17 Facts About Horst Schumann

Horst Schumann was an SS-Sturmbannfuhrer and medical doctor who conducted sterilization and castration experiments at Auschwitz and was particularly interested in the mass sterilization of Jews by means of X-rays.

Horst Schumann entered the Nazi party in 1930 and joined the Sturmabteilung in 1932.

Horst Schumann started his career as an assistant doctor in the Surgical Clinic of the clinic of Halle University.

From 1934, Horst Schumann was employed in the Public Health Office in Halle.

Horst Schumann was recruited to the air force as a physician in 1939.

Horst Schumann joined the Aktion T4 Euthanasia program in early October 1939, after a meeting with Dr Viktor Brack in Hitler's chancellery.

In January 1940, Horst Schumann became head of the Grafeneck euthanasia centre in Wurttemberg, where mentally ill people were gassed with carbon monoxide in the first gas chamber.

Horst Schumann belonged to a commission of doctors called "Action 14f13", who transferred weak and sick prisoners from Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Flossenburg, Gross-Rosen, Mauthausen, Neuengamme and Niederhangen concentration camps to the euthanasia killing centers.

Horst Schumann worked at Block 30 in the women's hospital, where he set up an X-ray station in 1942.

Horst Schumann selected some of the women in Block 10 in the main camp of Auschwitz.

Horst Schumann performed typhus experiments by injecting people with blood from typhus patients and then attempting to cure the newly infected subjects.

Horst Schumann left Auschwitz in September 1944 and was appointed to the Sonnenstein Clinic in Saxony which had earlier been converted into a military hospital.

Horst Schumann then fled, first to Egypt and eventually settled in Khartoum in Sudan as head of a hospital.

Horst Schumann was forced to flee from Sudan in 1962 after being recognized by an Auschwitz survivor.

In 1966, Horst Schumann was extradited from Ghana to West Germany where the trial against him was opened in Frankfurt on 23 September 1970.

However, Horst Schumann was released from prison on 29 July 1972 due to his heart condition and generally deteriorating health.

Horst Schumann died on 5 May 1983,11 years after he had been released.