At Auschwitz extermination was conducted on an industrial scale with several million
persons eventually killed through gassing,
starvation, shooting, and burning.
Dr. Herta Oberheuser killed children with oil and evipan
injections, then removed their limbs and vital organs. The time from
the injection to death was between three and five minutes, with the
person being fully conscious until the last moment.
She made some of the most gruesome and painful medical
experiments during World
War II, focused on deliberately inflicting wounds on the subjects.
In order to simulate the combat wounds of German soldiers fighting in
the war, Herta Oberheuser rubbed foreign objects, such as wood, rusty
nails, slivers of glass, dirt or sawdust into the wounds.
After World
War II, in October 1946, the Nuremberg
Medical Trial began, lasting until August of 1947. Twenty-tree German
physicians and scientists were accused of performing vile and potentially
lethal medical experiments on concentration
camp inmates and other living human subjects between 1933 and 1945.
Fifteen defendants were found guilty, and eight were acquitted. Of the
15, seven were given the death penalty and eight imprisoned.
Herta Oberheuser was the only female defendant in the
medical trial. She received a 20 year sentence but was released in April
1952 and became a family doctor at Stocksee in Germany. Her license
to practice medicine was revoked in 1958.
