Herta Oberheuser

Herta Oberheuser (1911 to 1978) was a German physician who took part in the criminal medical experiments carried out on prisoners at the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp, and her case belongs to the record of how medical ethics failed under National Socialism. She took her medical degree at the University of Bonn in 1937, specializing in dermatology, and held a residency in the dermatology department of the University of Düsseldorf. In 1940 she became an assistant to Karl Gebhardt, chief surgeon of the SS, and from 1942 she worked at Ravensbrück with the Hohenlychen group, whose experiments on 86 women, most of them Polish political prisoners, included deliberately infected wounds and the removal of bone, muscle and nerve tissue without anaesthetic; five of the women died. She was the only woman among the defendants at the Doctors' Trial, was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and was sentenced to twenty years, later reduced to ten. Released in 1952, she practiced as a family doctor until a survivor recognized her in 1958 and her medical license was revoked.