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In a recent BBC Radio 4 programme, Zoe Polanska Palmer told the gripping
story of her survival in the Auschwitz concentration camp, where she was
held as a 13-year old during the Third Reich. She talked about her quest
for an apology from Bayer — she believes she was forced to take pills
for Bayer by the “doctor” who experimented on her. Ms Polanska
Palmer experienced multiple health problems ever since and, now in her
early 70s, still suffers from the trauma. A spokesperson for Bayer said
that “between 1925 and 1952, no company named Bayer existed”.
All Ms Polanska Palmer received, therefore, was around £2,000 from
the German compensation fund. The “doctor” who committed these
crimes was Victor Capesius. Having had an interest for many years in the
history of “Nazi medicine”, I was puzzled: I had never come
across an Auschwitz doctor by this name. Therefore, I decided to do a bit
of research, using the
internet as well as my own collection of files.
Victor (several sources wrongly spell his first name Viktor) Capesius was
born as the son of a doctor of German descent in 1907, in a part of Romania
which then belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied in Romania
and Vienna where, in 1933, he completed his doctorate in pharmacy. In 1943,
Capesius was drafted into the German Wehrmacht where he initially served
as an “SS pharmacist” in Warsaw. Later, he was transferred
to Dachau and on 12 February 1944 he arrived in Auschwitz concentration
camp, first as a locum but soon taking the
position of camp pharmacist.
There are no well-documented links associating Capesius with the pharmaceutical
industry during this time, but some documents refer to him as the “Bayer
pharmacist in Auschwitz”. The reason for this could be that, in the
1930s, he was the official representative of Farbwerke Bayer-Leverkusen
in Romania. Interestingly, Capesius had been reprimanded by his superior
during this time for his anti-Jewish attitude and behaviour.
Around 7,000 members of the SS were based in Auschwitz’s main camp
and its 40 or so subsidiary installations, one of which (Birkenau) was
entirely dedicated to killing the (mostly Jewish) inmates. Several hundred
thousand individuals were murdered there. One of the camp doctors was the
notorious Josef Mengele, who conducted unspeakably cruel experiments on
twins. Mengele and Capesius knew each other well — documents repeatedly
mention that they had an association.
After the war
When Auschwitz was evacuated in 1945, Capesius managed to escape. He
was caught by the British but released in June 1946. He lived, under his
real name, in Stuttgart, only to be again imprisoned in 1946, having
been recognised by an ex-inmate of Auschwitz. But, once more, he avoided
prosecution. He was freed in 1947 and took employment as a pharmacist
in Stuttgart. On 5 October 1950, Capesius opened his own pharmacy in
Göppingen. His business (to which he also added a beauty salon)
thrived, producing an average yearly turnover of DM400,000.
On 4 December 1959, Capesius was re-imprisoned and charged as one of
the 22 defendants in the now famous Auschwitz trials. These trials are,
today,
regarded as a watershed in German legal history. It was the first serious
attempt by Germans to bring to justice those who violated human rights
during the Nazi era. The trials lasted from 20 December 1963 until 19 August
1965 and 211 Auschwitz prisoners were called as witnesses. Several individuals
remembered Capesius well and some even knew him personally from Romania.
The sentences turned out to be less severe than many observers had expected.
Six defendants received life sentences and 11 were sentenced to imprisonment
between three and a half and 14 years. Capesius received a sentence of
nine years’ imprisonment. During his imprisonment, the business was
run by his wife who, according to Capesius, was half Jewish. When he was
released in 1968 (10 and a half months prematurely), he stated that he
intended to stay with his wife in Göppingen.
Some reports mention that Capesius died in 1985 in Germany but, according
to the BBC Radio 4 programme, he returned to Romania where he established
a successful homoeopathic business. I found no evidence for this latter
information. Acting as a selector
Capesius was one of the few pharmacists convicted of crimes against humanity
during the Nazi era. But what exactly had he done? Several inmates recognised
Capesius “selecting at the ramp”. This task involved particularly
gruesome life and death decisions over prisoners as they arrived by train.
After long journeys, caged like cattle, many suffered from ill health
on arrival. The selectors had to
decide who was strong enough to endure the hardships of the camp and enforced
labour. Those who were too frail were immediately sent to Birkenau to be
gassed. The decisions were made as the prisoners walked past the selectors
in rows of five. Several witnesses told the court how particularly cruel
Capesius had been in executing this task. Others who had personally known
Capesius from Romania reported how cynically he behaved when
directing inmates to either forced labour or the gas chambers.
Capesius denied these and other charges. The defence insisted that his
was a “particularly tragic” case, because he had only tried
to help, always acted upon orders and eventually became a victim himself.
It was also alleged that many witnesses had been less than objective in
their statements about him, not least because they knew of the death sentence
Capesius had already received, in his absence, in Romania. However, other
witnesses
reported that they owed their survival in Auschwitz to Capesius.
Capesius was found guilty of assisting the murder of at least 8,000 individuals.
Other charges against him were assisting in the gas chambers, supervising
the liquidation of the gypsy camp and administrating phenol used to kill
prisoners but, because of lack of proof, these were dropped. Some witnesses
alleged that Capesius had committed other crimes as well; it was suggested
that he had enriched himself by taking prisoners’ possessions or
that he had participated in cruel “medical” experiments on
inmates. No hard evidence was, however, found for these allegations.
The story of Victor Capesius is chilling to say the least. In revisiting
it, we should honour those who perished through the most horrendous atrocities
in the history of medicine. This memory could help prevent similar barbarities
from happening again. As Zoe Polanska Palmer said: “I want to make
sure people remember what happened to people like me when I was a child
in Auschwitz. I was just one of thousands of children treated in this way.
But I was one of the few lucky ones who managed to survive”. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal