Herta Oberheuser

Herta Oberheuser (born 15 May 1911 in Cologne, Germany; died 24 January 1978 in Linz am Rhein, Germany) was a physician at the Ravensbrück concentration camp from 1940 until 1943.

Camp work

She worked there under Dr. Karl Gebhardt supervision participating in gruesome medical experiments (sulfanilamide as well as bone, muscle, and nerve regeneration and bone transplantation) conducted on 86 women, 74 of whom were Polish political prisoners in the camp.

Oberheuser killed healthy children with oil and evipan injections, then removed their limbs and vital organs. The time from the injection to death was between three and five minutes, with the person being fully conscious until the last moment. She performed some of the most gruesome and painful medical experiments, focusing on deliberately inflicting wounds on the subjects. In order to simulate the combat wounds of German soldiers fighting in the war, Herta Oberheuser rubbed foreign objects, such as wood, rusty nails, slivers of glass, dirt, or sawdust into the wounds.

Capture and trial

Herta Oberheuser was the only female defendant in the Nuremberg Medical Trial, where she was sentenced to 20 years in jail. She was released in April 1952 for good behavior and became a family doctor at Stocksee in Germany. She lost her position in 1956, after a Ravensbrück survivor recognized her, and her license to practice medicine was revoked in 1958.

See also

*Doctors' Trial
*Ex-Nazis
*Nazi human experimentation

External links

*http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/biography/hober.html
*http://www.deathcamps.info/Auschwitz/Albums/Album3/Large/hoberheuser.jpg
*http://www.auschwitz.dk/Women/Oberheuser.htm