Heinrich Rindfleisch MD – a doctor at Majdanek concentration camp

Background and higher academic education Heinrich Friedrich Rindfleisch was born on 3 March 1916 in Strasbourg as the only child of the Reichsbank inspector, August Heinrich Rindfleisch and his wife Lucie, née Müller. As Alsace and Lorraine, in accordance with the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, were returned to France, and the local branch of the Reichsbank was closed down, the Rindfleisch family moved to Berlin shortly after the end of the First World War. The bank clerk, August Rindfleisch, had the characteristics typical of a bureaucrat from the times of Emperor Wilhelm II (the period before the First World War) – conservatism and a nationalist world view. It is confirmed by the opinion from October 1934, in which Rindfleisch describes his family home as nationalist. Rindfleisch attended primary school in the Berlin district of Lichtenberg, and then a Reform Real gymnasium, from which he graduated in 1935 with a good final examination result. In the summer of 1935, he began to study medicine at the University of Berlin. With 9,000 students, the University of Berlin was then the biggest academic institution in Germany. He dropped his studies after a year in order to perform a duty of a six-month state labour service in the National Labour Service (RAD). At that time, he was also awarded the Bronze Sturmabteilung (SA) Sports Badge and he took part in the military parade at the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) congress in 1936 in Nuremberg. After resuming his studies he passed a physics examination as well as a state examination in medicine with the grade ‘good’. On 8 May 1942 he received a licence to practice medicine, and in the same year, under the supervision of Prof. Dr Werner Haase from the university surgery clinic in Berlin, he wrote a doctoral thesis ‘The Treatment of Joint Pain with Strontium’. He received the grade ‘very good’ for his thesis and was given a degree of Doctor of Medicine. From July 1940 until the end of 1941 he worked as a trainee doctor, and then as an assistant doctor in the university surgery clinic in Berlin. Since May 1942, directly after a longer leave, he underwent an almost eight-week basic training in the Reserve Sanitary Battalion of the Waffen-SS in Oranienburg. From July to August 1942 he took part in the training for candidates for the position of commander of the SS Reserve Sanitary Battalion in Oranienburg, which was organised for the tenth time, as he was supposed to become a commander of the SS Corps after the next promotion to the rank of second lieutenant. By the end of the war, Rindfleisch had reached the rank of SS reserve lieutenant. In 1934, as an 18-year-old student, he applied for admission to the local SS unit No. 10/42 in Berlin. In fact, his path to the SS, as well as his activity in its ranks until he was

1 promoted to SS commander in 1943, is impossible to reconstruct. The SS identity card confirms his membership since 1939. Due to a vision defect he was not fully able to perform military service and was therefore not sent to the front, but he was recommended to work as a camp doctor in an increasingly developing system of concentration camps.

Doctor in a concentration camp His first job as a camp doctor was in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. However, on the basis of the available records, it is impossible to determine an exact period of his activity in the camp. Therefore, he belongs to the group of the camp doctors, who, in the years 1941 to 1942, when there was a large personnel fluctuation, were in Sachsenhausen for a short period of time. During the one of police interrogations on 20 February 1968, Rindfleisch said that in 1942 he was conscripted into the Waffen-SS formation in Oranienburg, and then was a garrison doctor at the Reserve Sanitary Battalion, which was stationed there. Although he denies any connection with the camp, it is very likely that before his work in Ravensbrück, perhaps even within the time of the training for reserve commanders in the summer of 1942, he worked as a doctor in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp for a short period of time. Information about him working there is provided only by an account of a former prisoner, Witold Zegarski, who mentions Rindfleisch in connection with operations performed in the camp hospital. Rindfleisch took part in operations that seriously affected the health of the victims. Rindfleisch himself treated this as an additional training in the field of surgery. In August 1942, directly after the training for candidates for a position of commander of the reserve, Rindfleisch was promoted to the rank of master sergeant, and he was transferred to the men’s camp in KL Ravensbrück as a camp doctor. Since August 1941 the camp had its own camp hospital. During his service as a camp doctor, Ravensbrück was ‘purged’ of the Jews. Numerous transports of Jewish prisoners left Ravensbrück heading towards Auschwitz. In addition, prisoners, who were considered ‘permanently incapable of work’, were subjected to selections carried out by camp doctors. These prisoners were deported to other camps or, as part of the ‘14f13’ action (a code name for murdering mentally ill and incapable of work concentration camp prisoners), a special medical commission sent them to Hartheim death camp near Linz, where they were being murdered with gas. In the preparatory proceedings conducted by the Central Office of the State Justice Administration for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg against the former commander of a prisoner division in the men’s camp KL Ravensbrück, witnesses accused Rindfleisch of active participation in the killing of prisoners. In contrast, the former prisoner, Karl Gerber, who worked as an assistant in the camp hospital, expressed in his unpublished diary a positive opinion about Rindfleisch. Also another prisoner, Helmut

