Robert Neumann (pathologist)

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Robert Neumann (born August 21, 1902 in Nüssdorf , Silesia , † December 19, 1962 in Tübingen ) was a German pathologist and concentration camp doctor .

biography

Robert Neumann was the son of a rector and cantor who had seven siblings. He passed his Abitur in 1923 and then studied medicine and musicology at the Universities of Breslau and Hamburg . He was approved in Hamburg in 1929 and was awarded a Dr. med. PhD . He spent most of his assistantship as a student of Robert Rössle at the Pathological Institute of the University of Berlin , where he headed the pathology department at the Robert Koch Hospital in early April 1934 and finally in early November 1935 as director. He completed his habilitation in pathology in Berlin at the beginning of 1936 and worked there a few months later as a private lecturer . Although he had published twelve papers on “Heredity, Hormone Theory and Vascular Pathology” by 1939, his research work was judged to be average by a number of colleagues.

After the transfer of power to the National Socialists , he joined the SS in November 1933 (SS no. 203.348), where he achieved the rank of SS-Obersturmführer in September 1938. It also belonged to Lebensborn e. V. at. The Nazi party he belonged from 1937 under the membership number 5373111.

Neumann had developed a device for taking tissue samples from the liver called a histotome. He used this device from autumn 1939 to February 1940 for liver puncture in Buchenwald concentration camp , where he first tested it on prisoner corpses and then on living concentration camp inmates. The former Kapo of Pathology in Buchenwald Concentration Camp Gustav Wegerer said the following about Neumann after the end of the war, which he denied:

“Almost all […] treated prisoners died mostly two or three days after the puncture. I saw the corpses in the dissection room and repeatedly assisted Neumann with the dissection of such corpses. "

- Gustav Wegerer on July 6, 1948 in writing to the Chamber of Judges in Darmstadt :

From the end of May 1940 Neumann was employed as a camp doctor in the main camp of Auschwitz . One Auschwitz survivor had the following to say about Neumann:

“I know from him that he was involved in experiments in Auschwitz and also in Buchenwald. I myself had to help him several times in Auschwitz with the sectioning of prisoner corpses "

- Friedrich Thumm during an interrogation on the 1st Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial :

At the end of November 1940 Neumann moved to Shanghai to set up a pathological institute, of which he became director. In March 1941 he was appointed adjunct professor. At the German Medical Academy in Shanghai he held from 1942 a. a. Lectures on racial studies. Freyeisen describes Neumann as the ideologically most stable “cultural propagandist” in the German Medical Academy in Shanghai.

From 1945 to 1948 Neumann was interned by the Allies. In a report by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) zu Neumann, u. a. According to statements made by Shanghai Germans about himself: “It is stated that after his arrival in Shanghai, Neumann openly boasted of the inhumanities he had practiced in concentration camps in Germany, including the murder of a woman whom he was hydrochloric Acid splashed into the veins. ”He was questioned as a witness in 1948 in the course of the main Buchenwald trial. After his release, he worked as a research assistant at the pharmaceutical company STADA and became clinic manager in Reutlingen . Investigations against him by the Tübingen public prosecutor regarding his activities in Buchenwald and Auschwitz were discontinued at the end of January 1962.

literature

  • Astrid Freyeisen: Shanghai and the politics of the Third Reich , Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, ISBN 3-8260-1690-4 .
  • Ernst Klee : Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-039333-3 .
  • Ernst Klee : Auschwitz, Nazi medicine and its victims. 3. Edition. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-10-039306-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Astrid Freyeisen: Shanghai and the politics of the Third Reich , Würzburg 2000, p. 232
  2. ↑ a b c d Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. Lexicon of persons. Frankfurt / M. 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-039333-3 , p. 298
  3. ^ Astrid Freyeisen: Shanghai and the politics of the Third Reich , Würzburg 2000, p. 233
  4. ↑ Ernst Klee: Auschwitz, the Nazi medicine and its victims , Frankfurt am Main 1997, p. 36
  5. ↑ a b Quoted in Ernst Klee: Auschwitz, the Nazi medicine and its victims , Frankfurt am Main 1997, p. 36
  6. ↑ Astrid Freyeisen: Shanghai and the politics of the Third Reich , Würzburg 2000, p. 234
  7. ↑ Astrid Freyeisen: Shanghai and the politics of the Third Reich , Würzburg 2000, p. 242
  8. ^ Report of the OSS zu Neumann from October 15, 1945. Quoted in: Astrid Freyeisen: Shanghai and the politics of the Third Reich , Würzburg 2000, p. 238
  9. ^ Astrid Freyeisen: Shanghai and the politics of the Third Reich , Würzburg 2000, p. 236
personal data
SURNAME Neumann, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pathologist and concentration camp doctor
DATE OF BIRTH August 21, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Nüssdorf , Silesia
DATE OF DEATH December 19, 1962
Place of death Tübingen