Herta Oberheuser

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Herta Oberheuser as a defendant in the Nuremberg medical trial

Herta Oberheuser (born May 15, 1911 in Cologne ; † January 24, 1978 in Linz am Rhein ) was a doctor in the Ravensbrück concentration camp and was responsible for human experiments with sulfonamides , for which she was the only woman who was indicted and convicted at the Nuremberg medical trial.

Life

Oberheuser was born on May 15, 1911 in Cologne as the daughter of an engineer. She grew up in Düsseldorf , where she graduated from high school in 1931. She then studied medicine in Bonn and Düsseldorf . The Oberheuser family was not wealthy, so that Oberheuser had to finance part of their studies themselves. She passed her state examination in 1936 and was awarded a Dr. med. doctorate , received her first position as an assistant doctor at the Physiological Institute in Bonn and then worked at the Medical Clinic in Düsseldorf. Then she decided to train as a dermatologist and moved to the Düsseldorf Dermatology Clinic. She obtained the specialist title for dermatology in 1940. From 1940 she worked at the health department in Düsseldorf. She specialized in research experiments on living animals, vivisection .

In 1935 she joined the National Socialist Association of German Girls , where she rose to become a ring physician. In 1937 she was a member of the Nazi Party , and later the National Socialist sister organization , the National Socialist Medical Association and the Nazi air Conservation Union .

In 1940 she saw a job advertisement in a medical journal. A position as a camp doctor in a “women's retraining camp” was advertised. This was the Ravensbrück concentration camp . Upon her application, she was initially trained for three months and finally committed to work for the Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she worked from the beginning of 1941 to the summer of 1943 under the on- site doctors Walter Sonntag and Gerhard Schiedlausky . She then moved to Karl Gebhardt's Hohenlychen sanatorium as a surgical assistant , where she worked until the end of the war.

Human experiments in the Ravensbrück concentration camp

Medical experiments in Ravensbrück mostly served to research the vital functions under extreme conditions, often with a view to military use for treating frostbite or injuries that soldiers can suffer in combat. The respective injuries were inflicted on the test subjects, and statistics were compiled and remedies experimented with. After preliminary experiments in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , experiments with sulfonamides , among other things, were undertaken in Ravensbrück , on which great hopes were placed as antibiotics in the treatment of the wounded. Bacteria, putrefactive agents, wood splinters and glass were placed in specially made wounds for the victims of the experiments, imitating injuries caused by bomb fragments. The course of the wound and the effects of the drugs tested were documented and analyzed. Many victims died during the experiments, others years later from the sequelae.

Karl Gebhardt was named as the doctor in charge in Ravensbrück for all these operations ; his assistants were Fritz Fischer , Ludwig Stumpfegger and Oberheuser. Since her colleagues could no longer withstand the test conditions over time, Oberheuser gradually took over more and more of the functions of her colleagues, thereby ensuring that the tests were carried out. Her tasks included selecting the female inmates for the experiments, assisting during the operations and ensuring follow-up care, which mostly consisted of a targeted non-treatment or targeted deterioration of the healing process in order to achieve the highest level of infection. She primarily selected young Polish women who were imprisoned in the concentration camp for political reasons. After the treatment, numerous women from Oberheuser were murdered by injections, which she later tried to portray as a humanitarian act. In contrast to her colleagues, who also killed patients with targeted injections, Oberheuser chose gasoline injections, the effect of which only set in after three to five minutes and when the victims were fully conscious.

Oberheuser's statements clearly show her attitude towards the patients, which she perceived as rabbits and not as humans.

Oberheuser was not only involved in medical experiments, but also in forced abortions and other medical interventions. These were even carried out on women who were seven or eight months pregnant. Gerhard Schiedlausky confirmed this, but he only acted on orders. Oberheuser and Rosenthal initially assisted him in this, but later carried out the interventions independently. In addition to abortion by medical intervention, there were also abortions by beatings and the killing of newborns.

The doctor was verifiably confronted with at least 60 victims during her working hours in Ravensbrück. Unlike her male colleagues, Oberheuser did not use the results of her work in the Ravensbrück concentration camp for her further career after the end of the war. She saw her task in supporting her male superiors, but in doing so contributed significantly to the realization of the human experiments.

Trial against Herta Oberheuser

The trial against Oberheuser took place on April 3 and 8, 1947. Oberheuser was the only woman who was charged with crimes against humanity in the Nuremberg medical trial. It was legally represented by Alfred Seidl , who had defended Rudolf Heß and Hans Frank in the main war criminals trial .

Oberheuser tried in court to justify herself with her "femininity" and the argument that a woman - including herself - could not be so brutal. Their behavior was, consciously or unconsciously, part of a social consensus that women, and thus themselves, were not capable of such acts. Scientifically, this question was dealt with in detail in the so-called historians' dispute. She also explained that the experiments served the purpose of saving the lives of 100,000 wounded Wehrmacht soldiers. Oberheuser also stated in court that she did not know anything about the events in the camp or could no longer remember them, at the same time she repeatedly withdrew to her medical status. She also stated that orders had the effect of coming directly from Adolf Hitler and were therefore legitimate. The award of the War Merit Medal contradicts the passive role she describes. Doctors such as Oberheuser and Fischer stated in interviews after the end of the war that these experimental operations gave the women sentenced to death a chance to survive. However, this contradicts the fact that women, when they recovered from the experiments, were very often murdered or died as a result of further attempts.

