Nazi Doctor Tried for Auschwitz Crimes: Horst Fischer #ww2 #history #documentary

Horst Fischer was a German SS physician and one of the most significant medical perpetrators at the Auschwitz concentration camp complex during the Second World War. Born on 31 December 1912 in Dresden, Germany, Fischer grew up as an orphan and was raised by relatives who instilled strong nationalist views. He studied medicine in Berlin in the early 1930s and joined the SS in 1933, followed by membership in the Nazi Party in 1937. His professional ambitions soon aligned with the racial ideology of Nazi Germany. During World War II, Fischer served as a medical officer in the Waffen-SS before being assigned to concentration camps, including Dachau and Sachsenhausen. In November 1942, he was transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest killing center of the Nazi regime. There, Fischer became directly involved in selections on the arrival ramps, in hospitals, barracks, and labor details—deciding within seconds who would be sent to forced labor and who would be murdered in the gas chambers. He later served as chief camp physician at Auschwitz-Monowitz, a subcamp where prisoners were exploited as slave labor for the chemical company IG Farben. Fischer personally selected tens of thousands of men, women, and children for death and openly admitted after the war that he routinely sent entire transports—including the sick, elderly, and mothers with children—to the gas chambers. He also approved and supervised brutal punishments, including floggings, and took part in pseudo-medical experiments. By his own admission, Fischer bore direct responsibility for the deaths of at least 70,000 prisoners. After the war, Fischer avoided immediate arrest and resumed medical practice in East Germany, concealing his SS past. In 1965, he was finally arrested by the East German authorities. His trial in 1966 became one of the most important Auschwitz-related prosecutions in the Eastern Bloc. Fischer fully confessed but showed no genuine remorse. He was convicted of crimes against humanity an