Otto Bickenbach

Who is Otto Bickenbach?

Otto Bickenbach was a German internist and professor at the University of Strasbourg. He joined the Nazi Party on 1 May 1933. Between June and August 1943 in the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp, Bickenbach and his assistant, Helmut Rühl conducted a series of tests by poisonous gas in this gas chamber experiments with phosgene. More than 50 prisoners, mainly gypsies transferred for medical experiments from Auschwitz, were murdered in the course of these experiments.

Bickenbach was arrested in 1947 and after a second trial in December 1954 before a military court in Metz, together with his colleagues he was sentenced to forced labor for life but in 1955 was pardoned and Bickenbach then conducted a medical practice as an internist in Siegburg. The court for health professionals in Cologne in 1966 came to the conclusion Bickenbach had not violated his professional ethics by his participation in the experiments in the concentration camps.