2 Simolka, testified: ‘Dr Rindfleisch helped us as much as he could. He and the dentist, Dr Berger, illegally delivered medicines to the camp, he tried to make the prisoners receive better, more varied meals. He decided to use Block 5 as a hospital for patients during the period of convalescence.’ Another person who had a positive opinion about Rindfleisch was his boss, a garrison doctor, who, on 20 November 1942, proposed to promote Rindfleisch to the position of a second lieutenant of SS. What drew attention of Rindfleisch’s boss was his ‘particularly good behaviour and upbringing’. It is not known whether Rindfleisch took credit for successes of two Czech doctors, who, since the autumn of 1942, as prisoners have worked in the camp hospital and contributed to better care for ill prisoners. Until March 1, 1943 Rindfleisch was transferred to the KL Lublin concentration camp, where he worked as an assistant camp doctor. However, it is not clear how long he stayed there. On the one hand, the Central Office in Ludwigsburg stated that he stayed there until July 1944, when the camp was finally closed down on July 22, 1944. On the other hand, the former prisoner, Roman Olszyna, testified during the hearing that on April 8, 1944 Rindfleisch and ten other doctors- prisoners were transferred from Majdanek concentration camp to Gross-Rosen concentration camp located in Lower Silesia. According to the information provided by Wehrmacht, he was assigned to the headquarters of Gross-Rosen concentration camp on May 4, 1944. However, it is certain that during the time of the largest number of transports and the extermination conducted in the years 1943-1944, Rindfleisch worked as a doctor at Majdanek and took part in crimes committed there. During the preliminary hearings conducted by the Central Office in Ludwigsburg, as well as during the Majdanek trials in Düsseldorf (1975- 1981) many witnesses testified that Rindfleisch was killing prisoners himself. Some of the testimonies concerned the so-called Spritzen, i.e. killing prisoners by injecting them with evipan, phenol, air or petrol, which was practised in many camps. The victims of this method were mainly ill prisoners as well as other prisoners sentenced to death by the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA). Already during the first trial against members of SS crew from Majdanek, which took place in November 1944 in Lublin, one of the witnesses said ‘at 7 a.m. Dr Rindfleisch took evipan ampoules with himself, went to the camp hospital and there he chose a victim at his discretion and killed them.’ The witness testified that during 7 months when he had to work in a pharmacy, about 7,000 evipan ampoules were used. A Polish witness, Maria Kaufmann-Grasowska, accused Rindfleisch of the fact that in the summer of 1943, after he was asked to take care of a 10 or 11-year-old boy suffering from diphtheria, he slit his throat. Directly after this murder, Rindfleisch, leaving the camp hospital, said ‘he is cured now’. It should be added that during the interrogation of the camp’s hospital medical assistant, Willi Reinartz, he said that he could only imagine what the witness, Maria

