Kurt Heissmeyer (26 December 1905 – 29 August 1967) was a
Nazi
Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...
SS physician involved in medical experimentation on concentration camp inmates including children, notably seven-year old
Sergio de Simone.
Medical experiments
In order to obtain a professorship, Heissmeyer needed to present original research.
Although previously disproven, his hypothesis was that the injection of live
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...
bacilli into subjects would act as a vaccine. Another component of his experimentation was based on
pseudoscientific Nazi racial theory that race played a factor in developing tuberculosis. He attempted to prove his hypothesis by injecting live tuberculosis bacilli into the lungs and bloodstream of "
Untermenschen" (subhumans),
Jews
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
and
Slavs
The Slavs or Slavic people are groups of people who speak Slavic languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout the northern parts of Eurasia; they predominantly inhabit Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, and ...
being considered by the Nazis to be racially inferior to Germans.
He was able to have the facilities made available and to test his subjects as a result of personal connections: his uncle, SS general
August Heissmeyer, and his close acquaintance, SS general
Oswald Pohl.
His experiment was conducted on 20 Jewish children at
Neuengamme concentration camp. The children, along with their four adult caretakers, were murdered by being hanged in the basement of
Bullenhuser Damm School in
Hamburg
Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...
.
After the war, Heissmeyer escaped detection and returned to his home in
Magdeburg
Magdeburg (; ) is the Capital city, capital of the Germany, German States of Germany, state Saxony-Anhalt. The city is on the Elbe river.
Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, Otto I, the first Holy Roman Emperor and founder of the Archbishopric of Mag ...
in postwar East Germany and started a successful medical practice as a lung and tuberculosis specialist. He was eventually found out in 1959, and arrested in 1963. In 1966, he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. At his trial he stated, "I did not think that inmates of a camp had full value as human beings." When asked why he didn't use
guinea pigs he responded, "For me there was no basic difference between human beings and guinea pigs." He then corrected himself: "Jews and guinea pigs".
[Admitting the Holocaust: Collected Essays By Lawrence L. Langer Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (June 20, 1996) Language: English ] Heissmeyer died in prison on 29 August 1967.
See also
*
Bullenhuser Damm
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Heissmeyer, Kurt
1905 births
1967 deaths
Neuengamme concentration camp personnel
Physicians in the Nazi Party
East German physicians
German mass murderers
Nazi human subject research
German murderers of children
German people convicted of crimes against humanity
German prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment
Nazis convicted of war crimes
Nazis who died in prison custody
Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by East Germany
Prisoners who died in East German detention
20th-century German murderers