Medical Officers of the SS

[smetanin albert]

from SSO Schnabel

[Orlov]

Interesting historical and medical project - Medical Review Auschwitz:
https://www.mp.pl/auschwitz/auschwitz/2 ... he-project

[Georg_S]

About SS-Staf. Dr. Platt who have been discussed here before, He was attached to the SS-Standortlazarett Dachau.
He left that service in 1941.

//Georg

[Orlov]

Thanks Georg!

[Orlov]

Hellmuth Waldemar Vetter (21 March 1910 Rastenberg – 2 February 1949 Landsberg am Lech) was an SS-Hauptsturmführer and a German war criminal.
Vetter was a doctor at the Auschwitz extermination camp, appointed chief doctor by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. He joined other doctors (such as Hans König, Heinz Thilo, and Fritz Klein) in the task of choosing employable Jews to operate the industrial machines and sending others to the gas chambers. He also carried medical experiments on prisoners, involving phenol injections. Vetter worked for Bayer AG and IG Farben, he would also deliberately infect prisoners in Auschwitz, Dachau and Gusen to carry out medical experiments. After the war, Vetter was found guilty of committing crimes against humanity. He was hanged in the prison of Landsberg am Lech.

[Orlov]

Otto Blaschke (* 24. September 1908 in Obernitz, Landkreis Brüx; † 7. October 1982 in Asperg) - sudetendeutscher KZ-Arzt und SS-Obersturmführer.
After studying medicine in Prague in 1936, Blaschke received there medical PhD. After the Sudetenland was annexed as a result of the Munich Agreement, he joined the Allgemeine SS (SS No. 391,852) in October 1938 and the NSDAP in November 1938. During the II World War he joined the Waffen-SS at the beginning of October 1940 and was a camp doctor in concentration camps for almost two years. From the beginning of December 1940 he was a camp doctor in KZ Auschwitz for a year. He was then transferred to KZ Flossenbürg concentration camp on December 5, 1941 and from there to KZ Ravensbrück in February 1942, where he was employed as a camp doctor in the men's camp. In May 1942 he transferred to KZ Sachsenhausen and from there to KZ Mauthausen in July 1942. From November 1942 until the end of the war in May 1945 he was a unit doctor with the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler. In 1942 he attained the rank of SS-Obersturmführer.
In the post-war period, Blaschke worked from 1948 "in the medicines industry as a research assistant". From 1956 he practiced medicine in Eglosheim. In the course of the investigation into the first Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, he was interrogated and responded to a testimony incriminating him: "If the witness states that I walked around the camp to look for Moslems, whose number I wrote down in order to have them liquidated later, then this does not correspond to the facts” [„Wenn der Zeuge angibt, daß ich im Lager umhergelaufen sei, um Muselmänner zu suchen, deren Nummer ich mir aufschrieb, um sie später liquidieren zu lassen, dann entspricht dies nicht den Tatsachen“].

[Orlov]

SS-Obersturmführer Heinz Hartlieb, a doctor from the ranks of the Schutzpolizei, assigned to SS-Sdr.Rgt. Dirlewanger as Officer IVb
Who has information about his service in Orpo and the Waffen-SS and Hartlieb photo in 300 dpi (with copyright or not)
Thank you in advance
Orlov

PS: TESTIMONY OF JOANNA KRYNSKA
"Warsaw, 14 March 1947. Member of the District Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Warsaw, Judge Halina Wereńko, interviewed the person specified below as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false testimonies and of the wording of Art. 107 and 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the witness testified as follows:
[...]
Upon the order of the head of the health department in the district, Lamprecht, Doctor Hartlieb and others packed up medical equipment (microscopes, etc.) and sent it by cars to Germany. The same happened in other hospitals.
[...]
The escort brought us to a railway bank, where it turned out that there had been no dressing station. Major Stabsarzt Hartlieb from Kampfgruppe Reinefarth was sitting at a table there, and said to our escort: “Why did you bring them here, we do not need any Poles, we just need to execute them”.
[...]
I approached Doctor Hartlieb and I said that a German officer had declared upon his honour that we would not be executed. Later in the conversation Doctor Hartlieb said that there was an explicit order from Dirlewanger that all Poles in Warsaw, irrespective of their sex and age, were to be executed. Warsaw was to be razed to the ground to show Europe what it meant to organize an uprising against the Germans. Then Doctor Hartlieb, leaving us under guard, took a motorcycle to go to Saint Stanislaus Hospital to check whether indeed a German officer had given his word that we were to avoid execution. After he returned, he declared that, thanks to his intervention and requests, he had obtained a permission from the authorities not to execute us, and then he sent us together with Doctor Wesołowski and Doctor Manteufel back to Saint Stanislaus Hospital.
[...]
On 7 August 1944, having obtained Doctor Hartlieb’s permission and escorted by two German soldiers, I, Doctor Manteufel, Doctor Wesołowski and five sisters of Saint Vincent de Paul [szarytki], taking stretchers with us, went to the basements of nearby houses to collect the wounded [...]".
Source: AIPN, GK 166/1100 t. 5 (Akta w sprawie zbrodni hitlerowskich w okresie Powstania Warszawskiego i zburzenia Warszawy [Files on German crimes during the Warsaw Uprising and the destruction of Warsaw]), p. 325-327

