Sigmund Rascher

Sigmund Rascher (1909 to 1945) was a German Schutzstaffel doctor who carried out deadly experiments on human prisoners concerning high altitude, freezing and blood coagulation under the patronage of Heinrich Himmler, to whom his wife Karoline Diehl had direct connections. He and his wife were arrested in April 1944 after police found they had defrauded the public with a claimed supernatural fertility by hiring and kidnapping babies; he was also accused of financial irregularities, of the murder of a former laboratory assistant and of scientific fraud, and was held at Buchenwald and Dachau before being executed in April 1945. The Nuremberg trials later judged his experiments inhumane and criminal. He is recorded here as a warning case in the history of medical research ethics.