Herta Oberheuser, German National Socialist “Official” Serial Killer – 1946

From Wikipedia: Herta Oberheuser (15 May 1911 in Cologne, German Empire – 24 January 1978 in Linz am Rhein, West Germany) was a physician at the Ravensbrück concentration camp from 1940 until 1943.

She worked there under the supervision of Dr. Karl Gebhardt, participating in gruesome medical experiments (sulfanilamide as well as bone, muscle, and nerve regeneration and bone transplantation) conducted on 86 women, 74 of whom were Polish political prisoners in the camp. Oberheuser killed healthy children with oil and evipan injections, then removed their limbs and vital organs. The time from the injection to death was between three and five minutes, with the person being fully conscious until the last moment. She performed some of the most gruesome and painful medical experiments, focusing on deliberately inflicting wounds on the subjects. In order to simulate the combat wounds of German soldiers fighting in the war, Herta Oberheuser rubbed foreign objects, such as wood, rusty nails, slivers of glass, dirt, or sawdust into the cuts.

Herta Oberheuser was the only female defendant in the Nuremberg Medical Trial (United States of America v. Karl Brandt, et al.; December 9, 1946 through August 20, 1947.), where she was sentenced to 20 years in jail.

“She was released in April 1952 for good behaviour and became a family doctor at Stocksee in Germany, only to lose her position in 1956 after a Ravensbruck survivor recognised her. Her licence to practise medicine was revoked in 1958. She said of her service: ‘Being a woman didn’t stop me being a good National Socialist. I think female National Socialists were every bit as valuable as men in keeping what we believed in alive.’” [Allan Hall]

She died in January 1978 at the age of 66.

[Allan Hall, “Nazi women exposed as every bit as bad as Hitler's deranged male followers,” Daily Mail, Feb. 11, 2009; based on Kathrin Kompish, Taeterinnen: Frauen im Nationalsozialismus, 2008, Boehlau Verlag]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1142824/Nazi-women-exposed-bit-bad-Hitlers-deranged-male-followers.html

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More: Female Serial Killers of National Socialist Germany

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Female Serial Killers of National Socialist Germany

The dates represent the year each of these female serial killers was tried for her crimes. The term “free-lance killer” denotes a Nazi who violated the official code of conduct by engaging in homicidal; acts for personal pleasure rather than governmental duty.

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1945 – Johanna Altvater – Germany – Ukraine, Poland: “Holocaust of Bullets” 
1945 – Hermine Braunsteiner – Concentration camp “free-lance killer”

1945 – Irma Grese – Concentration camp “free-lance killer”

1945 – Erna Petri –
1946 – Valentina Bilien – “Death panel“ nurse

1946 – Anna Katschenka – “Death panel“ nurse
1946 – Gerta Oberheuser – Doctor

1946 – Ella Schmidt, Liesel Bachor & Kathe Pisters – Official child care providers

1946 – Marianne Tuerk (Türk) & Margarethe Heubsch – “Death panel“ physicians

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Ilse Koch has not been included because there is – despite her legend and the fact that she was indeed a vicious creature– no evidence that she was responsible for the human-skin lampshades or other homicidal acts attributed to her.

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Kathrin Kompisch, Perpetrators: Women Under National Socialism (translation of German title)  explodes the myth behind the propaganda. – ‘The history of National Socialism has long been reduced to one that blamed men for everything,’ says Kompisch. ‘The fact is women were involved at all levels of the Third Reich’s most infamous and brutal crimes . . . There were always choices, even within the Third Reich, and women often made their own choices as much as men.” [Allan Hall, “Nazi women exposed as every bit as bad as Hitler's deranged male followers,” Daily Mail, Feb. 11, 2009]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1142824/Nazi-women-exposed-bit-bad-Hitlers-deranged-male-followers.html#ixzz3tjZLXgQ6

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SEE MORE: Female Serial Killer Collections

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Kreis, Germany: Three Serial Baby Killer Nurses - Matron Ella Schmidt, Sister Liesel Bachor & Kathe Pisters

EXCERPTS from reports on the 1946 trial:

Kreis Children's Home was established by the Volkswagenwerk Directorate to accommodate the infant children of foreign workers in the factory and on farms in the neighbouring Kreis. It was clearly proved at the trial that Dr. Korbel, together with Matron Schmidt and Sister Bachor, were wilfully neglectful in their duties, and that their wilful neglect was the direct cause of the death of between 350 and 400 Polish and Russian children. Matron Schmidt was also sentenced to death by the court, but this sentence was commuted by the confirming officer to one of imprisonment for life. Sister Bachor was sentenced to five years imprisonment.

