Dr. Herta Oberheuser was a German Nazi physician who helped carry out medical experiments on prisoners at the Ravensbruck Concentration Camp for Women.
At the Doctors Trial at Nuremberg, after several Polish former prisoners testified that Herta had participated in the horrific sulfonamide experiments forced on them at the camp, Herta was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Herta was serving her sentence at Landsberg Prison when she was quietly released after serving only five years, all arranged by the United States military. Like many other Nazi concentration camp doctors, she returned to practicing medicine, and developed a “flourishing medical practice” in northern Germany. There, she was recognized by a Ravensbruck survivor who quickly got word to French survivors, who contacted socialite and activist Caroline Ferriday. Once Caroline heard Herta was free she mounted a campaign, with the help of her physician friends at The British Medical Association, to have the doctor’s medical license revoked.
Herta officially lost her position in August 1958 when her medical license was revoked and her practice shut down. She never practiced medicine again, was fined, and died in a German nursing home in 1978. She was 67 years old.
