Johann Paul Kremer (26 December 1883 – 8 January 1965) was German professor, physician and war criminal.
He was a professor of anatomy and human genetics at
Münster University
Münster (; nds, Mönster) is an independent city (''Kreisfreie Stadt'') in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is in the northern part of the state and is considered to be the cultural centre of the Westphalia region. It is also a state dist ...
who joined the
Wehrmacht
The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previous ...
on May 20, 1941. He served in the
SS in the
Auschwitz concentration camp
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
as a physician from 30 August 1942 to 18 November 1942. A member of the
NSDAP
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
, he was involved in
Nazi human experimentation
Nazi human experimentation was a series of human experimentation, medical experiments on large numbers of prisoners, including children, by Nazi Germany in its Nazi concentration camps, concentration camps in the early to mid 1940s, during Wo ...
on the prisoners of Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was
sentenced to death
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...
in the
Auschwitz Trial
The Auschwitz trial began on November 24, 1947, in Kraków, when Poland's Supreme National Tribunal tried forty former staff of the Auschwitz concentration camps. The trials ended on December 22, 1947.
The best-known defendants were Arthur Lieb ...
, but this sentence was later commuted to
life imprisonment
Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted people are to remain in prison for the rest of their natural lives or indefinitely until pardoned, paroled, or otherwise commuted to a fixed term. Crimes for ...
. He was released in 1958.
Life prior to Auschwitz
Kremer was born in
Stellberg. He studied in
Heidelberg
Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...
,
Strassburg
Strasbourg (, , ; german: Straßburg ; gsw, label=Bas Rhin Alsatian, Strossburi , gsw, label=Haut Rhin Alsatian, Strossburig ) is the prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est region of eastern France and the official seat of the Eur ...
as well as
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
; he received his philosophy degree in 1914 and his medical degree in 1919. He also studied natural science and mathematics. He was the "assistant surgeon at the surgical clinic of the University, Charité, the ward of internal diseases of the Municipal Hospital Berlin-Neukölln, the surgical clinic of the University of Cologne and prosector in the Institutes of Anatomy in Bonn and Münster. He became ''Dozent'' of anatomy in 1929 and was promoted there in 1936 to be professor in commission. At the same time, he was commissioned to lecture on the science of human hereditariness."
[Bezwińska, Jadwiga and Czech, Danuta. ''KL Auschwitz seen by the SS''. New York: Howard Fertig Inc., 1984.] He also did some writing: he mentions two articles that he wrote in the diary he kept, the first being "Inherited or Acquired? A Noteworthy Contribution to the Problem of Hereditariness of Traumatic Deformations" and the second titled "New Elements of Cell and Tissues Investigations".
Auschwitz
Medical experiments
The main priority of SS doctors at concentration camps throughout Nazi-occupied Europe was not to provide basic medical services to prisoners, but rather to give the appearance of competent medical care. Following the full-scale implementation of the
Final Solution
The Final Solution (german: die Endlösung, ) or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (german: Endlösung der Judenfrage, ) was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to th ...
, much of their time was occupied with concentration camp exterminations, sorting/selection of the newly-arrived (primarily Jewish) prisoners (e.g. for work, experimentation, or immediate extermination), direct observation of executions and gassings, experimentation, and the fabrication of causes of deaths on prisoner death certificates.
[Strzelecka, Irena. "Medicine in Auschwitz: Selection, executions, and experiments" Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau w Oświęcimiu. Accessed November 14, 2012. www.en.auschwitz.org] The experiments conducted by SS doctors were done for three main reasons: 1) to research methods to improve the health and survivability of soldiers; 2) to lay the groundwork for post-war scientific research; and 3) to carry out the dictates of the racial policies of the Nazi Party. Some experiments were also done at the behest of pharmaceutical companies and medical institutes, for the doctors' own research interests, and to benefit the doctors' personal careers.
Kremer was particularly interested in the effects of starvation on the human body, especially on the liver, and because Kremer was responsible for examining the prisoners that sought admission to the camp infirmary, he was able to personally select the prisoners that he believed would make good test subjects for his experiments. He often performed autopsies in order to extract samples from the liver, spleen and pancreas. On several occasions in his diary, he mentions the
extraction of organs and tissues (which he called "living-fresh material") from living victims, such as on October 15, 1942, when he writes, "Living-fresh material of liver, spleen and pancreas taken from an abnormal individual."
