Herta Oberheuser had trained to make sick people well. Instead the doctor used her skills to perform cruel, sometimes deadly, experiments on prisoners
Herta Oberheuser had trained to make sick people well. Instead the doctor used her skills to perform cruel, sometimes deadly, experiments on prisoners. On this day in 1946 a trial began to hold Nazi doctors accountable. Oberheuser was the only woman tried in the case. “ … I do not believe that the patients suffered that much because they never expressed any kind of disagreement,” she testified in her defense. At the Ravensbrück concentration camp for women, the doctor tested antibiotics on patients by intentionally infecting wounds with wood, ground glass, and dirt. Some patients were treated for the resulting infections while others, the control group, developed high fevers with no relief. She also sterilized prisoners. Oberheuser claimed that her work was humane because the women chosen for experiments otherwise would have been murdered. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison in August 1947 but only served a handful of years. After Oberheuser was released, she returned to worki...
Posts