The children at the Kinderheim all experienced the same sequence of symptoms: vomiting, diarrhea, emaciation, distended bluish colored abdomens, and, finally, death. When Allied investigators exhumed some of the children's bodies, they found evidence of extreme malnutrition, and bloated and distended abdomens. One Kinderheim nurse described the children as "rotting away with each passing day.".

Even though illness in the nursery had reached epidemic proportions, the staff made no effort to stop the spread of infection. There were several children to a bed, yet the children's diapers, clothes and bed linens were left filthy and unchanged for hours. The odor in the nursery was reported to be sickening. The windows in the nursery were left open during the winter. Although children were constantly sick with infections and sores, no effort was made to isolate the sick children from the healthy. The nurses did not bathe the children in fresh bath water; often ten to fifteen children, both sick and healthy, were bathed in the same water and dried with the same towel.

In addition to the disease and infection caused by unsanitary conditions in the nursery, the children suffered from starvation. A Polish nurse testified the children were so skinny "you could notice the bones. The mothers who wanted to breast feed were often thrown out by the German nurses who claimed they had "stolen" food or supplies. The supervising nurse at the Kinderheim, Ella Schmidt, reportedly beat mothers who came to visit their children after hours or without a police permit.

[Source: “Statement for the Press on the Trial of Dr. Hans Korbel & Others, Medical Officer In Charge and Staff at the Ruhen Baby Farm.)] Links: Part 1; Part 2

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For more cases of “Baby Farmers,” professional child care providers who murdered children see The Forgotten Serial Killers.

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For more cases, see Sicko Nurses

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Valentina Bilien, Serial Baby-Killer Nurse for the German Government - 1946

Valentina Bilien, nurse in the “children’s home” at Velpke, was one of many German medical professionals put on trial after WWW II for crimes against humanity. While the eugenics paradigm of the was an official (yet not publicized) policy it would be naïve to classify the serial killers of babies in these cases as mere instruments of democide (murder by government). Many of the free-lance serial killer nurses of recent decades are motivated by eugenics., euthanasia as well as more personalized varieties of a “playing God complex.” While some criminologists might prefer not to classify the physicians and nurses who murdered babies on behalf of their government, they will be included in our collection dues to their close parallel to non-government of serial killers: physicians, nurses, baby farmers, and baby-sitters.

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EXCERPT from 1946 trial records:

The accused, Heinrich Gerike, Georg Hessling, Werner Noth, Hermann Muller, Gustav Claus, Doctor Richard Demmerich, Fritz Flint and Frau Valentina Bilien, were charged with committing a war crime " in that they at Velpke, Germany, between the months of May and December, 1944, in violation of the laws and usages of war, were concerned in the killing by wilful neglect of a number of children, Polish Nationals."

VALENTINA BILIEN was a German national, at one time married to a Russian and formally a teacher in Russia. In 1944, she was appointed to the post of matron at a newly established children's home in Velpke, a village near Helmstedt, Germany. She had no previous experience whatever in running a children's clinic. Assisted by four Polish and Russian girls, the health of the infants soon deteriorated to the extent that within months more than eighty children died through gross negligence. The infants had been forcibly removed from their Polish mothers (who were working on farms as slave labour) at four months old. At a British Military Court, held at Brunswick in March/April, 1946, Frau Valentina Bilien was found guilty of a war crime and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment.

