18 Facts About Herta Oberheuser

Herta Oberheuser was a German Nazi physician and convicted war criminal who performed medical atrocities on prisoners at the Ravensbruck women's concentration camp.

In 1937, Herta Oberheuser obtained her medical degree at the University of Bonn, Germany, having specialized in dermatology.

Herta Oberheuser had a residency in the department of dermatology of the University of Dusseldorf.

In 1940, Herta Oberheuser was appointed to serve as an assistant to Karl Gebhardt, then Chief Surgeon of the Schutzstaffel and Heinrich Himmler's personal doctor.

Herta Oberheuser's duties included conducting humiliating gynaecological examinations on women arriving at the camp, selecting young, healthy Polish inmates for the human experiments to be conducted on, infecting wounds, and assisting in all surgical procedures.

Herta Oberheuser was one of the group members responsible for post operative care of the victims, but is recalled by witnesses as having done not much other than making the injuries worse.

For example, one survivor Stefania Lotocka remembers Herta Oberheuser refusing to provide water to many victims and, when she did, mixing it with vinegar.

Herta Oberheuser ordered that victims were not to be given medicine to relieve their pain.

Herta Oberheuser later tried to justify her inhumane actions and claimed that Germans had the right to experiment, because the victims were members of the Polish underground resistance against the Nazi Regime.

When 22 medical staff from the concentration camps were on trial in the Nuremberg "Doctors' trial" in 1948, Herta Oberheuser was the only female defendant.

Herta Oberheuser was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Herta Oberheuser's sentence was commuted to 10 years in January 1951.

Herta Oberheuser benefited from the massive protests by West German citizens and politicians over the upcoming executions of the remaining 28 war criminals who were on death row under US military law and from directly petitioning the Advisory Board.

Herta Oberheuser served her sentence at Landsberg Prison, and was released after just five years in April 1952 for good behaviour.

Herta Oberheuser became a family doctor in Stocksee, near Kiel, in West Germany.

Herta Oberheuser lost her position in August 1958 after a Ravensbruck survivor recognized her, and the interior minister of Schleswig-Holstein, Helmut Lemke, revoked her medical license and shut down her practice.

Herta Oberheuser appealed to the Schleswig-Holstein administrative court, which rejected the appeal in December 1960.

Herta Oberheuser died in a German nursing home in 1978.