After four weeks of deliberation, the court found her guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity . On August 20, 1947, Oberheuser was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment at the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial without her license to practice as a doctor being withdrawn. Since she could not become a member of the SS because of her gender , she was not convicted of membership in a banned organization. In contrast to several co-defendants, this obviously saved her from the death penalty . The sentence was reduced to ten years in 1951, and on April 4, 1952, Oberheuser was released from the Landsberg war crimes prison for good conduct. She was imprisoned for about five years and was later recognized as a late returnee on the recommendation of the Federal Ministry of Labor , which gave her special professional support.

Return to bourgeois life

After her release from prison, Oberheuser settled a little later as a general practitioner in Stocksee near Neumünster and at the same time worked at the Johanniter healing facility in Plön . She was recognized and reported by a survivor from the Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1956. After allegations against her person became known, she was released from the Johanniter sanatorium. At the same time, the Kiel public prosecutor's office opened proceedings against Oberheuser on suspicion of a criminal act, which, however, was discontinued in 1957 on the grounds that Oberheuser could not be punished twice for the same offense and that the proceedings in Nuremberg had been legally concluded. The proceedings were characterized by major bureaucratic difficulties, as the files from Nuremberg had never been transferred to the German inventory. Despite the lengthy process, which was marked by strong media interest, about the closure of the practice and withdrawal of approval, Oberheuser's private practice flourished.

In August 1958, her license to practice medicine was revoked after protests by the working group of former Ravensbrück women. Oberheuser brought an action for rescission , which was dismissed on December 4, 1960: "After a twelve-hour hearing, the eighth chamber of the Schleswig-Holstein Administrative Court in Schleswig filed a rescission action on Saturday by the doctor Oberheuser against the Kiel Interior Minister Lemke , who told her because of her work in the women -Concentration camp Ravensbrück (...) had withdrawn its license to practice medicine, was rejected for a fee. ”In addition to protests from former prisoners, it was particularly international press voices that had called for the license to be withdrawn.

Oberheuser then had to finally close their practice. In May 1965 she left Stocksee and moved to Bad Honnef . She died on January 24, 1978 in nearby Linz on the Rhine .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paul Weindling : Herta Oberheuser , in: Wolfgang U. Eckart , Christoph Gradmann (Hrsg.): Doctors Lexicon. Springer, Heidelberg 2006, p. 244. ISBN 3-540-29584-4 .
  2. ^ Ralf Jatzkowski: Herta Oberheuser (1911–1978) on shoa.de
  3. ↑ a b Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 441.
  4. ↑ Iris-Maria Hix: From reproduction to extermination selection. In: Annette Kuhn: Women's life in everyday Nazi life. Bonn 1999, p. 275.
  5. ↑ a b Angelika Ebbinghaus (ed.): Victims and perpetrators. Women's biographies of National Socialism . tape 2 . Franz Greno Verlag, Nördlingen 1987, ISBN 3-89190-951-9 , The doctor Herta Oberheuser , p. 253 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  6. ↑ Claudia Taake: Accused: SS women in court. BIS Verlag, Oldenburg 1998, ISBN 3-8142-0640-1 , p. 95 (PDF; 476 kB).
  7. ↑ a b Iris-Maria Hix: From reproduction to extermination selection. In: Annette Kuhn: Women's life in everyday Nazi life. Bonn 1999, p. 276.
  8. ↑ quoted in: Alexander Mitscherlich , Fred Mielke: Medicine without humanity . Documents of the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial. Frankfurt am Main 2004, p. 205.
  9. ↑ Nuremberg documents No. 862, cited in parts by: Ernst Klee: Auschwitz, the Nazi medicine and its victims. Frankfurt am Main 1997, p. 156.
  10. ↑ a b c Angelika Ebbinghaus (ed.): Victims and perpetrators. Women's biographies of National Socialism . tape 2 . Franz Greno Verlag, Nördlingen 1987, ISBN 3-89190-951-9 .
  11. ↑ Claudia Taake: Accused: SS women in court. BIS Verlag, Oldenburg 1998, ISBN 3-8142-0640-1 , p. 94 (PDF; 476 kB).
  12. ↑ Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial (ed.): Unbounded violence. Perpetrators under National Socialism (= contributions to the history of National Socialist persecution in Northern Germany. No. 7). 1st edition. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2002, ISBN 3-86108-371-X , p. 143 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  13. ↑ a b c Iris-Maria Hix: From reproduction to extermination selection. In: Annette Kuhn: Women's life in everyday Nazi life. Bonn 1999, p. 277.
  14. ↑ Claudia Taake: Accused: SS women in court. BIS Verlag, Oldenburg 1998, ISBN 3-8142-0640-1 , p. 99 (PDF; 476 kB).
  15. ↑ Monika Zorn: Hitler's victims twice killed. West German final solution of anti-fascism in the area of ​​the GDR. Freiburg 1994, p. 72.
  16. ↑ a b Shards in the wound . In: Der Spiegel . No. 46 , 1960 ( online ).
  17. ↑ Former concentration camp doctor is not allowed to practice. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . 5th December 1960.
  18. ↑ Alexander Mitscherlich: The Nuremberg medical process as reflected in its processing. Berlin / Hamburg / Münster 1994.
personal data
SURNAME Oberheuser, Herta
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor in the Ravensbrück concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH May 15, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH January 24, 1978
Place of death Linz on the Rhine