Helmut Poppendick

Who was Helmut Poppendick?

Helmut Poppendick Internist. Medical Doctorate, Chief of the Personal Staff of the Reich Physician SS and Police. Defendant in the Doctors' Trial.

He studied medicine from 1919-1926 in Göttingen, Munich, and Berlin. Poppendick received his medical license on 1 February 1928. Then, he worked for four years as a clinical assistant at the First Medical Clinic of Charité in Berlin. From June 1933-October 1934, he was the assistant medical director at Virchow Hospital in Berlin.

In 1935, he completed training as an expert for "race hygiene" at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics and Eugenics. After this, he became the adjutant of the ministerial director Arthur Gütt at the Reich Ministry of the Interior. He was also the chief of staff at the SS Office for Population Politics and Genetic Health Care, which in 1937 became the SS Main Race and Settlement Office. Poppendick was departmental head and staff leader of the Genealogical Office.

At the beginning of World War II, he was drafted as an adjutant to a medical department of the army and took part in the attack on Belgium, France and the Netherlands.