World War 2 - KZ Doctor

Looking at this photo you may think of your family doctor. Try to associate as many words as you can to describe the nature of that individual. Most people come up with words like compassionate, professional, considerate.

The doctor left is Dr. Carl Clauberg, before World War 2 a well-respected Professor and gynecological researcher with a successful medical career. But Clauberg, one of the most respected individuals in the German medical society, transformed at Auschwitz from a healer into a systematic killer.

Carl Clauberg was born in Wuppertal in 1898 into a craftsmen family. He participated in World War I as infantryman, later studied medicine and avanced to doctor-in-chief at the University gynaecological clinic in Kiel. He entered the NSDAP in 1933, and later he was appointed Professor for gynaecology at Koenigsberg University.

In December 1942, Carl Clauberg came to the deathcamp Auschwitz and received Block 10 for his medical experimental activities.

At Auschwitz Professor Carl Clauberg injected chemical substances into wombs during his experiments. Thousands of Jewish and Gypsy women were subjected to this treatment. They were sterilized by the injections, producing horrible pain, inflamed ovaries, bursting spasms in the stomach, and bleeding. The injections seriously damaged the ovaries of the victims, which were then removed and sent to Berlin.

At Auschwitz "patients" were put into pressure chambers, tested with drugs, frozen to death, and exposed to various other traumas. Men and women were positioned repeatedly for several minutes between two x-ray machines aimed at their sexual organs.

Most subjects died or were gassed immediately because the radiation burns from which they suffered rendered them unfit for work. Men's testicles were removed and sent to Breslau for histopathological examination.

Carl Clauberg was put to trial in the Soviet Union and sentenced to 25 years. 7 years later, he was pardonned under the "returnee" arrangement between Bonn and Moscow and went back to West Germany. Upon returning he held a press conference and boasted of his scientific work at Auschwitz.

After survivor groups protested, Clauberg was finally arrested in 1955 but died in August 1957, shortly before his trial should have started.