

After the end of the war, Poppendick was one of the defendants in the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial. He as well as his co- Joachim Mrugowsky and Karl Gebhardt was among a group of SS doctors who Grawitz had been assumed. During the trial, Poppendick tried to downplay his role under Grawitz and was wrongly indicted on behalf of Grawitz, who had committed suicide at the end of the war. For his membership in an organization that had been declared criminal, he was sentenced to ten years in prison on August 20, 1947 at the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial. The court considered it proven that Poppendick had knowledge of almost all experiments that had been carried out on prisoners in concentration camps during the Nazi era, but did not see any criminally relevant responsibility.

After his release from prison on February 1, 1951 from the Landsberg War Crimes Prison , Poppendick worked as an internist in Oldenburg, from 1957 with a health insurance certificate .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographical information in: Klaus Dörner (Ed.): The Nürnberger Ärzteprocess 1946/47. Verbal transcripts, prosecution and defense material, sources on the environment. Access tape. Saur, Munich, 1999, ISBN 3-598-32020-5 , p. 132; Ernst Klee : The personal lexicon for the Third Reich - who was what before and after 1945. Fischer paperback, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 469 f.
  2. ↑ Dörner, Ärzteprozess , p. 132. In Klee, Personenlexikon , p. 470, the statement that Poppendick was head of the medical services at the RuSHA from 1941 onwards.
  3. ↑ Ernst Klee: Auschwitz, Nazi medicine and its victims. 3rd edition Frankfurt / M. 2004, ISBN 3-596-14906-1 , p. 179.
  4. ↑ Udo Benzenhöfer : Nürnberger Ärzteprozess: The selection of the accused. Deutsches Ärzteblatt 1996; 93: A-2929-2931 (issue 45) (PDF, 258 kB). Ibid, p. A-2930, a scheme related to Poppendick's position in the German healthcare system.
  5. ↑ Angelika Ebbinghaus : Looks at the Nuremberg medical process. In: Dörner, Ärzteprozess, (indexing volume), p. 66.
  6. ↑ Alexander Mitscherlich, Fred Mielke (ed.): Medicine without humanity. Documents of the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-22003-3 , p. 361
  7. ↑ Ebbinghaus, Blick , p. 60.
personal data
SURNAME Poppendick, Helmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German medic
DATE OF BIRTH January 6, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Hude (Oldenburg)
DATE OF DEATH January 11, 1994
Place of death Oldenburg