Kremer's diary contains descriptions of at least five more similar instances. At his hearing on July 30, 1947, Kremer stated that "I observed the prisoners in this group
o be liquidatedcarefully and whenever one of them particularly interested me because of his advanced stage of starvation, I ordered the medical orderly to reserve him and to inform me when this patient would be killed by injection."
"Special actions"
All SS doctors were required to be present at what were called "special actions", which was when the mass gassings took place. The most common victims were children, the elderly, mothers with young children and any others considered unfit to work. During his trial, Kremer described how a gassing was conducted and what his role as doctor was. The gassings were conducted in cabins located on the outskirts of the camp; the victims were transported by railway, and after they arrived, prisoners "were first driven to barracks where the victims undressed and then went naked to the gas chambers. Very often no incidents occurred, as the SS men kept people quiet, maintaining that they were to bathe and be deloused. After driving all of them into the gas chamber the door was closed and an SS man in a gas mask threw the contents of a
Cyclon tin through an opening in the side wall."
Kremer's role was to sit in a van along with a medical orderly ready to treat any officers that might succumb to the gas.
Executions and beatings
Throughout Kremer's diary there are multiple occasions where he mentions being in attendance at various executions and beatings. At least four instances can be found where he mentions executions either by gun,
phenol
Phenol (also called carbolic acid) is an aromatic organic compound with the molecular formula . It is a white crystalline solid that is volatile. The molecule consists of a phenyl group () bonded to a hydroxy group (). Mildly acidic, it req ...
injection, or an unspecified method.
He mentions briefly no fewer than three instances where he oversaw the punishment of prisoners. The physicians were required to examine the victim before the punishment and to remain during the administration of punishment; in practice however, physicians rarely, if ever, examined victims and did not openly object to the punishments.
Diary
Kremer kept a diary of his time at Auschwitz. Interspersed with entries of mundane, day-to-day events are multiple accounts of murder, depravity,
gassings and ''
special actions''.
Trial and conviction
After the war, Kremer was arrested by British troops and sent to an internment camp in
Neuengamme
Neuengamme was a network of Nazi concentration camps in Northern Germany that consisted of the main camp, Neuengamme, and more than 85 satellite camps. Established in 1938 near the village of Neuengamme in the Bergedorf district of Hamburg, th ...
. He was later extradited to Poland. Kremer was tried in the Auschwitz trials at the sitting of the Supreme Court National Tribune in Kraków throughout November and December 1947. Based on the contents of his diary and his own confessions, Kremer participated in fourteen gassings as well as multiple public executions and special actions, also known as gassings.
During his testimony, he described the process by which he selected his victims, the process of gaining the necessary information for his research, and he states that:
Kremer was sentenced to death. In his clemency petition, Kremer claimed that he asking for mercy not for his own sake, but for the sake of his research results which he claimed were ready for public. These results, Kremer claimed, included "the building of gallstones in insects, inflammations, the problem of cancer and, finally, a satisfying answer to the question of inheritance of acquired characteristics. Kremer's petition was successful and his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by President
Bolesław Bierut
Bolesław Bierut (; 18 April 1892 – 12 March 1956) was a Polish communist activist and politician, leader of the Polish People's Republic from 1947 until 1956. He was President of the State National Council from 1944 to 1947, President of Polan ...
. Kremer was released from prison on 11 January 1958. After his return to
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
, Kremer was charged with murder by West German officials. On 29 November 1960, he was found guilty of two counts of being an accessory to murder and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. However, the court credited Kremer for the time he had served in Poland and allowed him to walk free. However, he was stripped of his civil rights for five years, and he was later stripped of all of his medical titles. Kremer went on to testify in the
Frankfurt Auschwitz trials
The Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, known in German as ''der Auschwitz-Prozess'', or ''der zweite Auschwitz-Prozess,'' (the "second Auschwitz trial") was a series of trials running from 20 December 1963 to 19 August 1965, charging 22 defendants unde ...
. He died in 1965.
Notes
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kremer, Johann Paul
1883 births
1965 deaths
Physicians in the Nazi Party
People convicted in the Auschwitz trial
German prisoners sentenced to death
Holocaust perpetrators in Poland
Prisoners sentenced to death by Poland
Nazi human subject research
Academic staff of the University of Münster
Auschwitz concentration camp medical personnel
German people convicted of crimes against humanity
Prisoners and detainees of the British military
People extradited to Poland