On this date, 28 May
1946, the Doctor Death of Dachau Concentration Camp, Dr. Klaus Karl Schilling, was executed by hanging at Landsberg Prison. I will post the information
about this Doctor of Death from Wikipedia.
Dr. Klaus Karl Schilling
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Born
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5 July 1871
Munich, Bavaria, Germany |
Died
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28 May 1946 (aged 74)
Landsberg am Lech, Bavaria , West Germany |
Nationality
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German
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Occupation
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Tropical medicine, Medical research
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Claus Karl Schilling (born 5 July 1871 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany; died 28
May 1946 in Landsberg am Lech, Bavaria, West Germany), also recorded as Klaus
Schilling, was a German tropical medicine specialist, particularly
remembered for his infamous participation in the Nazi human experiments at the Dachau
concentration camp during World War II.
Though
never a member of the Nazi Party and a recognized researcher before the war,
Schilling became notorious as a consequence of his enthusiastic participation
in human research under both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. From 1942 to 1945,
Schilling's research of malaria and attempts at fighting it using synthetic
drugs resulted in over a thousand cases of human experimentation on camp
prisoners.
Sentenced
to death by hanging after the fall of Hitler's Germany, he was executed for his
crimes against the Dachau prisoners in 1946.
Defendant Dr. Klaus Schilling takes the stand in the Dachau trial. Dachau, [Bavaria] Germany |
Biography
Born
in Munich on July 5, 1871, Schilling studied medicine in his native city,
receiving a doctor's degree there in 1895. Within a few years, Schilling was
practicing in the German colonial possessions in Africa. Recognized for his
contributions in the field of tropical medicine, he was appointed the
first-ever director of the tropical medicine division of the Robert Koch
Institute in 1905, where he would remain for the subsequent three decades.
Italian
research
Upon
retirement from the Robert Koch Institute in 1936, Schilling moved to Benito
Mussolini's Fascist Italy, where he was given the opportunity to conduct
immunization experiments on inmates of the psychiatric asylums of Volterra and San
Niccolò di Siena. (The Italian authorities were concerned that troops faced
malarial outbreaks in the course of the Italo-Ethiopian War.) As Schilling
stressed the significance of the research for German interests, the Nazi
government of Germany also supported him with a financial grant for his Italian
experimentation.
Dachau
experiments
Schilling
returned to Germany after a meeting with Leonardo Conti, the Nazis' Health
Chief, in 1941, and by early 1942 he was provided with a special malaria
research station at Dachau's concentration camp by Heinrich Himmler, the leader
of the SS. Despite negative assessments from colleagues, Schilling would remain
in charge of the malaria station for the duration of the war.
Although
in the 1930s Schilling had stressed the point that malaria research on human
subjects could be performed in an entirely harmless fashion, the Dachau
subjects included experimentees who were injected with synthetic drugs at doses
ranging from high to lethal. Of the more than 1,000 prisoners used in the
malaria experiments at Dachau during the war, between 300 and 400 died as a
result; among survivors, a substantial number remained permanently damaged
afterward.
In
the course of the Dachau Trials following the liberation of the camp at the
close of the war, Schilling was tried by an American tribunal, with an October
1945 affidavit from Schilling being presented in the proceedings.
The
tribunal sentenced Schilling to death by hanging on December 13, 1945. His
execution took place at Landsberg Prison in Landsberg am Lech on May 28, 1946.
See Schilling execution
Dr. Klaus Schilling on the witness stand, 7
December 1945 [PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauTrials/KlausSchilling.html]
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PLEASE SEE THIS VIDEO
TO WATCH THE HANGING OF THOSE SENTENCED TO DEATH AT THE DACHAU TRIALS:
VIDEO SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-uSYHYr3Ts
Dr.
Klaus Karl Schilling, a physician who infected over one thousand prisoners with
malaria in his experiments at the Dachau camp, defends himself at the trial of
former camp personnel and prisoners from Dachau. In his appeal in English after
cross examination, Schilling explained, "I have
worked out this great labor. It would be really a terrible loss if I could not
finish this work. I don't ask you as a court, I ask you personally to do what
you can; to do what you can to help me that I may finish this report. I need
only a table and a chair and a typewriter. It would be an enormous help for
science, for my colleagues, and a good part to rehabilitate myself."
His voice then broke and he cried.
The
Dachau concentration camp trial opened on November 2, 1945 in Dachau, Germany.
Forty individuals who had participated in the operation of the Dachau
concentration camp were charged with the murder and mistreatment of foreign
nationals imprisoned there. Among those charged were Martin Gottfried Weiss,
the camp commandant from 1942-1943; Dr. Klaus Karl Schilling, an SS physician
who was brought to Dachau to find a method of immunizing people against
malaria; and three former prisoners. The trial lasted from November 15 to
December 13, 1945, with seventy witnesses called for the prosecution and fifty
witnesses called for the defense. All forty defendants were found guilty, with
thirty-six being sentenced to death by hanging (including Weiss and Schilling),
one sentenced to hard labor for life, and three sentenced to hard labor for ten
years. A few of the sentences were reduced after a review board determined the
defendants were involved to a lesser degree than originally believed, but most
were upheld. Those sentenced to death were hanged on May 28-29, 1946 at Dachau.
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