[Orlov]

In Mogilev, the chief physician of the police hospital in the area of the Higher SS and Police Commander Russland-Mitte was: unpunished active sanitary officer of the police Dr. Heinz H a r t l i e b, b. March 18, 1913 in Vienna, residing in in Wien 19, Krottenbachstr. 198, employed at the Medical Academy in Vienna (Wien XIX). Dirlewanger and Hartlieb meet. Dirlewanger made Hartlieb later transferred to his unit in Uzda in spring 1944. He was interviewed in writing by the historian Dr. von Krannhals; On November 20, 1963, he was questioned by an Austrian judge in Vienna
The Polish doctor, MD Joanna Ewa Kryńska, on March 14, 1947, testified in front of the Polish Regional Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Warsaw that she had met Dr. Hartlieb in Warsaw on August 5, 1944; Dr. Hartlieb told her that
“That there is a clear order from Himmler that all Poles in Warsaw, regardless of sex and age, should be shot; Warsaw is to be razed to the ground to show Europe what it means to start an uprising against Germany ”.
Therefore, in agreement with the author of this note, the historian von Krannhals from Lüneberg asked Dr. Hartlieb in a letter of March 12, 1962, asking for a written statement on the above-mentioned testimony of the Polish doctor. Dr. Hartlieb, who remembers the meeting with the Polish doctor, fulfilled this request and replied:
"This (for the sake of completeness: I made a statement about Warsaw and its inhabitants) about Warsaw and its inhabitants was a statement that we received from unit managers or unit commanders, in the first place to explain to the soldiers why we should act in this way towards the population civil.
I myself have not received an order to shoot, I have never passed on such an order, nor shot anyone. As far as I know, the liquidation of the population of Warsaw was in the so-called order of the Reichsführer.

[Yuli]

I am searching for a photo of the Auschwitz SS doctor Hans Wilhelm König. Google takes me to a photo of a George W König, but I am not sure that this is the SS doctor I am looking for.
https://www.memoiresdeguerre.com/articl ... 23481.html
Can anybody help with this search?

[George_W]

This is not the same man as SS-Ustuf. Hans Wilhelm König from KL Auschwitz who was not in US captivity after the war.

SS-Hscha. Georg Wilhelm König served at KL Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora (Nordhausen).

George

[Orlov]

I am searching for a photo of the Auschwitz SS doctor Hans Wilhelm König.

Dear Yuli,
You have to write to Bundesarchiv for copy his personal file:
R 58/9591
König, Hans Wilhelm
Bestandsbezeichnung
Reichssicherheitshauptamt
Geburtsdatum
13.5.1912
Geburtsort
Stuttgart 5/13/1912
The second road is contact to prof. Aleksander Lasik - author of "Lasik List" of all members SS-Totenkopfverbände in KZ Auschwitz.
https://www.ukw.edu.pl/pracownicy/stron ... der_lasik/
Or write to Research Center - Memorial Site and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau
https://www.auschwitz.org/kontakt/?id_dzialu=5
Bestreg Orlov

[Orlov]

Johann Paul Kremer (26 December 1883 – 8 January 1965) was born in Stellberg. He studied in Heidelberg, Strassburg as well as Berlin; he received his philosophy degree in 1914 and his medical degree in 1919. He also studied natural science and mathematics. He was the "assistant surgeon at the surgical clinic of the University, Charité, the ward of internal diseases of the Municipal Hospital Berlin-Neukölln, the surgical clinic of the University of Cologne and prosector in the Institutes of Anatomy in Bonn and Münster. He became Dozent of anatomy in 1929 and was promoted there in 1936 to be professor in commission. At the same time, he was commissioned to lecture on the science of human hereditariness". He also did some writing: he mentions two articles that he wrote in the diary he kept, the first being "Inherited or Acquired? A Noteworthy Contribution to the Problem of Hereditariness of Traumatic Deformations" and the second titled "New Elements of Cell and Tissues Investigations".

