Hans Münch

Hans Münch

Hans Wilhelm Münch was a German Nazi Party member. He worked as an SS doctor at the Auschwitz concentration camp from 1943 to 1945. He was the only person acquitted of war crimes at the 1947 Auschwitz trials. After the war and the trial, he returned to Germany and worked as a practicing physician in Roßhaupten in Bavaria. While suffering from Alzheimer’s in old age, he made several public remarks that appeared to support Nazi ideology. He died in 2001 and was never sentenced, as all courts ruled that he was not of sound mind.

About Hans Münch in brief

Summary Hans MünchHans Wilhelm Münch was a German Nazi Party member. He worked as an SS doctor at the Auschwitz concentration camp from 1943 to 1945. He was the only person acquitted of war crimes at the 1947 Auschwitz trials in Kraków. After the war and the trial, he returned to Germany and worked as a practicing physician in Roßhaupten in Bavaria. While suffering from Alzheimer’s in old age, he made several public remarks that appeared to support Nazi ideology, and was tried for inciting racial hatred and similar charges. He died in 2001 and was never sentenced, as all courts ruled that he was not of sound mind. He did conduct human experiments, but these were often elaborate farces intended to protect inmates, as experiment subjects who were no longer useful were usually killed. The book on SS physicians of Auschwitz by Robert Jay Lifton mentions MünCh as the only physician whose commitment to the Hippocratic oath proved stronger than that to the SS. He met Josef Mengele shortly before his death, and the meeting was covered by a journalist from \”Die Welt,\” a German newspaper. In the meeting, he said, if he could go back in time and choose to go to Auschwitz again, he’d absolutely do it, because he saw it as a huge opportunity. The court’s acquittal was based on his strict refusal to participate in things, among other things, that he had a benevolent attitude toward them and helped them while they were alive. However, there are doubts as to the truth of this story – another former inmate, Imre Gönczy alias ‘Emmerich,’ paints a very different picture: apparently, he not only participated in selections, but also used the flesh of the dead bodies to cook a broth which was used as a medium for his microbes.

The latter is still suffering from these experiments today, They met shortly before Mün ch’s death, they met by a reporter from Die Welt,. He was arrested in a US internment camp after being identified as an Auschwitz physician. After in 1945, he was extradited to Poland in 1946 to stand trial for war crimes, but was acquitted in 1946. He later died in a U.S. internment prison after he was identified as a Auschwitz physician after being charged with injecting inmates with malaria-infected blood and a malaria serum that caused rheumatism. In May 1937, he joined the NSDAP. He received his doctor’s degree and married a physician in 1939. In June 1943 he was recruited as a scientist by the Waffen-SS and was sent to the Hygiene Institute in Raisko, about 4 km from the main camp at Auschwitz. He found this abhorrent and refused to take part; this was confirmed by witnesses’ testimony at his trial. He continued the bacteriological research he was known for before the war, as well as making occasional inspections of the camps and the prisoners. He spent three months at Dachau concentration camp near Munich.