Siegfried Handloser

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Siegfried Adolf Handloser (25 March 1885 – 3 July 1954) was a Nazi physician and convicted war criminal, convicted for overseeing medical atrocities at concentration camps.

He was convicted at the 1947 Doctors' Trial during the subsequent Nuremberg trials and sentenced to life imprisonment. His sentence was ultimately reduced to a 20-year term, though Handloser was released in 1954 and died of cancer the same year.

Nazi Party membership

Born in Konstanz, he had been a member of the German Army Medical Service since the First World War.

Handloser joined the committee of the German Society for Internal Medicine (DGIM) in 1937 as a de facto Nazi emissary. In 1938, Handloser was promoted to the position of Army Group physician of the Nazi Army Group Command 3. In October, 1939, he was named honorary professor.

From February 1941 during World War II, he held the position of Chief of the Medical Services of the Wehrmacht, the most important medical position in the Nazi Armed Forces and Waffen-SS. He was also Doctor Professor of Medicine and Generaloberstabsarzt (Four stars, NATO Rank OF-9) of the German Armed Forces Medical Services.

War crimes

Handloser attended a meeting on December 29, 1941, at which it was decided to conduct human experiments to test typhus vaccines at Buchenwald concentration camp. They resulted in the deaths of about 100 people.

Handloser actively operated the organization of forced prostitution in the territories occupied by the German Reich, in his position as chief of Wehrmacht Medical Service. Handloser strove to minimize the danger of venereal disease and to prevent "sexual intercourse with Jewish women."

Conviction and death

He was convicted by the American Military Tribunal No. 1 (the Doctors' Trial) in August 1947, and sentenced to life imprisonment. This was later reduced to 20 years. He was released on health grounds in 1954 shortly before dying of cancer in Munich at the age of 69.