Who was Dr. Craemer?

(August, 10th 2007) The German concentration camp doctors who murdered hundreds of people for the sake of science are regarded as Nazi monsters and cranks which worked apart from serious science. One of those doctors was Sigmund Rascher. He killed probably more than one hundred people. Rascher was a strange person and an incompetent scientist. A compre-hensive biography of his bizarre life and death has recently been published. But was Rascher really isolated from and despised by established German scientists? Siegfried Baer probes further.

In the Nazi regime there were the extermination bureaucrats like Adolf Eichmann and Heinrich Himmler but they never killed anyone personally. There were the guards in the concentration camps such as Hermine Braunsteiner and Max Koegel but they did not kill systematically. And then there were the concentration camp doctors who carried out experiments on humans. They killed personally and systematically and often acted of their own initiative. The most notorious concentration camp doctors were Josef Mengele (1911-1979) and Sigmund Rascher (1909-1945). Mengele carried out research on twins in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The number of his victims is unknown but experts like Sven Keller speak of 1500 sets of twins. Mengele was convinced by the NS ideology, in particular with respect to its theories on race.

Mengele's colleague Sigmund Rascher performed high-altitude and freezing experiments in the Dachau concentration camp for the German Air Force. Probably more than a hundred victims were suffocated or frozen to death by Rascher. Contrary to Mengele, who became notorious somewhat later (in 1958), Rascher had already featured in 1945 Anglo-Saxon press articles as a "Nazi monster" and is often referred to as a "typical Nazi". However, Rascher was not a "typical Nazi". A typical Nazi would have displayed anti-Semitic feelings but Rascher had two half-Jewish co-workers and he and his wife wrote letters to support a half-Jewish family in Munich. Rascher himself was not even a purebred German, since one of his grandmothers was British.

Rather than being a fiery follower of Hitler, Sigmund Rascher was a disciple of the obscure anthroposophic guru Ehrenfried Pfeiffer. Rascher's SS career was not due to a passion for the SS ideology but to the fact that his wife was a former love of Himmler, the Reichsfuehrer SS, and still had good connections to him. Initially, Rascher had not joined the SS but the Air Force where he held the rank of captain. Common to Mengele and Rascher was their zeal to rise within the German academic hierarchy. Both effectively killed for their habilitation, a title, which in Germany is a prerequisite for a professorship. Both had connections to established academics in universities and recognised academic institutions.

In 1937 Mengele was an assistant to Othmar von Verschuer and he revived this connection in 1943 when he became camp doctor in Auschwitz. Verschuer had since been promoted to director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute for Anthropology in Berlin. Rascher had even better connections to the German scientific establishment. He worked together with Ernst Holzlöhner, professor at the University in Kiel, with Georg Weltz, director of the Institute for Luftfahrtmedizin (Aviation medicine) in Munich, and with Siegfried Ruff from the Fliegermedizinisches Institut (Institute for Aero Medicine) in Berlin, Rascher was also well-acquainted with Wilhelm Pfannenstiel, professor at the University of Marburg, with Heinz von Diringshofen, professor at the University of Frankfurt, and with August Hirt, professor at the University of Strasburg.

Although Rascher's research was stamped "secret" he was allowed to present it at the 1942 conference on "distress at sea and winter cold" held on 26 and 27 October in Nuremberg. Amongst his 93 listeners were sat the cream of the German aeronautic medics such as Franz Büchner or Hermann Rein. From Rascher's talk it was obvious that he had experimented with humans and that some of them had actually died during the course of these experiments. In his memoirs Franz Büchner states that after Rascher's talk he and several others protested against the experiments to the highest Air Force official present. Although no independent corroboration of this statement is known, there is, however, a strange letter from Rascher to Heinrich Himmler, dated 6 November 1942 (Source: 1946 Transcript of original document Harvard Law School Library):



The results, which Rascher had presented in Nuremberg, were freezing experiments with prisoners in ice water in an aim to find out the best re-warming method. The planned scientific cooperation with Craemer is described by Rascher in a second letter, also dated 6 November 1942 (Source: 1946 Transcript of original document, Nuremberg Trials Project, Harvard Law School Library):



Rascher's plea was successful. A week later on 12 November 1942 Rascher wrote to his colleague, Craemer (Source: 1946 Transcript of original document, Nuremberg Trials Project, Harvard Law School Library):

