D. Z.
PF wrote:What was fate of SS Dr. Wilhelm Pfannensteil b.1890-d.?
Ostubaf. Wilhelm Pfannenstiel
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Dieter Zinke
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Pfannenstiel's (tentative) late years curriculum...
Prof. Dr. Wihelm Pfannenstiel (NSDAP 2828629; SS-Nr. 273083. Oa.Arzt Fulda-Werra, z. Zt. SS-Führung Hauptamt. Promoted to SS-Staf. 9 Nov 1944).
After his long dealings with Odilo Globocnik and Aktion Reinhard, which lasted at least until Spring 1943 (attested by Max Cichotsky a.k.a Max Runhof), Prof. Wilhelm Pfannenstiel was apparently transferred as Hygiene consultant to the 6th Army and participated in the Ardennes onslaught in 1944. He was then sent on to the front in Hungary, and finally arrested by US troops in Austria.
At first nothing happened; he was neither identified, recognized by anyone, nor questioned to any depth. Finally, the U.N.W.C.C. first identified him in a POW camp in Darmstadt and interrogated him in 1947 in connection with the ‘Gerstein Report’ which, although discarded by the court, had been presented at Nuremberg (file PS 1553) and wherein his name was abundantly mentioned. At first Pfannenstiel admitted only to going to Lublin on a ‘hygiene’ mission, but denied visiting Belzec or ever witnessing a gassing operation. He was nearly released. Transferred to another POW camp in Garmisch. In 1948, following a request filed by Professor Von Drygalski (Head of the Hessian Health Bureau), Pfannenstiel was ordered to appear before a denazification court and placed under domiciliary arrest. Gerstein’s report being considered ‘exaggerated’ by the court, Pfannenstiel was released.
Interrogated again on 6th June 1950, Pfannenstiel finally admitted to having traveled to Belzec with Gerstein, to having met Globocnik, and to having witnessed a gassing. He however strongly denied having said a number of awful things Gerstein mentions him in his report as saying (such as ‘Sound just like a synagogue’ while the victims were sobbing inside the chambers during a C02 engine breakdown) but added ‘Even if I should have made such a remark, it was not in the sense imputed to me by Gerstein, as if to suggest that I was poking fun at the torments of the prisoners. The situation was much too dreadful for that’. A sort of half-admission to having said it, in my view. But Pfannenstiel is freed again.
Interrogated again in 1951, and 1959, he is released once more on grounds that his testimony provides no decisive elements concerning the gas chamber question. He appears again as a witness in a few Aktion Reinhard related cases (1960, 1961, 1963, 1965, 1966 – Belzec/Oberhauser – in Munich, Hamburg and Frankfurt am Main) and is final discharged.
He finished up as a successful doctor in the Federal Republic, practising under his own name. He was allegedly in mail contact (or even met) with Paul Rassinier, ‘the Father of Revisionism’ in the mid-sixties, although the allegation is open to debate. The purpose of their exchange was – again – to discredit Gerstein’s version of the facts (i.e. Gerstein is ‘mad’ and his report is totally unreliable).
Pfannenstiel died in 1982 – in Stuttgart, if I’m not mistaken (I may be about the place, but the date is right).
Cheers
Eddy
Prof. Dr. Wihelm Pfannenstiel (NSDAP 2828629; SS-Nr. 273083. Oa.Arzt Fulda-Werra, z. Zt. SS-Führung Hauptamt. Promoted to SS-Staf. 9 Nov 1944).
After his long dealings with Odilo Globocnik and Aktion Reinhard, which lasted at least until Spring 1943 (attested by Max Cichotsky a.k.a Max Runhof), Prof. Wilhelm Pfannenstiel was apparently transferred as Hygiene consultant to the 6th Army and participated in the Ardennes onslaught in 1944. He was then sent on to the front in Hungary, and finally arrested by US troops in Austria.
At first nothing happened; he was neither identified, recognized by anyone, nor questioned to any depth. Finally, the U.N.W.C.C. first identified him in a POW camp in Darmstadt and interrogated him in 1947 in connection with the ‘Gerstein Report’ which, although discarded by the court, had been presented at Nuremberg (file PS 1553) and wherein his name was abundantly mentioned. At first Pfannenstiel admitted only to going to Lublin on a ‘hygiene’ mission, but denied visiting Belzec or ever witnessing a gassing operation. He was nearly released. Transferred to another POW camp in Garmisch. In 1948, following a request filed by Professor Von Drygalski (Head of the Hessian Health Bureau), Pfannenstiel was ordered to appear before a denazification court and placed under domiciliary arrest. Gerstein’s report being considered ‘exaggerated’ by the court, Pfannenstiel was released.