Medical experiments in KZ Auschwitz
The main priority of SS doctors at concentration camps throughout German-occupied Europe was not to provide basic medical services to prisoners, but rather to give the appearance of competent medical care. Following the full-scale implementation of the Final Solution, much of their time was occupied with concentration camp exterminations, sorting/selection of the newly-arrived (primarily Jewish) prisoners (e.g. for work, experimentation, or immediate extermination), direct observation of executions and gassings, experimentation, and the fabrication of causes of deaths on prisoner death certificates. The experiments conducted by SS doctors were done for three main reasons:
1) to research methods to improve the health and survivability of soldiers;
2) to lay the groundwork for post-war scientific research and
3) to carry out the dictates of the racial policies of the National Socialist Party. Some experiments were also done at the behest of pharmaceutical companies and medical institutes, for the doctors' own research interests, and to benefit the doctors' personal careers.

Kremer was particularly interested in the effects of starvation on the human body, especially on the liver, and because Kremer was responsible for examining the prisoners that sought admission to the camp infirmary, he was able to personally select the prisoners that he believed would make good test subjects for his experiments. He often performed autopsies in order to extract samples from the liver, spleen and pancreas. On several occasions in his diary, he mentions the extraction of organs and tissues (which he called "living-fresh material") from living victims.
On 3 October 1942 SS doctor Johann Paul Kremer wrote in his diary: "Today fresh living material from the human liver and spleen as well as pancreas fixed, along with lice from typhus patients fixed in pure alcohol. In Auschwitz (city), whole streets are struck down with typhus. So today I had the first serum injection against abdominal typhus administered to me. SS-Obersturmführer Schwarz is sick with typhus!".
Also on October 15, 1942 he writes, "Living-fresh material of liver, spleen and pancreas taken from an abnormal individual." Kremer's diary contains descriptions of at least five more similar instances. At his hearing on July 30, 1947, Kremer stated that "I observed the prisoners in this group [to be liquidated] carefully and whenever one of them particularly interested me because of his advanced stage of starvation, I ordered the medical orderly to reserve him and to inform me when this patient would be killed by injection".

Sonderaktion
All SS doctors were required to be present at what were called "special actions", which was when the mass gassings took place. The most common victims were children, the elderly, mothers with young children and any others considered unfit to work. During his trial, Kremer described how a gassing was conducted and what his role as doctor was. The gassings were conducted in cabins located on the outskirts of the camp; the victims were transported by railway, and after they arrived, prisoners "were first driven to barracks where the victims undressed and then went naked to the gas chambers. Very often no incidents occurred, as the SS men kept people quiet, maintaining that they were to bathe and be deloused. After driving all of them into the gas chamber the door was closed and an SS man in a gas mask threw the contents of a Zyklon-B tin through an opening in the side wall." Kremer's role was to sit in a van along with a medical orderly ready to treat any officers that might succumb to the gas.

[smetanin albert]

Dr.Oskar Altrichter(18.04.1908)

[Orlov]

Thanks Albert!
Next SS-Artz will presented SS-Hauptsturmführer Helmuth Vetter (21 March 1910 in Rastenberg – 2 February 1949) German National Socialist war criminal.
His work began on July 29, 1941 in the Dachau concentration camp, where he tested Bayer sulfonamide preparations for their effectiveness against gonorrhea, pneumonia and other indications. His inhumane attitude emerges from letters to his colleagues in Leverkusen, in which he writes about Dachau that it is one of the "best equipped concentration camps" in the Reich and that he feels "like in paradise".
Vetter was a doctor at the Auschwitz extermination camp, appointed chief doctor by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. He joined other doctors (such as Hans König, Heinz Thilo, and Fritz Klein) in the task of choosing employable Jews to operate the industrial machines and sending others to the gas chambers. He also carried medical experiments on prisoners, involving phenol injections. As paid retainer of IG Farben, Vetter would also deliberately infect prisoners in Auschwitz, Dachau and Gusen to carry out medical experiments. After the war, Vetter was found guilty of committing crimes against humanity. He was hanged in the prison of Landsberg am Lech.
More in Deutsch:
http://www.cbgnetwork.org/Ubersicht/Zei ... etter.html

[smetanin albert]

Add Info - Brandt