Horst Schumann
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/* Early life */
Dr. '''Horst Schumann''' ([[May 1]], [[1906]] - [[May 5]], [[1983]]), SS-[[Sturmbannführer]], participated in [[Sterilization (surgical procedure)|sterilization]] and [[castration]] experiments at [[Auschwitz]] and was particularly interested in the mass sterilization of Jews by means of [[X-ray]]s.
==Early life==
Schumann was born on [[May 1]], [[1906]] in [[Halle an der Saale]]. His father Paul Schumann was also a doctor. Schumann entered the [[NSDAP]] in 1930 and joined the [[SA]] in 1932. In 1933, he received his medical degree after producing a thesis entitled "Frage der Jodresorption und der therapeutischen Wirkung sog. Jodbäder" ("The Question of Iodine Absorption and the Therapeutic Effects of so-called Iodine Baths"). He started his career as an assistant doctor in the Surgical Clinic of the clinic of Halle University.
== Nazi Doctor ==
From 1934, Schumann was employed in the Public Health Office in [[Halle, Saxony-Anhalt|Halle]]. He was recruited to the air force as a physician in [[1939]]. He joined the [[Aktion T4]] Euthanasia program in early October 1939, after a meeting with Dr. [[Viktor Brack]] in Hitler's chancellery.
In January 1940, Schumann became head of the [[Grafeneck]] euthanasia centre in Wurttemberg, where mentally ill people were gassed with [[carbon monoxide]] in the first gas chamber. In the early summer of 1940 he was ordered to the Sonnenstein euthanasia centre. Schumann also belonged to a commission of doctors, the famous "Action 14 f 13", who transferred weak and sick prisoners from [[Auschwitz]], [[Buchenwald]], [[Dachau concentration camp|Dachau]], [[Flossenbürg]], [[Gross-Rosen]], [[Mauthausen]], [[Neuengamme]] and Niederhangen concentration camps to the euthanasia killing centers.
== Auschwitz ==
On [[July 28]], [[1941]], Schumann arrived in [[Auschwitz]]. He worked at Block 30 in the women's hospital, where he set up an x-ray station in 1942. Here men and women were forcibly sterilized by being positioned repeatedly for several minutes between two x-ray machines, the rays aiming at their sexual organs. Most subjects died after great suffering, or were gassed immediately because the radiation burns from which they suffered rendered them unfit for work. Men's testicles were removed and sent to [[Breslau]] for histopathological examination. Schumann "...chose his test persons himself. They were always young, healthy, good-looking Jewish men, women and girls who looked like old people afterwards. The parts of the body that were treated with the rays were burnt, suppurating. Often the intestines were also affected. Many died. Part of Schumann's control tests, to check whether the radiation had worked, was the so-called semen check: a stick covered with a rubber hose was inserted into the rectum of the victim and the glands stimulated until ejaculation occurred so that the ejaculate could be tested for sperm..." (Klee, 53) Both kinds of samples were sent to the University of [[Breslau]] (today [[Wrocław]]) for examination.
Schumann also performed [[typhus]] experiments by injecting people with blood from typhus patients and then attempting to cure the newly infected subjects. Schumann left Auschwitz in September 1944 and was appointed to the
[[Sonnenstein Clinic]] in [[Saxony]] which had earlier been converted into a military hospital.
While serving as a military doctor on the Western Front he was captured by the Americans in January 1945. He was released from captivity in October 1945. In April 1946 he began to work as a sports doctor for the city of [[Gladbeck]]. An application for a license for a hunting gun led to his being identified in 1951 so the GDR issued an arrest warrant. According to his own statement, Schumann served as a ship’s doctor for 3 years and because he did not have a German passport, he applied for one in [[Japan]] in 1954 and received it under his own name. Schumann then fled, first to [[Egypt]] and eventually settled in [[Khartoum]] in the [[Sudan]] as head of a hospital. He was forced to flee from Sudan in 1962 after being recognised by an Auschwitz survivor. Then he went to Ghana, where he received the protection of the head of state, [[Kwame Nkrumah]].
In 1966, he was extradited from [[Ghana]] to [[West Germany]] where the trial against him was opened in [[Frankfurt]] on [[September 23]], [[1970]]. However, Schumann was released from prison on [[July 29]], [[1972]] due to his heart condition and generally deteriorating health. However, he did not die until [[May 5]], [[1983]], eleven years after he had been released. As [[Robert Jay Lifton]] has observed "...Schumann has great importance for us because of what he did — intense involvement in both direct medical killing and unusually brutal Auschwitz experiments — and what he was — an ordinary, but highly Nazified man and doctor..." (p.284).
== See also ==
*[[The Holocaust]]
*[[Nazi human experimentation]]
*[[Dr. Mengele]]
*Dr. [[Eduard Wirths]]
== References ==
* Dr. [[Robert J. Lifton]], (1986) ''THE NAZI DOCTORS:Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide''. New York: Basic Books.
*Klee, Ernst.
"Turning the tap on was no big deal" , (1990) -The
gassing doctors during the Nazi period and afterwards, Dachau
Review 2, History of Nazi Concentration Camps, Studies,
Reports, Documents, Volume 2. edited by Wolfgang Benz and
Barbara Distel, published for the Comite International de
Dachau, Brussels. Verlag Dachauer Hefte, Alte Roemerstrasse
75, 8060 Dachau.
*Klodzinski, Stanislaw: "Sterilisation und Kastration durch Röntgenstrahlen im Auschwitz-Lager. Verbrechen Horst Schumann" in Internationales Auschwitz-Komitee (Hrsg.) "Unmenschliche Medizin" Anthologie, Bd. 1, Teil 2, Warschau 1969.
*Mitscherlich, Alexander/Mielke, Fred: "Medizin ohne Menschlichkeit", Frankfurt a. M. 1978, [ISBN 3-596-22003-3]
*[http://www.wsg-hist.uni-linz.ac.at/Auschwitz/HTMLd/Schumann.html]
See also:
[http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/aumed.html]
{{BD|1906|1983|Schumann, Horst}}
[[Category:Freikorps]]
[[Category:Auschwitz concentration camp personnel]]
[[Category:SS officers]]
[[Category:Nazi physicians]]
[[Category:People from Halle, Saxony-Anhalt]]
[[Category:People from the Province of Saxony]]
[[Category:University of Halle-Wittenberg alumni]]
[[Category:University of Innsbruck alumni]]
[[de:Horst Schumann]]
[[he:הורסט שומאן]]
[[pl:Horst Schumann]]