Were there any "Untermensch" doctors at the death camps?

[Vinny Rize]

Hello all,

I am a new member at this forum and look forward to plenty of informative discussion and debate in the future.

Anyway, I recently encountered a work of fiction that depicts a (fictional) collegue of Dr. Mengele who is of Jewish origin. He is shown to be a genius who is completely devoid of any morals or ethical standards. He sells out his parents to the Nazis and in exchange he is allowed to carry out numerous brutal experiments on the prisoners at Auschwitz (implied to also be of Jewish origin).

Now I am very well aware that fictional works take quite a bit of liberty in how they portray the era of the Third Reich, but I am wondering, is there any real life example of such a situation? Were there any doctors (not including the POWs who had no choice in the matter) from races or ethnicities that were considered sub human by the Nazis working at any of the death camps willingly? Are there cases of any who went so far as to sell out their own family members? Or is this just a case of creative license? This is an area of interest of mine.


BTW I am not sure if this was the right section to post this. If it isn't, please feel free to move it

[wm]

There were Jewish doctors in death camps - after all only Jews were there, and there were in the "international" camps like Auschwitz too (about 50 in Auschwitz).

A man working on an important for the Nazis project wouldn't have to sell his parents, especially that they were worth nothing, most likely their lives would be spared simply because of his importance to the Nazis.

[Vinny Rize]

There were Jewish doctors in death camps - after all only Jews were there, and there were in the "international" camps like Auschwitz too (about 50 in Auschwitz).

A man working on an important for the Nazis project wouldn't have to sell his parents, especially that they were worth nothing, most likely their lives would be spared simply because of his importance to the Nazis.

Ok thank you for your reply. My next question is, were any of these doctors prosecuted for their role in camp activities? Or were they able to use the Duress defence? Also, are the names of any of these doctors known?

Thanks

[history1]

Likely the most famous of them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikl%C3%B3s_Nyiszli
I don´t know if such doctors were convited after WWII at the moment. There were always men who defented an accused.
Example, though not a physician: Just yesterday evening I read a report from a Viennese Jewess telling about her terrible experiences in KL Ravensbrück during an investigation in Vienna. She really thought she could complain about the treatment there (she got murdered two years later in an euthanasia institution). But the most woundrosly is that she described Maria Mandl as the most nice and acceptably female overseer there!
If you don´t know Mandl: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Mandl

[wm]

All prisoners were working under duress in concentration camps. The doctors simply had the luck to work in their own profession (for example there was 2000-bed hospital in Auschwitz, and about 150 doctors) which increased their chances of survival enormously.
As to helping the Nazis in their experiments, many were coerced to cooperate in testing experimental drugs, although they were trying to help the victims too - frequently successfully.
One of the Polish doctors Władysław Dering cooperated with Carl Clauberg in his sterilization experiments (because of his "cowardly nature"), and later was freed and sent to work in Clauberg's private hospital. For this he was tried and acquitted after the war - because the prosecution bungled the case.

There was another case, although it was a Polish male nurse not a doctor - Janusz "Perełka" Szymkowiak, who in unknown circumstances agreed to murder dying prisoners with phenol, for this he was killed by the Polish prisoners shortly afterwards.

[wm]

The narration that Maria Mandl was responsible for the deaths of a half a million people is simply both sensationalism and fake history.
Such a low level functionary didn't have the power to do that. It was someone high in the Nazi hierarchy (Himmler) that ordered that the weak and the ill had to be murdered, and hentchmen like Mandl faithfully carried out that order.
Without Mandl (her sadistic impulses notwithstanding) those people wouldn't be spared, only selected to death by someone else.

It should be noted (because it happens very frequently) that the story of her responsibility for the deaths is supported by a link to Photobucket(!), and a citationless article on the Jewish Virtual Library web page (its principal objective is to enhance Israel's image - nothing wrong with that, but citationless is citationless).

[chopp]

Mandl was commandant of the woman's camp at Birkenau from Oct 42 - Nov 44. So, the fact that she was found guilty of the murder of approx 500,000 prisoners is hardly an exaggeration. She signed the orders, she personally made some of the selections. And just following orders from a higher up, which in her case would have been Hoess, is not a defense. She had a choice not to do it. Her victims did not.

[history1]

Mandl was commandant of the woman's camp at Birkenau from Oct 42 - Nov 44. [...]

PLEASE, do some research before spreading such nonsense.
1. Mandl was in KL Ravensbrück from April 1939 until Oct. 42
2. From Oct. 42 until summer 1943 she was camp leader of the FKL - Birkenau.
3. Until Nov. 44 she was senior supervisor there.

BUT SHE WAS NEVER A CAMP COMMANDER.
Those were Höß, Hartjenstein, Kramer and Baer.

[chopp]

You do some research. The article linked (not by me) refers to her as the commandant of woman's camp at Birkenau. You can call it what ever you want. As to her prior service, I dont care. Everyone knows it. This wasnt meant to be a treatise on Mandl's sordid career but just to argue that she indeed was guilty of 500,000 deaths. Try not being so rude to people. Now piss off.

[wm]

Mandl was commandant of the woman's camp at Birkenau from Oct 42 - Nov 44. So, the fact that she was found guilty of the murder of approx 500,000 prisoners is hardly an exaggeration. She signed the orders, she personally made some of the selections. And just following orders from a higher up, which in her case would have been Hoess, is not a defense. She had a choice not to do it. Her victims did not.

I was referring to the fact she wasn't even in the SS, actually she was a "civilian contractor".
She was a nobody, and her lack of education (an elementary school dropout) meant this wouldn't change.

