Carl Clauberg

Carl Clauberg was born to a family of craftsmen in the village of Wupperhof near Solingen. His father was a maker of knives who became an arms dealer. Clauberg served with the infantry in France during 1916-1918, from November 1917 as a prisoner of war with the British. He was released from prison in September 1919 and subsequently studied medicine at the universities of Kiel, Hamburg, and Graz until 1925. He passed his state examination in 1924 and then worked as a trainee (Medizinalpraktikant) in the Institute for forensic and social medicine at the University of Kiel until January 31, 1925. He was then a trainee at the city hospital in Kiel until March that year, and on April 6, he became a licensed physician.

Clabber was conferred doctor of medicine at the University of Kiel on May 1, 1925. From November 1, 1925 to June 30, 1832, he was an assistant physician and physician at the University women's clinic (Universitätsfrauenklinik ) in Kiel, and from August 1, 1932 he worked in the Frauenklinik in Königsberg, from 1934 as head physician. On February 2, 1833, he was habilitated at the University women's clinic in Königsberg and on April 1 that year he entered the NSDAP. Later that year he became an SA-Sanitätssturmführer.

On August 30, 1937, Clauberg became außerplanmäßiger Professor and on October 1 chief physician to the SA-Standarte 3 (SA-Gruppe Ostland) and on November 9, 1937 SA-Sanitäts-Obersturmführer.
On August 30, 1838 he became professor extraordinary fur gynaecology and obstetrics at the University of Königsberg, being appointed außerplanmäßiger Professor on September 20, 1939.

From February 2, 1940 to January 11, 1945 he was director and physician-in-chief at the women's clinic to the Knappschafts- and the St. Hedwig-Krankenhauses Königshütte in Upper Silesia.

From 1940 Clauberg conducted experimental research on permanent and temporary sterilisation of women by closing the Fallopian tube following artificially induced inflammations or by means of a constipation of the oviduct.

During 1942 and 1944 Clauberg headed the sterilisation experiments and other inhuman and painful researches on female Jews and Gypsies in concentration camps. He received the order to conduct these experiments from Heinrich Himmler in July 1942 and began the sterilisation experiments in the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau on December 28 that year. Clauberg made Block 10 in Auschwitz I a place of horror. The majority of his victims were Jewish and Gypsy women. In his experiments he made use of a large number of physicians that were themselves prisoners, among them the Polish camp physician Wladislas Dering. Clauberg conducted his sterilisation injections without anaesthesia and thus cause his victims to suffer excruciating pains. Some of the women did not survive, a fact Clauberg accepted as part of the project. Among his victims were girls twelve years of age. Following the forced sterilisation the tortured victims received insufficient care and received no treatment with drugs. This resulted in some of the women being cripples and others dying from infections.

On June 7, 1944, Clauberg reported to Himmler that a physician with 10 assistants could sterilize 1,000 women a day.

In January 1945 he fled to the concentration camp Groß-Rosen on the Ravensbrück concentration camp, where he continued his experiments.

After the war Clauberg fled to Schleswig-Holstein but on June 8, 1945, he was arrested by Soviet soldiers and deported to the USSR. In 1948 he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. In 1955, as a consequence of the Adenauer-Bulganin agreement, he was granted amnesty and on October 11 that year returned to Western Germany. In 1955 he was accused by the Central Board of German Jews (Zentralrat der Deutschen Juden) and on November 21 that year he was arrested by the Kiel police. In 1956 he was excluded from the German Medical Association. Carl Wilhelm Clauberg died in prison on August 9, 1957, while awaiting trial.

Carl Wilhelm Clauberg published more than 50 scientific works.
• Die weiblichen Sexualhormone. 1933.
• Innere Sekretion der Ovarien und der Placenta. 1937.