During
World War II, the Nazi doctor worked at the Ravensbrück concentration
camp, where he had unfettered access to prisoners to use as subjects in
experimentation.
Gebhardt exploited the
opportunity, performing needless and painful tests. At one point, he
attempted to transplant limbs from camp victims to German soldiers
wounded in the war.
Among those subjected to
Gebhardt’s terror were a group of female political prisoners from Poland
who had been part of the resistance, fighting their German occupiers.
Gebhardt and other doctors operated on a number of the women, cutting
open their legs and intentionally infecting them by inserting wood
chips, ground glass, or dirt into the wound.
The
women secretly documented injuries inflicted on them. Their testimony
and evidence helped convict Gebhardt and other doctors in August 1947 at
an American military tribunal held in Nuremberg, Germany.
Gebhardt was sentenced to death by hanging and was executed in June 1948.
As
we commemorate Disability Awareness Month, learn how Ravensbrück
victims—some with lifelong disabilities—helped to hold Gebhardt and
other Nazi doctors accountable for their crimes. Watch live today on
Facebook at 9:30 am ET.
Karl Franz Gebhardt (23
November 1897 – 2 June 1948) was a Nazi physician and a war criminal.
Gebhardt was the main coordinator of a series of medical atrocities
performed on inmates of the concentration camps at Ravensbrück and
Auschwitz. These experiments were an attempt to defend his approach to
the surgical management of grossly contaminated traumatic wounds,
against the then-new innovations of antibiotic treatment of injuries
acquired on the battlefield.
During the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, Gebhardt stood trial in the Doctors' trial (American Military Tribunal No. I).
He
was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced
to death on 20 August 1947. He was hanged on 2 June 1948, in Landsberg
Prison in Bavaria.
During the Subsequent
Nuremberg Trials, Gebhardt stood trial in the Doctors' Trial (9 December
1946–20 August 1947), along with 22 other doctors. He was found guilty
of war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to death on 20
August 1947. He was hanged on 2 June 1948, in Landsberg Prison in
Bavaria.
Two of Gebhardt's assistants were also
tried and convicted at Nuremberg. Fritz Fischer worked in the hospital
of the Ravensbrück concentration camp as a surgical assistant to
Gebhardt, and participated in the surgical experiments carried out on
the inmates.
He was initially condemned to life
imprisonment, but his sentence was reduced to 15 years in 1951 and he
was released in March 1954. Fischer subsequently regained his medical
license and resumed his career at the chemical company Boehringer
Ingelheim, where he remained employed until his retirement. He died in
2003 at the age of 90.
Herta Oberheuser was
another of Gebhardt's assistants at the Ravensbrück concentration camp.
She was the only female defendant in the Doctors' Trial, where she was
sentenced to 20 years in prison.
She was
released in April 1952 and became a family doctor in Stocksee, Germany.
She lost her position in 1956 after a Ravensbrück survivor recognized
her, and her medical license was revoked in 1958. She died on 24
January 1978 at the age of 66.
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