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DOCTORS TRIAL

DOCTORS TRIAL. (December 1946 - August 1947). Doctors trial: What happened?. December 9, 1946: an American military tribunal opened criminal proceedings against 23 German physicians and administrators for their willing participation in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

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DOCTORS TRIAL

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  1. DOCTORS TRIAL (December 1946 - August 1947)

  2. Doctors trial: What happened? • December 9, 1946: an American military tribunal opened criminal proceedings against 23 German physicians and administrators for their willing participation in war crimes and crimes against humanity. • Killed those that were "unworthy of life," also known as the “Euthanasia”Program. • Mentally retarded • Institutionalized mentally ill • Physically impaired • Also performed experiments, without asking for consent, which usually caused death or extreme injury and the victims usually consisted of Jews, Poles, Russians, and Gypsies.

  3. Doctor trials Continued… • 140 days of proceedings, testimonies of 85 witnesses, submission of 1,500 documents. • American judges pronounced their verdict on August 20, 1947. • 16 of the doctors were found guilty • 7 were sentenced to death • Executed on June 2, 1948

  4. 4 Counts • 1) Participation in the common design or conspiracy • 2) War Crimes • 3) Crimes against Humanity • 4) membership in Criminal Organizations • Accused of: murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhuman acts through specific medical experiments dealing with the effects of high altitude, low temperature, seawater, typhus, infectious jaundice, sulfa drugs, bone grafting, and mustard gas.

  5. WALDEMAR HOVEN: • Hauptsturmfuehrer (Captain) in the Waffen SS; and Chief Doctor of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. • Involved in the prosecution • Gave his patients lethal injections to kill them. • He was found guilty of conducting spotted fever experiments and practicing euthanasia on humans. Hoven was given the death sentence and executed on 2 June 1948.

  6. WILHELM BEIGLBOECK • Wilhelm Beiglboeck pleads "not guilty" to the charges against him at the Doctors Trial. • Consulting Physician to the Luftwaffe. • He was convicted at the Doctors' trial on two accounts, the common design or conspiracy, and : war crimes. The verdict was 15 years, but Beiglboeck only served for 10. • He later became the chief physician at the Hospital of Buxtehude. He died in 1968. • He was found guilty of conducting seawater experiments on humans and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

  7. ADOLF POKORNY • Physician, Specialist in Skin and Venereal Diseases. • Retired man in military medicine that supported Clauberg's work on sterilization: • Injected caustic substances into women’s' cervixes to disturb the fallopian tubes. Formalin, Novocain, progynon and prolusion were used to terminate their pregnancies • Defendant eventually set free.

  8. HERTA OBERHEUSER • Physician at the Ravensbrueck Concentration Camp; and Assistant Physician to the defendant Gebhardt at the Hospital at Hohenlychen. • Killed children with oil and evipan injections, and removed their limbs and vital organs. The time of the experiments were between three and five minutes, with the person being fully conscious until the last moment. • Focused on deliberately inflicting wounds on the subjects. She rubbed foreign objects, such as wood, rusty nails, slivers of glass, dirt or sawdust into the wounds. • Herta Oberheuser was the only female defendant in the medical trial. She received a 20 year sentence but was released in April 1952 and became a family doctor at Stocksee in Germany. Her license to practice medicine was revoked in 1958.

  9. FRITZ FISCHER • Sturmbannfuehrer (Major) in the Waffen SS; and Assistant Physician to the defendant Gebhardt at the Hospital at Hohenlychen. • He was found guilty of participation in sulfanilamide experiments and experiments with bone transplantation and bone muscle and nerve regeneration. Fischer was given a life sentence in prison.

  10. SIEGFRIED RUFF • January 1934, Director of the Department for Aviation Medicine at the German Experimental Institute for Aviation. • Accused of conducting high altitude experiments on humans. • 1938: Joined Nazi Party (NSDAP) • Acquitted, Died 1989

  11. Hans Wolfgang romberg • Doctor on the Staff of the Department for Aviation Medicine at the German Experimental Institute for Aviation. • Accused of performing high altitude experiments on humans. • Acquitted. • Worked with Ruff.

  12. VIKTOR BRACK • Chief Administrative Officer of the Chancellery during the war. • Active role in the construction of the death camps in German-occupied Poland. • December 1939-August 1941, Brack was the chief of the section that ran the T-4 Euthanasia program. • Offered the facilities to Himmler for the sterilization of Jews. • Helped in preparation of mobile gassing vans and gas chambers. • Not a physician, but defendant at Doctors Trials. • Convicted for participation in the euthanasia and forced sterilization programs. • Sentenced to death on August 20, 1947 and hanged on June 2, 1948.

  13. HERMANN BECKER-FREISING • Chief of the Department for Aviation Medicine and Medical Services in the Luftwaffe. • Accused of performing high altitude, freezing, sulfanilamide, seawater, epidemic jaundice, and spotted fever experiments on humans. • Sentenced to 20 years in prison.

  14. Georg August Weltz • Lieutenant Colonel in the medical services and Chief of the Institute for Aviation Medicine in Munich. • Accused of participating in high altitude and freezing experiments on humans. • He was acquitted.

  15. Konrad schaefer • Doctor on staff at the Institue for Aviation Medicine in Berlin. • Accused of carrying out seawater experiments of humans. • He was acquitted.

  16. Karl Brandt • Selected as Adolf Hitler's personal physician in August 1934. • Was convicted of crimes against humanity. He was hanged on June 2, 1948. • The trial began on December 9th 1946. • Charged with 4 accounts.

  17. SIEGFRIED HANDLOSER • He was convicted by the American Military Tribunal No. I in August, 1947 • Originally sentenced to life imprisonment. • he had done nothing to stop medical experiments conducted on concentration camp prisoners • Chief of the Medical Services of the Armed Forces during World War II

  18. PAUL ROSTOCK • Rostock was a defendant in the Doctors' Trial. • Because of his very high position, Rostock was charged of implication in several series of human experiments on concentration camp prisoners • He was found innocent and released in August 1947 • He immediately began to work on documentation of the Doctors' Trial, with the goal of presenting the trial to the public from another perspective. • Rostock never finished this project.

  19. OSKAR SCHROEDER • After World War II he was tried at Nuremberg and found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity • Originally he was sentenced to life imprisonment • He was found guilty of performing high altitude, freezing, seawater, epidemic jaundice, and spotted fever experiments on humans

  20. KARL GENZKEN • Genzken was found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and membership in an illegal organization by the American Military Tribunal No. I. • He was condemned in August 1947 to originally life imprisonment by the tribunal • was Chief of the Medical Department, a part of the Waffen SS.

  21. KARL GEBHARDT • convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity and condemned to death on 20 August 1947 He was hanged on 2 June 1948, in Landsberg Prison in Bavaria • was the personal physician to Himmler Himmler

  22. Bibliography • United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "RECOGNIZE SOMEONE?" Photo Archives. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2014. • United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "USHMM." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. • "The Doctors Trial: The Medical Case of the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. • "Nuremberg-Tribunal.org." Most Wanted. Dr. Rath Health Foundation, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.

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