Title:

Karl Gebhardt and Herta Oberheuser : the road to medical murder

Issue Date: 2013
Abstract (summary): Nazi doctors violated the inherent trust and intimacy of the medical profession by conducting experiments on non-consenting concentration camp prisoners. Focusing on Dr. Karl Gebhardt and Dr. Herta Oberheuser, it became clear that perpetrators of medical crimes shared sociological and biographical factors that affected their decision to join and participate in the violence of Nazism in spite of the demands placed upon them by their profession to heal and not harm. Furthermore, their work relationship, shaped by Nazi and gender ideology, had a significant impact on how they operated within the concentration camp system, and later, how they were perceived in an American military trial. By examining a male superior and a female subordinate, the influence of gender was revealed not only in the primary court documentation, but also in the current historiography. Connecting sociology with biography enables a more complete understanding of the historic individual that proves invaluable given that many more recent interpretations of Gebhardt and especially Oberheuser have been coloured by sentiment and moral judgment.
Description: This research paper was completed and submitted at Nipissing University, and is made freely accessible through the University of Toronto’s TSpace repository
Content Type: Student Research Project

Permanent link

https://hdl.handle.net/1807/102681

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