Fritz Fischer

Who was Fritz Fischer?

Fritz Ernst Fischer was a German medical doctor who, under the Nazi regime, participated in medical experiments conducted on inmates of the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Fischer was born in Berlin. He studied medicine first at Bonn, later at Berlin and Leipzig, and finally graduated in Hamburg in 1938. He joined the SS in 1934 and became a member of the NSDAP in June 1937. On 1 November 1939, he was assigned to the Waffen-SS of the SS-Department of the Hohenlychen Sanatorium as a physician and SS Second Lieutenant.

In 1940, he became troop physician of the SS Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. After having been wounded he was posted back to Hohenlychen and worked in the camp hospital of the Ravensbrück concentration camp as a surgical assistant to Karl Gebhardt. He participated in the surgical experiments carried out on concentration camp inmates there.

After World War II, he was tried in the Doctors' Trial in Nuremberg and was condemned to life imprisonment. His sentence was reduced to 15 years in 1951 and he was released in March 1954. Fischer subsequently returned his license to practice medicine and started a new career at the chemical company Boehringer in Ingelheim, where he stayed until his retirement.