[Source: Law-Reports Of Trials Of War Criminals, The United Nations War Crimes Commission, Volume VII, London, HMSO.1948; NO. 42, Trial Of Heinrich Gerike And Seven Others (The Velpke Children’s Home Case) British Military Court, Brunswick, 20th March - 3rd April, 1946]

Pdf version: The Velpke Children’s Home Case

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Newspaper report on trials involving this and another German government baby farm:

FULL TEXT: Brunswick, Germany, Jan. 15 – Four hundred and sixty-two infants died from “willful neglect’” at two German “baby farms” and 16 men and three women connected with the camps have been arrested for war crimes trial, British investigators said today.

The children were born to slave laborers working on farms and in a factory near Brunswick and were considered illegitimate by the Nazis, the investigators said.

Separated from their mothers at ages of 10 days to three months, the children were taken to two “farms” or “clinics” in the villages of Velpke and Ruehen. Out of 114 placed in wooden huts at Velpke, 92 died, and all of the 370 placed in corrugated iron sheds at Ruehen succumbed.

Their bodies were wrapped in toilet paper and stacked in the lavatory until cardboard boxes arrived in which the children were buried in unmarked graves, the British said. The bodies were packed three or four to the box.

Cause of the deaths, the report said, was willful neglect, incorrect feeding, premature separation from mothers and generally filthy conditions of the “clinics.” Diarrhea was given as a general cause, occasioned by improper diets.

The report said the babies were kept in crude cribs which were seldom if ever cleaned. Mattresses were described as so dirty many of them had rotted to pieces, and insects covered the ward walls as well as the babies themselves.

“The baby farms were staffed by civilians of the local Nazi party and labor organizations,” a British investigating officer said. “The person ultimately thought to be responsible is the notorious gauleiter of Hannover, Hartmann Lauterbacher, who has not been located.

[“462 Infants Died On German ‘Baby Farm’ – British Hold 16 Men, Three Women For ‘Wilful Neglect,’” (AP), Jan. 16, 1946, p. 1]

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To learn more details about murderous child care providers in history, including baby farmers, adoption agents and baby sitters, see “Death on the Baby Farm,” by Robert St. Estephe, Female Serial Killer Index.

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For more cases of “Baby Farmers,” professional child care providers who murdered children see The Forgotten Serial Killers.

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More: Female Serial Killers of National Socialist Germany

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For more cases, see Sicko Nurses

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Anna Katschenka: Austrian Serial Child-Killing “Death Panel” Nurse - 1946

Anna Katschenka (1905 - 1966) was described by the matron at the training school from which she graduated as one of their best students, bearing superior intellect strong character. She became deputy chief nurse in the children's institution Am Spiegelgrund Institute for Children in Vienna, working there from 1941-1945, and participated in the murder of disabled children under that National Socialist policy of  “death accelerations,” or euthanasia (under the guise of bioethics). Nurse Katschenka was not, however, a member of the National Socialist (“Nazi”) Party, yet she did receive bonus payments from the Reich Association (AOA) for her active participation in the death acceleration protocol. The program, which took the lives of 789 children, was ended in June 1945. She, along with a number of other medical colleagues (Marianne Tuerk & Margarethe Heubsch) from the same institution, was tried after the end of the war for manslaughter. 

On April 9, 1948, following her confession to having performed “death acceleration” on 24 children, Katschenka sentenced to 8 years in prison. Her trial revealed that a number of other nurses refused to obey orders to kill children. Those physicians and nurses who did engage in the crimes numbered around 90. She was paroled December 24, 1950 after serving only 4 years (including detention period before sentencing. She returned to her profession as a children’s nurse.

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NOTE: 4 of the Am Spiegelgrund serial killer nurses were charged but managed to escape capture: Maria Bohlrath (born July 10, 1918, nurse), Erna Storch (born January 18, 1916, nurse), Emilie Kraguly (born September 4, 1914, nurse) and Klara Kleinschmittger (born August 23, 1909, nun care provider for infants).

Based on Wikipedia entry: “Anna Katschenka.
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Decades following the trials of the late 1940s, “The Child murders at Spiegelgrund” was back in the news. It has been discovered that the dismembered bodies murdered by the eugenics doctors had been not only kept but had been continued to be used for medical experiments by the institution in which the crimes had taken place.

