During World War II, the Nazi doctor worked at the Ravensbrück concentration camp, where he had unfettered access to prisoners to use as subjects in experimentation.
Gebhardt exploited the opportunity, performing needless and painful tests. At one point, he attempted to transplant limbs from camp victims to German soldiers wounded in the war.
Among those subjected to Gebhardt’s terror were a group of female political prisoners from Poland who had been part of the resistance, fighting their German occupiers. Gebhardt and other doctors operated on a number of the women, cutting open their legs and intentionally infecting them by inserting wood chips, ground glass, or dirt into the wound.
The women secretly documented injuries inflicted on them. Their testimony and evidence helped convict Gebhardt and other doctors in August 1947 at an American military tribunal held in Nuremberg, Germany.
Gebhardt was sentenced to death by hanging and was executed in June 1948.
As we commemorate Disability Awareness Month, learn how Ravensbrück victims—some with lifelong disabilities—helped to hold Gebhardt and other Nazi doctors accountable for their crimes. Watch live today on Facebook at 9:30 am ET.
Karl Franz Gebhardt (23 November 1897 – 2 June 1948) was a Nazi physician and a war criminal. Gebhardt was the main coordinator of a series of medical atrocities performed on inmates of the concentration camps at Ravensbrück and Auschwitz. These experiments were an attempt to defend his approach to the surgical management of grossly contaminated traumatic wounds, against the then-new innovations of antibiotic treatment of injuries acquired on the battlefield.
During the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, Gebhardt stood trial in the Doctors’ trial (American Military Tribunal No. I).
He was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to death on 20 August 1947. He was hanged on 2 June 1948, in Landsberg Prison in Bavaria.
During the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, Gebhardt stood trial in the Doctors’ Trial (9 December 1946–20 August 1947), along with 22 other doctors. He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to death on 20 August 1947. He was hanged on 2 June 1948, in Landsberg Prison in Bavaria.
Two of Gebhardt’s assistants were also tried and convicted at Nuremberg. Fritz Fischer worked in the hospital of the Ravensbrück concentration camp as a surgical assistant to Gebhardt, and participated in the surgical experiments carried out on the inmates.
He was initially condemned to life imprisonment, but his sentence was reduced to 15 years in 1951 and he was released in March 1954. Fischer subsequently regained his medical license and resumed his career at the chemical company Boehringer Ingelheim, where he remained employed until his retirement. He died in 2003 at the age of 90.
Herta Oberheuser was another of Gebhardt’s assistants at the Ravensbrück concentration camp. She was the only female defendant in the Doctors’ Trial, where she was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
She was released in April 1952 and became a family doctor in Stocksee, Germany. She lost her position in 1956 after a Ravensbrück survivor recognized her, and her medical license was revoked in 1958. She died on 24 January 1978 at the age of 66.
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