Helmut Poppendick facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Helmut Poppendick
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| Born | 6 January 1902 Hude, Lower Saxony, German Empire
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| Died | 11 January 1994 (aged 92) |
| Occupation | Doctor |
| Organization |  Schutzstaffel |
| Criminal status | Deceased |
| Conviction(s) | Membership in a criminal organization |
| Criminal penalty | 10 years imprisonment; commuted to time served |
Helmut Poppendick (6 January 1902 – 11 January 1994) was a Nazi physician in the SS during World War II. After the war he was a defendant in the 1947 Doctors' Trial and accused of war crimes relating to human experimentation; he was acquitted on these charges, but convicted for his SS membership and sentenced to 10 year imprisonment. He was released in 1951.
Education and Nazi activities
Poppendick studied medicine from 1919 to 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 to October 1934 he was the assistant medical director at Virchow Hospital in Berlin.
He was an internist and worked in the Medical Doctorate, as Chief of the Personal Staff of the Reich Physician SS and Police.
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. In November 1941, Poppendick was accepted into the Waffen-SS. In 1943, Ernst-Robert Grawitz of the Reich Physician SS appointed him to lead his personal staff. Poppendick joined the NSDAP in 1932 (party member No. 998607) and the SS (No. 36345). He reached the rank of Oberführer in the SS.
See also
- Doctor's Trial
- Nazi human experimentation
