Ernst-Robert Grawitz

Ernst-Robert Grawitz (1899 to 1945) was a German physician who served the Nazi regime as Reichsarzt SS und Polizei, the chief physician of the SS and police. Born in Charlottenburg, Berlin, he was also the de facto head of the German Red Cross between 1937 and 1945 and changed it substantially from its original Red Cross principles. He funded programmes of experimentation on inmates of concentration camps: researchers who wanted to use camp prisoners had to apply to him, and he forwarded the requests to Heinrich Himmler for final approval. He was also part of the group in charge of the Aktion T4 programme that murdered mentally ill and disabled people, including children from 1939. Late in the Second World War he served as a physician in the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin, and in April 1945, as Soviet forces advanced on the city, he killed himself and his family with hand grenades at their home in Babelsberg. The Medicine Atlas records him as a figure in the history of medical atrocity and the abuse of medical authority.