3 Kaufmann-Grasowska, meant was ‘a procedure of an incision in the trachea’, which is commonly used in patients suffering from diphtheria. What is more, the witness claims that she knows from the camp nurses that Dr Rindfleisch was stabbing pregnant women in the stomach with a scalpel, which led to death of both mother and the unborn child. Officially, no medical experiments were conducted at Majdanek. However, a few doctors performed experiments on prisoners on their own. According to the testimony of the former camp writer, Jerzy Kwiatkowski, it is possible that Dr Rindfleisch infected the Polish prisoner, whose surname and name is known, with tuberculosis. In order to gain experience, he ordered to treat this prisoner well as he was a ‘guinea pig’. The mentioned witness, Pawlak, testified that Rindfleisch collected fluid from his spinal cord, and then he injected another Polish prisoner with it. The prisoner died soon after this. In the indictment of the prosecutor’s office in Düsseldorf, Rindfleisch appears also as a leader of typhus experiments, which were conducted in March 1943 that is in the month of his arrival at Majdanek. The prosecutors assumed that at least 17 prisoners were infected with typhus, at least 2 of them died as a result of the infection, and at least 6 other prisoners from this group were selected by Rindfleisch in April 1944 for gassing. What is more, a former prisoner, Henryk Wielicza ński, testified that it was well known that a doctor–prisoner, Dr Hanusz, conducted experiments on Rindfleisch’s command. He also waived the copyrights to the publication of results of the research in favour of Rindfleisch. Another proof of Rindfleisch’s participation in medical experiments is the utterance of the former employee of the Political Department at Majdanek, Erwin Fischer, who testified that shortly before the evacuation of Majdanek he had to deliver a sealed package to Rindfleisch to Bad Charlottenbrunn camp, which was a part of the complex of KL Gross- Rosen subcamps. The package contained probably the results of experiments, which could not fall into the hands of the approaching Soviet troops. Rindfleisch’s participation in the selection process is confirmed by numerous testimonies of witnesses, and it corresponds to the scope of duties of camp doctors. Their duties included controlling the prisoners’ ability to work, and that is why the selection of ill and weak prisoners was considered the only effective way. With regard to the selection of transport of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto in March or April 1943, a former prisoner, Georg Gröner, testified: ‘At the time of receiving transports of prisoners after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising every time about 500 Jewish women, men and children had to go behind the warehouses in which the prisoners’ property was stored, and then they were led to the so-called “Rose Garden’ (Rosengarten). It was a square behind the bathhouse, 20x20 meters, surrounded by barbed wire. The camp doctor, dr Rindfleisch, and other members of SS crew stood at the

4 entrance and they sent prisoners either to us, to the bathhouse, or, if they were old and ill, they were taken aside, to a small square surrounded by barbed wire, where they had to stay.’ Except for this form of selection, which was practised in all camps, numerous selections against children were carried out at Majdanek. According to the testimonies of Danuta Brzosko-Mędryk, Rindfleisch also took part in such selection at the end of August or at the beginning of September. In August 1944 Oberscharführer, Ternes, testified: ‘On the same day, a camp doctor, dr Rindfleisch, who held the rank of SS – Untersturmführer, told me that about 300 children aged 3 to 10 were gassed in gas chambers. The bodies of these children were burned in the crematorium.’ In order to fill a severe labour shortage in Auschwitz concentration camp, the selection of prisoners took place at Majdanek in July 1943. Out of 3,800 prisoners selected by doctors as capable of work, only a maximum of 30% was really capable of work, what was to be finally confirmed also by dr Rindfleisch. To replace these 3,800 emaciated prisoners, 1,500 other prisoners were sent to Auschwitz to forced labour. None of them was included in the group of the healthy during the selection. Probably, in this way the administration of the Majdanek concentration camp wanted to get rid of these, in their opinion, ‘hopeless cases’. The fact that after the selection dr. Rindfleisch was also present during gassing follows from Karl Gerstenmeier’s testimonies, who claims that he knows from the medical assistant, Perschon that both dr. Blancke and dr. Rindfleisch were often present during gassing of prisoners. Within the framework of ‘Aktion Erntefest’ (Operation Harvest Festival), during which about 40,000 – 42,000 people died in the Lublin district, the largest one-time execution in the history of concentration camps took place. On November 3, 1943 about 18,000 Jews were killed including 9,000 prisoners of the Majdanek concentration camp. According to the testimonies of the witness, Zacheusz Pawlak, on November 3, before the shooting execution started, Rindfleisch and other SS commanders reviewed the location of weapon set on the banks of execution ditches. Then, on his command, ill non-Jewish prisoners left the camp hospital and in this way escaped death. Another witness testified that on that day, drunken Rindfleisch was running around the camp and looking for hidden Jews in order to lead them to the places of executions. In SS, Majdanek was thought to be a hard and disliked camp. It was also a camp in which the phenomenon of corruption, embezzlement and defraudation of valuables belonging to Jews was on the agenda. Rindfleisch also was accused by one of the SS crew members of ‘taking three or four suitcases with items belonging to Jews’. Proceedings against him were discontinued on July 18, 1944, because he managed somehow to refute allegations. These intra-party proceedings, however, had most likely an impact on the assessment related to the promotion proposal in November 1943. Otto Cousin, a former writer of the first camp doctor,

