Erwin Oskar Ding-Schuler (September 19, 1912 – August 11, 1945) was a

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

surgeon In medicine, a surgeon is a medical doctor who performs surgery. Even though there are different traditions in different times and places, a modern surgeon is a licensed physician and received the same medical training as physicians before spec ...

and an officer in the

Waffen-SS The (; ) was the military branch, combat branch of the Nazi Party's paramilitary ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscr ...

who attained the rank of

Sturmbannführer __NOTOC__ ''Sturmbannführer'' (; ) was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank equivalent to Major (rank), major that was used in several Nazi organizations, such as the Sturmabteilung, SA, Schutzstaffel, SS, and the National Socialist Flyers Corps, NSFK ...

(Major). He is notable for having performed

experiments An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into Causality, cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome o ...

on inmates of the

Buchenwald Buchenwald (; 'beech forest') was a German Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within the Altreich (Old Reich) territori ...

concentration camp. Ding-Schuler joined the

NSDAP The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor, the German Workers ...

in 1932 and the SS in 1936. In 1937, he received his degree and passed his second state exam in medicine. An author of scientific publications, in 1939 he became camp physician at

and head of the division for spotted fever and viral research of the Waffen-SS Hygiene Institute in Weimar-Buchenwald. In July 1939, Ding-Schuler killed the pastor Paul Schneider with an overdose of g-Strophanthin; Schneider was later venerated as a martyr. He conducted extensive medical experiments on some 1,000 inmates, many of whom lost their lives, in Experimental Station Block 46, using various poisons as well as infective agents for

spotted fever A spotted fever is a type of tick-borne disease which presents on the skin. They are all caused by bacteria of the genus '' Rickettsia''. Typhus is a group of similar diseases also caused by ''Rickettsia'' bacteria, but spotted fevers and typhus a ...

, yellow fever,

smallpox Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by Variola virus (often called Smallpox virus), which belongs to the genus '' Orthopoxvirus''. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (W ...

typhus Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposu ...

, and

cholera Cholera () is an infection of the small intestine by some Strain (biology), strains of the Bacteria, bacterium ''Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea last ...

.Zenter, Christian and Bedürftig, Friedemann (1991). Encyclopedia of the Third Reich, p. 199. New York: Macmillan. Ding-Schuler was arrested by U.S. troops on 25 April 1945. He committed suicide on 11 August 1945.Eugen Kogon, ''The Theory and Practice of Hell'' (1998) p. 265.

References

* 1912 births 1945 suicides 1945 deaths People from Bitterfeld-Wolfen Physicians from the Province of Saxony SS-Sturmbannführer Recipients of the Iron Cross (1939) Physicians in the Nazi Party Nazi human subject research Buchenwald concentration camp personnel Nazis who died by suicide in Germany Nazis who died by suicide in prison custody {{Holocaust-stub German military personnel who died by suicide German prisoners of war in World War II held by the United States Prisoners who died in United States military detention Waffen-SS personnel

See also

References