Public outcry finally resulted in the treatment of the remains of 600 of the tiny victims of the medical serial killers. There were buried in a grave of honor at the Vienna Central Cemetery April 2002.

[Source: “Kindermord am Spiegelgrund” (Innocents at Spiegelgrund) & “Institutionelle Bemäntelung - Kindermord am Spiegelgrund” (Institutional cover up - Massacre at Spiegelgrund), website: wien.at]

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More: Female Serial Killers of National Socialist Germany

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“The Stomping Mare”: Hermine Braunsteiner, Nazi Serial Killer - 1945

WIKIPEDIA EXCERPT: Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan (July 16, 1919 – April 19, 1999) was a female camp guard and the first Nazi war criminal to be extradited from the United States.

She was born in Vienna, the youngest child in a strictly observant Roman Catholic working class family. Her father Friedrich Braunsteiner was a chauffer for a brewery and/or a butcher. Hermine lacked the means to fulfill her aspiration to become a nurse, and worked as a maid. From 1937 to 1938 she worked in England for an American engineer’s household.

In 1938 the Anschluss made her a German citizen, and she returned to Vienna. Late that year she moved and found work at the Heinkel aircraft works in Berlin.

At the urging of her landlord, she applied for a better paying job with better working conditions, supervising prisoners, quadrupling her income in time. She began her training on August 15, 1939, as an Aufseherin under Maria Mandel at Ravensbrück concentration camp. After some years a disagreement with Mandel led Braunsteiner to request a transfer.

On October 16, 1942, she took up her duties in the apparel factory at Majdanek, located near Lublin, Poland. It was both a labour camp (Arbeitslager and an extermination camp (Vernichtungslager). She was promoted to assistant wardress in January 1943 under Oberaufseherin Elsa Erich along with five other women.

Her abuses took many forms in the camp. She involved herself in “selections” of women and children to be sent to the gas chambers and whipped several women to death. Working alongside other female guards such as Elsa Ehrich, Hildegard Lächert, Marta Ulrich, Alice Orlowski, Charlotte Karla Mayer-Woellert, Erna Wallisch and Elisabeth Knoblich, Braunsteiner was infamous for her wild rages and tantrums. According to one witness at her later trial in Dusseldorf, she “seized children by their hair and threw them on trucks heading to the gas chambers.” Other survivors testified how she killed women by stomping on them with her steel-studded jackboots, earning her the nickname “The Stomping Mare” (In Polish “Kobyła”, in German “Stute von Majdanek”)

She received the War Merit Cross, 2nd class, in 1943, for her work.

In January 1944, Hermine was ordered back to Ravensbrück as Majdanek began evacuations. There she was promoted to supervising wardress at the Genthin subcamp of Ravensbrück, located outside Berlin. Witnesses say that she abused many of the prisoners with a special whip she carried.

On May 7, 1945, Hermine Braunsteiner fled the camp ahead of the Soviet Red Army. She then returned to Vienna, but soon left, complaining that there was not enough food there. The Austrian police arrested her and turned her over to the British military occupation authorities; she remained incarcerated from May 6, 1946, until April 18, 1947. A court in Graz, Austria convicted her of torture, maltreatment of prisoners and crimes against humanity and against human dignity at Ravensbrück (not Majdanek), then sentenced her to serve three years, beginning April 7, 1948; she was released early in April 1950. An Austrian civil court subsequently granted her amnesty from further prosecution there. She worked at low level jobs in hotels and restaurants until emigrating.

Link to full Wikipedia article

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More: Female Serial Killers of National Socialist Germany

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Links to more cases: Female Serial Killers Who Like to Murder Women

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Sadism & Female Serial Killers

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Eugenics Female Serial Killers: Two Austrian Doctors, Marianne Tuerk & Margarethe Heubsch - 1946

FULL TEXT: London, Tues – Dr Ernst Illing (42), who is on trial with two women assistants for the mass murder of 250 children, admitted killing “a certain number” of them, says Reuters man in Vienna.

Women are Drs Marianne Tuerk (32) and Margarethe Heubsch (43). All three claimed that the alleged murders were ordered from Berlin to “purify and improve the physical standards of the German race.”