5 testified in 1969 that by order of dr. Franz von Bodmann, he sent an opinion about dr. Rindfleisch to the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) from which it resulted that ‘dr Rindfleisch is against killing prisoners’. Rindfleisch also complained to several paramedics that Majdanek was transformed from a prison camp to a concentration camp in February 1943. In the opinion from November 1943, his promotion to the Obersturmführer position, which was to take place until January 30, 1944, was accepted, but this concise opinion did not contain such praises as that of the Ravensbrück camp. When the Red Army was approaching and the camp was expected to be evacuated, Rindfleisch was transferred, as already mentioned, as a camp doctor to KL Groß-Rosen. He took part in the selection and executions there, in particular in the sub-camp ‘AL Riese’. In that role he also proved himself as a national socialist. The superiors perceived him as a man with an established worldview and an open and sincere character. Additionally, there was still clear self-confidence, as well as a kind of pride of that profession. All these things were supposed to indicate his suitability for occupying higher positions. From entries in SS personal files, it results that his service as a camp doctor came to an end in mid-January 1945, when the Red Army liberated the camp in Groß-Rosen and its sub-camps. However, it is not known where he lived until the end of the war, and whether he was taken captive.

Post-war career In June 1946, Rindfleisch applied for a doctor-assistant position in the surgical ward of the Martin Luther Hospital in Berlin, where he had been employed for three months. The job application contained his real name and information that from 1942 to February 1945 he was a surgeon by order of the Ministry of the Reich for Internal Affairs. From March 1945 to February 1946 he worked in the surgical ward of the St. Gertrude Catholic Church in Berlin. The note made by Rindfleisch's superior contains information that the doctor's assistant post has been received without a submission of a compulsory permit to practice as a doctor. It seems that, in the eyes of his supervisor, the lack of a formal document did not prevent Rindfleisch from practicing doctor’s profession during the post-war period, when there was a huge lack of doctors, or it could also be seen as a sign of solidarity with a colleague to save him from trouble. After one and a half year, on January 1, 1948, Rindfleisch left the hospital of Martin Luther. At that time he was looked for by Poland, Belgium and France as a war criminal. Probably that was why he separated himself from his family and lived alone in Berlin in the Wilmersdorf district. Information about Rindfleisch from the 1950s, when criminal investigations concerning Nazi criminals were almost ended, cannot be found. Presumably, he moved to the

6 Ruhr area at the end of the 1950s to avoid being exposed in Berlin, where the control of the Allies was greater. After the war, Rindfleisch could continue his professional career without any problems. After working for various hospitals in the Ruhr, he even successfully opened his own surgery. In the early 1960s, Rindfleisch’s reputation was threatened when the Central Center of National Judiciary Boards in Ludwigsburg initiated an investigation concerning the crimes committed at Majdanek, which was later the basis of the Majdanek trial in Düsseldorf, which took place from November 26, 1975 to June 30, 1981. On the basis of witnesses' testimonies, the Central Center for National Judiciary Boards in Ludwisburg identified Rindfleisch in 1960 as a former member of the SS crew from the Majdanek camp and included him to the group of main perpetrators. In the following years, the Central Center for National Judiciary Justice in Ludwigsburg tried to determine his whereabouts. However, the Central Centers for the prosecution of war criminals in Cologne and Ludwigsburg were not consistent in assessing the degree of risk of a possible Rindfleisch escape. After the escape of the camp doctor Hans Eisel in 1958, which took place shortly before his arrest, prosecutors from Ludwigsburg were inclined to state in January 1961 that there was an increased risk of escaping camp doctors whereas the Central Center in Cologne in 1964 remained that Rindfleisch's whereabouts were unknown, but there is also no immediate danger that he will escape. Rindfleisch died suddenly on January 16, 1969 at the age of 52 of a heart attack, six years before the trial in Düsseldorf. If the investigation was initiated earlier, he would be one of the main defendants in the trial against the SS crew from Majdanek. The time wasted in prosecuting war criminals in the 1950s meant that Rindfleisch never had to be brought to trial for crimes committed as a camp doctor.