In his previous high-altitude (low pressure) and freezing (cooling) experiments Rascher, much to his dismay, had been guided and supervised by experienced scientists. Hans Romberg, an assistant to Siegfried Ruff, led the high-altitude experiments; the freezing experiments in ice water were led by Ernst Holzlöhner. Rascher already had several years of research experience but this research was of questionable value. Thus, from 1936 to 1939 he had tried to establish a cancer diagnosis based on the occult anthroposophic theories of his guru Pfeiffer and had published several articles with probably fraudulent results. From the tone of the above letter, it seems that this time Rascher set his sights on being supervisor or senior scientist. It also seems that he would have undertaken the project without Craemer. It is not known how Craemer reacted to Rascher's letter. However, on 13 December 1942 Rascher received orders from Himmler to perform (Source: 1947 Transcript of original document, Nuremberg Trials Project, Harvard Law School Library):



The SS mountain retreat Sudelfeld, built in 1938, served as a spa for SS members.


Were the experiments performed?

Probably not. Rascher was a member of the SS organisation "Ahnenerbe" and the chief executive officer of the "Ahnenerbe", Wolfram Sievers, was responsible for the accommodation of the prisoners, the erection of the igloos and food provisions. Sievers thought Sudelfeld unsuitable for the experiments. However, since he was unable to find a better place, it was subsequently decided to use the Sudelfeld facilities. Meanwhile, the 1942/43 winter had passed and the experiments had to be postponed to the following winter of 1943/44. Rascher used the postponement to apply for a grant to the Reichsforschungsrat (research council, a sub-organisation of the German research foundation). It is not known if Craemer was also registered as an applicant or if he even participated in the project. For reasons unknown, the experiments appear to have been postponed for yet another year to the winter of 1944/45 but were finally abandoned in summer 1944 because Rascher was arrested on 1 April 1944. The criminal police in Munich suspected him and his wife of kidnapping children.


Who was Dr. Craemer?

The true identity of Rascher's willing and would-be co-worker Dr. Craemer has remained unknown to date. I presume, however, that "Craemer" was, in all probability, Hans Diedrich Cremer. Born 14 February 1910 in Kiel, Cremer studied medicine from 1928 to 1933 in Bonn, Köln, Kiel and Innsbruck. He obtained his doctoral degree in Cologne. Cremer served a short time as assistant and in 1936 started working in the Institute of Physiological Chemistry at the military medical academy in Berlin. In addition, he was a member of the special surgical group in the army's supreme command. In 1942 Cremer was assigned to the construction and direction of the mountain physiological institute in St. Johann (Tirol). He also held the rank of major in the medical corps.


Craemer versus Cremer - coincidental facts ?!

By way of comparison: In 1942 Cremer led the research group in the mountain medical school in St. Johann.
In 1942 Craemer was also head of the research group of the mountain medical school in St. Johann.
Cremer was major in the medical corps.
Craemer was also major in the medical corps.
Cremer was an expert on nutrition.
Craemer was also an expert for nutrition.

Last but not least, Hans Diedrich Cremer also participated in the Nuremberg conference concerning medical problems in distress at sea and in winter. In all probability Rascher has simply spelled Cremer's name incorrectly, as Craemer and Cremer are pronounced the same in German. Contrary to Rascher's career, Hans Diedrich Cremer's career was a success. He obtained his habilitation on 25 January 1944 in Berlin, attended the university of Heidelberg in 1945 and the university of Mainz in 1946. He worked for three years in Sweden with Tiselius (electrophoresis, Nobel prize 1948). There, Cremer developed the solid-phase electrophoreses. In 1950 he was appointed associate professor in Mainz. In 1951 he directed the Institute for Applied Nutrition in Hannover. In 1956 Cremer was appointed director of the Institute for Nutritional Science in Gießen. He became the outstanding authority for German nutritional science and published more than 200 articles and reviews. Highly honoured, Hans Diedrich Cremer died on 18 April 1995.

Even if Cremer's cooperation with Rascher failed, Cremer was willing to cooperate, he even initiated the cooperation. The strange Dr. Rascher was not isolated in the German scientific community.

Siegfried Bär



The biography of Rascher's life and death has been published:
Der Untergang des Hauses Rascher
LJ-Verlag 2006

Last Changes: 10.08.2007