They are said to have given overdoses of veronal, luminol and morphine to children afflicted with mental, lung and other diseases. Dr Jekelius and Professor Heyde, who are alleged to be implicated in the mass killings of children at Steinhof Hospital near Vienna are missing.

Dr Jekelius was once reported to be engaged to Paula Hitler, the Fuehrer’s sister and housekeeper.

[“Child Murders,” Daily News (Perth, Australia), Jul. 16, 1946, p. 3]

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Dr. Marianne Türk sentenced to ten years' imprisonment at the People's Court. Information on the outcome for Dr. Margarethe Heubsch has not yet been located by this editor.

At least two other women were tried as participant in the child murder conspiracy: Dr. Margaret Nicely was acquitted and the nurse Anna Katschenka to eight years in prison.

Decades following the trials of the late 1940s, “The Child murders at Spiegelgrund” was back in the news. It has been discovered that the dismembered bodies murdered by the eugenics doctors had been not only kept but had been continued to be used for medical experiments by the institution in which the crimes had taken place.

Public outcry finally resulted in the treatment of the remains of 600 of the tiny victims of the medical serial killers. There were buried in a grave of honor at the Vienna Central Cemetery April 2002.

[Source: “Kindermord am Spiegelgrund” (Innocents at Spiegelgrund) & “Institutionelle Bemäntelung - Kindermord am Spiegelgrund” (Institutional cover up - Massacre at Spiegelgrund), website: wien.at]

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The plague illustrated is part of a monument called “Salzburg STUMBLING BLOCKS: An art project for Europe” initiated by artist Gunter Demnig. The project is directed against forgetting the victims of government-directed euthanasia [based on the philosophy of eugenics, in the USA today, under the aegis of genetic science, called “bioethics” or “transhumanism.”

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More: Female Serial Killers of National Socialist Germany

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For more cases, see Sicko Nurses

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The Original Feminazis?: “The Battle Of The Fake Rape Cases” - 1945

FULL TEXT: Early as it is in the occupation of Germany, the American army appears to have won one major battle against an evil which might have seriously undermined its authority.

It was the battle of the fake rape cases.

As yet, few level-headed high army officials are certain whether it was an organized campaign of subtle sex sabotage or merely a sort of individual feminine guerrilla campaign.

Whatever its origin – either individual or collective – it has pretty definitely failed.

~ Viewed as Murder. ~

To understand the seriousness of the original situation when American troops first swept into Germany it must be realized that, for both moral and disciplinary reasons, our army views rape as civilian courts view murder. American soldiers have been hanged for rape in several European countries where this war has been fought.

Thus, word of the American army’s penalty for rape obviously filtered into Germany. That at least some nazi-minded frauleins heard of it and made their plans is now a matter of record. Others perhaps “innocently” – if that word is fitting – fell into the scheme.

It should be said that the army’s overseas rape cases generally have been fewer than would occur among a similar number of similarly aged civilians in most countries. But suddenly in Germany the military police began to be approached by numbers of women crying “Rape!”

Arrests were made immediately, but investigations prior to courts-martial began to unearth many discrepancies, for instance:

Out of three such complaints in one division, medical investigation revealed that two of the girls were virginal and civilians testified that the third was a known prostitute.

All three finally admitted they had been prompted by the departing Germans to try the rape racket as a means of harassing American troops.

~ Followed Instructions. ~

Several cases of German girls found fraternizing with doughboys first appeared as sex cases. The frauleins realized they had been found out and mistakenly thinking they too would be punished for such fraternizing they immediately cried “rape” in hopes of saving themselves.

The soldiers were punished for such fraternizing – but there’s a difference between a $65 fine and hanging.

More than once it developed that frauleins who said they had been raped did not even know what the English word “rape” means. They had merely been instructed briefly on how to say it. Rape remains a hanging offense in the American army – but no doughboy is going to the gallows simply on the word of a clever German girl.

[Kenneth L. Dixon, “Army Thwarts Fake Rape Plot,” syndicated (IP),  The Racine Journal-Times (Wi.), May 15, 1945, p. 2]

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More historical cases of False Rape Accusations

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