Final considerations A former prisoner of the Auschwitz camp, Hermann Langbein, divided the doctors from this camp into blunt contractors and those who were urgently or unwillingly involved in extermination. Unambiguous characterization of Rindfleisch on the basis of these criteria does not seem to be possible, because none of his personal testimonies from 1933-1945 have survived, in which he would express his position towards national socialism or the extermination of Jews. His entry into the SS ranks in 1934 was most probably caused by ideological convictions, but it cannot be ruled out that it resulted from a desire to adapt to existing circumstances. However, this is argued by the fact that Rindfleisch never belonged to the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) and did not step out of the

7 evangelical church, which was required of the SS commanders. Nonetheless, his superior garrison physicians saw him as a man with a strongly formed national socialist viewpoint. Based on the opinions of his superiors and the testimonies of witnesses, an ambiguous picture of the Rindfleisch person can be created. Otto Cousin, for example, testified that Rindfleisch was reluctant to take part in the executions. Although this statement exonerating Rindfleisch comes from a former member of the SS crew, it should be taken into account. In her work on the concentration camp in Groß-Rosen, Isabell Sprenger pointed out that almost every physician involved in the execution obligatorily received the II Class Merit Cross. But Rindfleisch did not receive any documented commendation during his entire camp doctor's career. It can be deduced from this that, in spite of all these positive opinions, he did not fulfill the requirements imposed on the camp physicians. Occasional help shown to prisoners of non-Jewish origin can also mean that he had sensitivity for them and was not, as Theodor Eicke expected him to be, a ruthless man. One of the possible explanations for the fact that the gravest accusations were partly presented to him was his name that was easy to remember. Witnesses, who recalled these events years later, could mistakenly connect him with some facts because they remembered his name, while perhaps the names of real culprits, which were not so characteristic and easy to remember, were lost to their memory (Rindfleisch means beef) . Rindfleisch's example confirms the thesis that many Nazi culprits could oppose their superiors on specific issues related to the killing of people or the preservation of SS ideals. Their careers, with regular promotions, went on without any problems until they questioned the process of extermination or the SS as a whole. Rindfleisch's behavior and his career as a camp doctor in the Nazi period, when, according to sources, he treated non-Jewish prisoners better than Jewish prisoners, argue that, depending on the situation and category of prisoners, he behaved flexibly and he adapted to specific circumstances. His motivation for action resulted from a kind of mixture of trust in authority, ideological beliefs and some kind of character weakness. It was this weakness of character that made him particularly vulnerable to the influence of organizations such as the SS. Rindfleisch grew up in a clerical family in which authorities were almost uncritically recognized. In a strictly hierarchical SS organization guided by the ‘order and obedience’ principle he passed to the first position of the camp doctor in almost eight years through numerous ideological trainings and ideological courses that prepared him for his tasks. It must be assumed that at least a part of the racist propaganda, which played a large role in medical education, was accepted by Rindfleisch and established as a role model of his behavior. This could also explain why he treated non-Jewish prisoners better. During the Third Reich, the image of the so-called ‘Heroic front physician’ was moulded . For example,

8 Dr. Hans Munch, a former doctor at the Institute of Hygiene at the SS in Auschwitz, noticed that Josef Mengele, after coming to Auschwitz, had a special aura that was the result of his actions on the Eastern Front, which he often mentioned during his conversations with colleagues. In contrast, neither the slim figure of Rindfleisch, nor his limited ability to serve, corresponded to the idealized and propagated image of a soldier and member of the SS. If he could not show himself as a soldier on the outside front, he could see himself on, as Theodor Eicke called it ‘inner front’, as a doctor in a concentration camp. All his superiors praised Rindfleisch for this kind of attitude. By consciously emphasizing his soldierly attitude and resolve, he was able to cover up the fact that as a young man he was not fully capable of serving military service. The former prisoner Georg Gröner said: ‘The selections at Majdanek were carried out by all doctors. In particular, I remember dr. Bodmann and dr. Rindfleisch. In my opinion, dr. Rindfleisch in comparison with dr. Bodmann was quite a vigorous doctor, who was marked by an appropriate flair. Dr. Rindfleisch was much younger than dr. Bodmann, had a slightly rounded face, a special mark around his mouth, and on the one hand, as an SS doctor, he seemed to be a gentle person. In spite of the fact that, as I mentioned, Rindfleisch seemed to be a gentle person, on the other hand, he acted quite decisively in his activities in the camp.’ Because this external ‘sensitivity and gentleness’ did not meet the SS requirements, which expected absolute strong-mindedness from its members, it could be assumed that Rindfleisch had the need to show and prove that he was worth wearing an SS uniform. Because of this, he could become one of many ‘small driving wheels of genocide’, and at the same time use his privileged position in the camp for personal gain, and in this way prove himself as a Nazi and take up higher and higher posts in the service hierarchy.

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