As far as I know (and I can't check it know) she was sentenced to death for a single list with her signature of about 500 people to be executed, and for her cruelty, nothing more.

"Fake news" about these women have been spreaded from the very end of the war. People wrote they were angelic beauties when in fact most of them were barely physically attractive, that they were sixteen years old, or that they were highly intelligent - but Höss wrote all his female overseers were idiots and lowlife dumped on Auschwitz by the central camps - because Auschwitz was at the end of the allocation queue.

[Sergey Romanov]

There is no question that Mandl wasn't a Kommandant of anything.
However the claim was made that she was a *commandant* (English word).
A quick search shows that this word (as such or in combinations like "assistant commandant") is sometimes used to translate "Lagerführer" into English (along with "camp commander" and "camp leader").

http://www.dict.cc/?s=commandant
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22comm ... ++birkenau

Moreover, several sources indicate interchangeability of the terms at least when it comes to sub-camps:

Spaniards in the Holocaust: Mauthausen, Horror on the Danube
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1134587120
David Wingeate Pike - 2003 - ‎History
... it couldbecome a Nebenlager. The terms given to the commandants of these camps (Lagerkommandant, Lagerführer, Lagerleiter) are equally interchangeable.

And: http://media.offenes-archiv.de/ss3_1_thm_1902.pdf

"An der Spitze eines Außenlagers stand der Lagerführer, auch als Kommandoführer, Lagerleiter oder Kommandant bezeichnet."

[history1]

You do some research. The article linked (not by me) refers to her as the commandant of woman's camp at Birkenau. [...] Try not being so rude to people. Now piss off.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

BTW, the text in the link reads

On 7 October 1942, Mandl was assigned to the Auschwitz II Birkenau camp where she succeeded Johanna Langefeld as SS-Lagerführerin of the women camp under SS-Kommandant Rudolf Höß.

And YOU claimed in your post that she was a camp leader until Nov 44 while the truth is that she had this function only until summer 1943.

@wm: Right, those was the camp guard personal the Nazis were looking for. People with no to very low education and no chance to a better income in civil life. And then they published newpaper advertisements and announced salaries of a few civil life earnings in a single month in SS duty.

[history1]

[...]
And: http://media.offenes-archiv.de/ss3_1_thm_1902.pdf
"An der Spitze eines Außenlagers stand der Lagerführer, auch als Kommandoführer, Lagerleiter oder Kommandant bezeichnet."

David Wingeate Pike - 2003 - ‎History
... it couldbecome a Nebenlager. The terms given to the commandants of these camps (Lagerkommandant, Lagerführer, Lagerleiter) are equally interchangeable.

As far as I know was the women camp not a subcamp [= Außenlager = Nebenlager] of Auschwitz - Birkenau but a specific section of it hence your example is a fail.

Commandant [...] is a title often given to the officer in charge of a military (or other uniformed service) training establishment or academy. This usage is common in English-speaking nations. [...] It is also often used to refer to the commander of a military prison or prison camp (including concentration camps and prisoner of war camps).

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commandant

What is even more annoying are the wrong datas in chopp´s posting.

[Sergey Romanov]

[...]
And: http://media.offenes-archiv.de/ss3_1_thm_1902.pdf
"An der Spitze eines Außenlagers stand der Lagerführer, auch als Kommandoführer, Lagerleiter oder Kommandant bezeichnet."

David Wingeate Pike - 2003 - ‎History
... it couldbecome a Nebenlager. The terms given to the commandants of these camps (Lagerkommandant, Lagerführer, Lagerleiter) are equally interchangeable.

As far as I know was the women camp not a subcamp [= Außenlager = Nebenlager] of Auschwitz - Birkenau but a specific section of it hence your example is a fail.

Since I never claimed it was a subcamp, your reading comprehension is a fail (as usual - so not at all surprising).

What my example illustrated was that the German terms come from the same semantic field, going even so far as to fully coincide in some contexts (though not others). As such it is no wonder that the *English* word "commandant" is more encompassing than the German "Kommandant". While I personally wouldn't call a Lagerführer(in) of a Frauenlager a commandant of a women's camp, it's not a mistake as long as the context is clear.

Commandant [...] is a title often given to the officer in charge of a military (or other uniformed service) training establishment or academy. This usage is common in English-speaking nations. [...] It is also often used to refer to the commander of a military prison or prison camp (including concentration camps and prisoner of war camps).

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commandant

What is even more annoying are the wrong datas in chopp´s posting.

If you use Wikipedia, so can everybody:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =749230750

"On 7 October 1942, Mandl was assigned to the Auschwitz II Birkenau camp in German-occupied Poland where she succeeded Johanna Langefeld as SS-Lagerführerin, a female commandant under (male) SS-Kommandant Rudolf Höß. "

(I'm of course linking to the old version, before you edited it out.)

[history1]

[...]
And: http://media.offenes-archiv.de/ss3_1_thm_1902.pdf
"An der Spitze eines Außenlagers stand der Lagerführer, auch als Kommandoführer, Lagerleiter oder Kommandant bezeichnet."

David Wingeate Pike - 2003 - ‎History
... it couldbecome a Nebenlager. The terms given to the commandants of these camps (Lagerkommandant, Lagerführer, Lagerleiter) are equally interchangeable.

As far as I know was the women camp not a subcamp [= Außenlager = Nebenlager] of Auschwitz - Birkenau but a specific section of it hence your example is a fail.

Since I never claimed it was a subcamp, your reading comprehension is a fail [...]

My reading comprehension is quite well
It´s you who brought up examples where the terms can be exchanged freely. And all examples are concerning only SUBCAMPS but not concentration camp sections!