Wilhelm Beiglböck (1905–1963)
Doctor at the concentration camp Dachau
Like many doctors in the Nazi regime, Wilhelm Beigelböck of Lower Austria utilized the concentration camp system for his research. He used prisoners at the concentration camp Dachau in experiments on the effects of using seawater as drinking water in order to find out if German fighter plane pilots who had crash landings in saltwater might be able to survive longer. The majority of the test persons he chose were Romani people, who often died under excruciating circumstances during his experiments.
After 1945, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison at the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial. However, already in 1951 he was pardoned with the help of the German Society for Internal Medicine, and seamlessly continued on with his career as an Internist.