Carl Clauberg (28 September 1898 – 9 August 1957) was a German gynecologist who conducted medical experiments on Jewish and Romani women at Auschwitz concentration camp. He worked with Horst Schumann in X-ray sterilization experiments at Auschwitz concentration camp.
In 1945, near the close of WWII, he was captured by the Red Army and sentenced to 25 years in prison. He was released in 1955 under a prisoner exchange agreement, and he returned to Germany and continued to practice medicine. Due to public outcry from Holocaust survivors, Clauberg was arrested in 1955, but died before he could be tried.
Early life
thumb|100px|Dr. Carl Clauberg „The beast“, Image by the expressionist artist [[Stefan Krikl from his series Doctors of Death, 1985]]
Carl Clauberg was born in 1898 in Wupperhof (now part of Leichlingen), Rhine Province, into a family of craftsmen.
Medical career
During the First World War he served as an infantryman. After the war, he studied medicine and eventually reached the rank of chief doctor at Kiel University's gynaecological clinic. He joined the Nazi party in 1933 and later was appointed associate professor of gynaecology at the University of Königsberg. He carried out research on female fertility hormones (particularly progesterone) and their application as infertility treatments, obtaining a habilitation for this work in 1937. He received the rank of SS-Gruppenführer of the Reserve.
Human experiments at Auschwitz
In 1942 he approached Heinrich Himmler, who knew of him through treatment of a senior SS officer's wife Clauberg's goal was to find an easy and cheap method to sterilize women. He injected caustic substances into their uteruses without anesthetics. His test subjects were thousands Jewish and Romani women, who either directly died or suffered permanent injuries and infections.
As he fled from the approaching Red Army, Clauberg moved to the Ravensbruck concentration camp, where he continued his experiments, sterilizing an estimated 700 further women.
Clauberg test
The Clauberg test is an obsolete bioassay to assess progestational activity based on the conversion of proliferative endometrium to secretory endometrium in immature rabbits.