Rolf Rosenthal

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Rudolf "Rolf" Rosenthal (born January 22, 1911 in Braunschweig ; † May 3, 1947 in Hameln ) was a German gynecologist and, as a member of the SS, last worked in several concentration camps with the rank of SS-Obersturmführer . He was sentenced to death in 1947 and executed .

Life

Rosenthal grew up without parents, his father was missing at sea at the turn of the year 1913/14 (other source: 1912/1913). Why he did not live with his mother - according to the files, this would have been possible at least until 1943 - is not clear.

According to his own statements, he joined the Hitler Youth as early as 1928 "for fun in the boy scout character" , where he was a member from March 1 to May 30, 1928. On February 1, 1929 he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 112.187) and from June 1, 1928 to February 28, 1932 he was in the SA . From March 1, 1932, he was a member of the SS (SS No. 31,442).

In April 1936 he interrupted his studies for a year and went to the Navy ; to do this he had to officially leave the party and the SS. In the spring of 1937 he got into trouble with his superiors due to a lack of discipline and returned to the university, where he graduated. Rosenthal then completed various internships and got an assistant position. With the general mobilization in October 1939 he went back to the Navy.

He finished his medical training in 1940. In March 1941, Rosenthal was called up by the SS to Hamburg , but did not appear there. He was then arrested and used in Poland .

Ravensbrück concentration camp

After several relocations, each due to disciplinary difficulties, including in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , Rosenthal came to the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp as a camp doctor in January 1942 . He testified that he had tried to oppose the transfer, but his family had been threatened with arrest if he refused to go to Ravensbrück.

At the same time, he was promised that he would only have to do six months of service there, but that turned out to be untrue (cf. identical statements by Gerhard Schiedlausky and Percival Treite ).

So Rosenthal came to Ravensbrück as a replacement for the gynecologist Gerda Weyand , where he worked alongside Herta Oberheuser . His superior was Walter Sonntag .

Rosenthal was taken into custody on July 22, 1943. He had to leave Ravensbrück and was brought to Sachsenhausen concentration camp as a prisoner . The indictment was issued on November 4, 1943, and on December 13, 1943, the field court of the SS and Police Court III Berlin met in Ravensbrück.

One of the charges was that Rosenthal had a relationship with the female prisoner Gerda Ganzer and had performed an abortion on her. His “persistent denial” and his refusal to comply with the “repeated admonitions of the court to finally make an open and masculine confession” were seen as aggravating the punishment.

Rosenthal was sentenced to a total sentence of eight and a half years in prison for continued military disobedience, abortion , breach of duty of care and forgery of documents . Furthermore, he lost his civil rights for nine years , was considered unworthy of defense and was expelled from the SS.

On June 20, 1944 the judgment was revised. The sentence was reduced to six years in prison and six years in loss of honor. He was excluded from the SS.

After the end of the war, he was at large for ten days before the German police arrested him on June 16, 1945 for belonging to the Waffen SS .

Ravensbrück trial

During the trial , witnesses described Rosenthal's role in the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp as follows: Anyone who had been arrested for political reasons and was examined by him had no chance of being admitted to the precinct despite illness. He immediately had such women thrown out of the station and refused to give them any help.

He himself claimed to have been an "anti-Nazi", which contradicted the statements of the witnesses. He just "slipped in" everywhere, although he refused again and again. In the process he reported as an apparently outsider about the conditions in the camp. He himself could not eliminate these conditions, although he tried to. He admitted that in the summer of 1942 he had taken part in some experimental operations (see Human experiments in National Socialist concentration camps ) as an assistant.

After all, Rosenthal made the admission that he might have been involved in the selection of "guinea pigs" without knowing what it was about.

Rosenthal's defense attorney tried to use excerpts from letters and the statements of Rosenthal's wife to prove his strong dislike for National Socialism. This, Dorothea Rosenthal , herself a doctor, confirmed the accuracy of two letters from her husband from 1942, which the defense presented to her. Extracts:

“... A year of the most difficult overcoming is behind me and I don't know whether I can endure one more. I hate Nazism like the plague today. He only brought bad luck to us and the German people ... "

“... All prisoners, whether men or women, stand behind me like one man. Everyone walks around here with guns. Only I walk through the camp without weapons at night and am not afraid that something will happen to me, because I was humane to the prisoners, as everyone should do. What scares me most is the stupidity of the SS clan! Something like that wants to rule the world ... "

The British prosecutors in court summarized that Rosenthal was a doctor and that he had clearly shown with his statements that he was an accomplice. He had, in collaboration with Gerhard Schiedlausky the sulfonamide performed experiments, injections administered to forced sterilization and infanticide participated. In doing so, he had known all along what had really happened there in the name of medicine, without opposing it.

Rosenthal was sentenced to death on February 3, 1947 in the first of seven Hamburg Ravensbrück trials . Several requests for clemency were made for him, including from his wife and a pastor, on the grounds that he was a good person and a doctor and was therefore not responsible. The pastor (presumably the prison pastor) reported that as a deeply religious person, Rosenthal had increasingly come into opposition to the SS.

The verdict was upheld on March 31, 1947. He arrived on February 3, 1947 by the court prison Altona to the penitentiary prison Fuhlsbüttel , from there on 2 May 1947 to prison Hameln , where he was executed a day later at 9:37 PM.

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personal data
SURNAME Rosenthal, Rolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rosenthal, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German gynecologist, member of the SS, executed war criminal
DATE OF BIRTH January 22, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Braunschweig
DATE OF DEATH May 3, 1947
Place of death Hamelin