Herta Oberheuser, the daughter of an engineer, was born on 15 May 1911 in Cologne, then part of the German Empire. She grew up in Düsseldorf, where she graduated from high school in 1931. Oberheuser joined the League of German Girls in 1935, and her activities were to provide medical assistance to female participants in youth shows who were overloaded with exercise.
A chance to earn well came her way when Oberheuser learned from a professional medical journal that the SS was looking for a female doctor for a “women's retraining camp” near Berlin. She applied, and after three months of training, in December 1940, the 29-year-old Oberheuser was sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. After the war, Anna Heil, a German woman, recalled how she had received news that her sister had died in Ravensbrück and contacted Oberheuser hoping to discover more details on her sister's final days. Oberheuser hit Heil in the face and stomach, while screaming at her: "She is gone! Because she was only a useless eater and we really don't need those sort of people around any more!"
In total, some 132,000 women from all over Europe passed through Ravensbrück including Poles, Russians, Jews, Romani people, and others. Of that number, over 92,000 women perished.
When the camp was liberated by the Red Army on the 30th of April 1945, there were about 3,500 sick women, men and children in the camp.
Justice finally caught up with Oberheuser when she was tried in the Nuremberg "Doctors' trial" which began on 9 December 1946. She was the only female defendant at the trial and on her gender she commented saying: "being a woman didn't stop me being a good National Socialist. I think female National Socialists were every bit as valuable as men in keeping alive what we believe."
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