Schmitz, Dr. Heinrich.

Schmitz, Dr. Heinrich, born 03-07-1896, in Braunschweig as the third of four children of a master painter. Heinrich also attended elementary school and a high school there, where he had to repeat a school year. After the outbreak of World War I, Schmitz enlisted as a student on 05-11-1914 and fought as a soldier in the Braunschweig Infantry Regiment No. 92 in France and Russia. On 18-06-1916 he was wounded by machine gun fire , so treatment required several operations and a three-year stay in field hospitals.From the spring of 1919, after the end of the war, Schmitz began studying human medicine at the universities of Jena, Freiburg (Breisgau), Göttingen and Berlin. He finished this in 1924 with the state examination in Jena.After completing his studies, Schmitz first worked as an assistant doctor at a tuberculosis ward in Jena, then from 1926 to 1927 at the Medical Academy in Düsseldorf, before taking up a position at the Pathological Institute in Breslau in 1928. This was followed by appointments as chief physician in smaller hospitals in Hanau and near Leipzig, before Schmitz set up his own practice in Gera in 1932 and opened his own clinic in 1937, also in Gera.

Heinrich belonged to the NSDAP from 1932 to 1937, but was not an SS member. In June 1943, Schmitz was sterilized according to a decision of the Health Court of Jena. The basis for the court decision was the “Act for the Prevention of Ill-Infectious Offspring” of 1933, which allowed forced sterilization against the will of the person concerned. The court judgment was justified by “manic-depressive insanity”. Schmitz had committed an attempted suicide, in his life there were “times of markedly manic unrest and a morbidly increased activity.” For this diagnosis, Schmitz was dismissed in September 1943 as “completely unsuitable for service in the armed forces” from his military service. Schmitz addressed the Reichsarzt SS and the police, Ernst-Robert Grawitz to a former superior. ,  As the Soviet Army advanced on Berlin, Grawitz killed himself on 24-04-1945, age 45 and his family with grenades at their house in Babelsberg

In December 1943 the personal staff SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler,

  Obergruppenführer Grawitz asked “the use of the Dr. Schmitz as an importer in a concentration camp. ” In April 1944, Schmitz was hired as a civilian “physician without provision” for the Flossenbürg concentration camp.

With Schmitz arriving in Flossenbürg the “most catastrophic phase of medical activity, medical failure and medical killing practice” began for the prisoners there. Statements by prisoners after the end of the war show numerous unnecessary operations that Schmitz carried out on prisoners. The operations were not, as in other concentration camps, part of an experimental program arranged by the SS, but were tolerated by Schmitz’s superiors in Flossenbürg. Commander was SS Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch  In October 1943, Fritzsch was arrested as a part of an internal SS investigation into corruption. An SS court charged him with murder. As a punishment he was transferred to front line duty (SS-Panzergrenadier-Ersatzbatallion 18 “Horst Wessel” ) under command of SS-Brigadeführer August Wilhelm Trabant . It is assumed that he fell during the battle of Berlin in May 1945, age 41. SS Brigadeführer  August Trabant died on 19-05-1968, age 76, in Hamburg,

“Dr. Schmitz liked to operate on the body, but also carried out amputations. Once, he even practiced a cranial operation without having the proper instruments. Sometimes he removed tissue and sent it to Erlangen for examination. About fifty percent of the operations performed were unnecessary because of negative results and no ulcer or anything else, “a prisoner said. A French detainee led an operation book. According to this information, Schmitz undertook 400 operations in six months, 300 of which were amputations. According to the records, about 250 of the operated prisoners died. According to the prisoner’s opinion, 14 operations, of which 11 were fatal, were “just for fun by Dr. Schmitz takes place. ”  
In autumn 1944 Schmitz was involved in the targeted killing of incurably sick persons in Flossenbürg.which SS Standartenführer Enno Lolling  of the D III Office of the SS Economic had ordered. On 27-05-1945, Lolling committed suicide at the reserve army hospital in Flensburg. He was 56. Administrative authority had previously ordered that these prisoners be killed by medical means. In this second phase of Action 14f13, Schmitz sought out the prisoners to be killed, without first carrying out an in-depth investigation. The inmates were murdered with overdosed phenol, Novocain or tuberculin preparations in a specially designed room. Schmitz denied direct involvement in the murders in post-war statements, but admitted that under his leadership about 70 prisoners had been killed with phenol. Other testimonies spoke of up to 300 kills. Until its liberation in April 1945, more than 96,000 prisoners passed through the camp, around 30,000 of whom died there. 
At the end of September 1944 a typhus epidemic broke out in Flossenbürg. Schmitz was ignoring the diagnosis of spotted fever. When this diagnosis confirmed itself in a bacteriological examination Schmitz distorted the results. During the epidemic, 200 prisoners died, a figure that Schmitz described as “normal” in his later process. After the replacement of the former local authority by SS Sturmbannführer Johann Hermann Fischer in October 1944, Schmitz was gradually withdrawn from the powers. He himself fell victim to typhus; shortly after the end of the war, he was arrested by American soldiers in the Weiden hospital.

Death and burial ground of Schmitz, Dr. Heinrich.

Schmitz, along with five other persons, was accused   of the follow-up to the concentration camp Flossenbürg “Ewald Heerde et al.” (File number 000-50-46-3). This process, part of the Dachauer Processes, took place from 10-11-1947 onwards. The US military court sentenced Heinrich Schmitz to death on 12-12-1947. Schmitz renounced the submission of a grace application. The verdict was executed on 26-11-1948, age 52, in Landsberg’s war criminals prison and he was buried on the Spottinger prison cemetery, between other condemned and hanged war criminals.

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