Interrogated again on 6th June 1950, Pfannenstiel finally admitted to having traveled to Belzec with Gerstein, to having met Globocnik, and to having witnessed a gassing. He however strongly denied having said a number of awful things Gerstein mentions him in his report as saying (such as ‘Sound just like a synagogue’ while the victims were sobbing inside the chambers during a C02 engine breakdown) but added ‘Even if I should have made such a remark, it was not in the sense imputed to me by Gerstein, as if to suggest that I was poking fun at the torments of the prisoners. The situation was much too dreadful for that’. A sort of half-admission to having said it, in my view. But Pfannenstiel is freed again.
Interrogated again in 1951, and 1959, he is released once more on grounds that his testimony provides no decisive elements concerning the gas chamber question. He appears again as a witness in a few Aktion Reinhard related cases (1960, 1961, 1963, 1965, 1966 – Belzec/Oberhauser – in Munich, Hamburg and Frankfurt am Main) and is final discharged.
He finished up as a successful doctor in the Federal Republic, practising under his own name. He was allegedly in mail contact (or even met) with Paul Rassinier, ‘the Father of Revisionism’ in the mid-sixties, although the allegation is open to debate. The purpose of their exchange was – again – to discredit Gerstein’s version of the facts (i.e. Gerstein is ‘mad’ and his report is totally unreliable).
Pfannenstiel died in 1982 – in Stuttgart, if I’m not mistaken (I may be about the place, but the date is right).
Cheers
Eddy
A few more details about Prof. W. Pfannenstiel :
His duties as professor in Hygiene included inspection of SS barracks, but also of sanitary conditions in the concentration camps all over Germany. He was part of the counsel board of the Lebensborn, became a specialist in racial hygiene, and presided the Marburg Deutsche Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene.
(source : Kurt Quecke: « Die Geschichte der Medizinischen Fakultät der Universität Marburg » in « Das Gesundheitswesen in Hessen » Trautheim 1962).
In 1944, he published « Der moderne Krieg als Lehrmeister de Hygiene », dealing with wartime hygiene problems. He was also in close contact (maybe a friend) of Standartenführer Max de Crinis, psychiatrics professor at the Berlin Faculty. An important detail – overlooked by the various trials he went through because of lack of information (at the time) and heavily overlooked by revisionists (for obvious reasons) is Prof. Pfannenstiel’s participation in criminal medical experiments. As a letter, dated 18 November 1943, and posted from Dachau by Dr. Sigmund Rascher to Pfannenstiel proves without a doubt :
« Highly esteemed Professor (« Hochverehrter Herr Professor ! ») […] please allow me to inquire if you still wish us to proceed with experiments on human beings relative to an increased vitamin-induced resistance to altitude. In the affirmative, I would be most grateful if you would apply to the Reich Research committee and Chief of the managing board Standartenführer SS Wolfram Sievers […] so that a mobile low pressure chamber may be obtained through the Luftwaffe for our joint experiments ».
(NMT 01. « Doctor’s Trial » - USA v. Karl Brandt, et al., p. 10363 (26 June 1947)
Certainly an impressive pedigree for someone who claimed to have visited Belzec through « simple curiosity ».
Cheers
Eddy Marz
His duties as professor in Hygiene included inspection of SS barracks, but also of sanitary conditions in the concentration camps all over Germany. He was part of the counsel board of the Lebensborn, became a specialist in racial hygiene, and presided the Marburg Deutsche Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene.
(source : Kurt Quecke: « Die Geschichte der Medizinischen Fakultät der Universität Marburg » in « Das Gesundheitswesen in Hessen » Trautheim 1962).
In 1944, he published « Der moderne Krieg als Lehrmeister de Hygiene », dealing with wartime hygiene problems. He was also in close contact (maybe a friend) of Standartenführer Max de Crinis, psychiatrics professor at the Berlin Faculty. An important detail – overlooked by the various trials he went through because of lack of information (at the time) and heavily overlooked by revisionists (for obvious reasons) is Prof. Pfannenstiel’s participation in criminal medical experiments. As a letter, dated 18 November 1943, and posted from Dachau by Dr. Sigmund Rascher to Pfannenstiel proves without a doubt :
« Highly esteemed Professor (« Hochverehrter Herr Professor ! ») […] please allow me to inquire if you still wish us to proceed with experiments on human beings relative to an increased vitamin-induced resistance to altitude. In the affirmative, I would be most grateful if you would apply to the Reich Research committee and Chief of the managing board Standartenführer SS Wolfram Sievers […] so that a mobile low pressure chamber may be obtained through the Luftwaffe for our joint experiments ».
(NMT 01. « Doctor’s Trial » - USA v. Karl Brandt, et al., p. 10363 (26 June 1947)
Certainly an impressive pedigree for someone who claimed to have visited Belzec through « simple curiosity ».
Cheers
Eddy Marz