16. The Sadistic Doctor Who Froze Prisoners and Infected Them With Gangrene
Josef Mengele is probably the best-known evil Nazi doctor, but equally horrible and horrific was his colleague, Doctor Walter Schreiber (1893-1970). A medical student when WWI erupted in 1914, Schreiber voluntarily enlisted in the German army. He was wounded early in the conflict, and after his recovery resumed his studies, then served as a military doctor until war’s end. After the war, he became a professor of biology and hygiene, and gained renown as one of the world’s foremost experts on epidemics. In the Nazi era, Schreiber introduced the use of lethal phenol injections “as a quick and convenient means of executing troublemakers“. During WWII, he rose to the rank of major general in the Wehrmacht Medical Service. He was also a member of the Reich Research Council, and in that capacity, he conducted cruel and sadistic medical experiments on prisoners.
Medical Experiments
During the war, Schreiber experimented upon prisoners in Auschwitz by freezing them in order to examine the effects of extreme cold. He conducted other sadistic medical experiments on female prisoners in Ravensbrueck concentration camp, by cutting open their legs and deliberately infecting them with gangrene. He then gave them bone transplants. The subjects of his experiments usually suffered slow and agonizing deaths. At war’s end, Schreiber was captured by the Red Army and taken to the USSR, where he was held in the infamous Lubyanka prison in poor conditions. His conditions improved when his captors discovered his true identity, and the Soviets put him to work providing medical care to high-ranking German prisoners.
