Oberheuser and Gebhardt came to Ravensbrück in 1942 in order to conduct experiments on its prisoners, with an emphasis on finding better methods of treating infection.[2] The experiments were performed by a group of doctors known as the 'Hohenlychen group'.[3] Oberheuser was one of the 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.[3] For example, one witness Stefania Lotocka remembers Oberheuser refusing to provide water to many victims and, when she did, mixing it with vinegar.[3] The group conducted gruesome medical experiments (treating purposely infected wounds with sulfonamide, as well as bone, muscle, and nerve regeneration and transplantation) on 86 women, 74 of whom were Polishpolitical prisoners. Five of them died as a direct result of the experiments.[4][5]
Trial
Herta Oberheuser was the only female defendant in the Nuremberg "Doctors' trial", where she was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Her sentence was commuted to 10 years in January 1951, a benefit of massive protests by West German citizens and politicians over the upcoming executions of the remaining 28 war criminals who were on death row under U.S. military law.[6]
Later life
Oberheuser served her sentence at Landsberg Prison, and was released in April 1952 for good behaviour and became a family doctor in Stocksee, near Kiel, in West Germany. She lost her position in August 1958 after a Ravensbrück survivor recognized her, and the interior minister of Schleswig-Holstein, Helmut Lemke, revoked her medical license and shut down her practice. Oberheuser appealed to the Schleswig-Holstein administrative court, which rejected the appeal in December 1960. She never practiced medicine again and was fined.[7][8] She died in a German nursing home in 1978.[2][3]
References
^Kater, Michael H. (1987). "The Burden of the Past: Problems of a Modern Historiography of Physicians and Medicine in Nazi Germany". German Studies Review. 10 (1): 31–56. doi:10.2307/1430442. ISSN0149-7952. JSTOR1430442. PMID11653789.
