Waldemar Hoven
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Waldemar Hoven (10 February 1903 - 2 June 1948) was a Nazi physician and SS member involved in the Nazi Medical Experimentation program.
Nazi career edit
Hoven joined the SS in 1934, and graduated from medical school in 1939, becoming an SS physician and rising to the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer soon after. In his role at Buchenwald Concentration Camp, Hoven was involved in human experimentation, and was responsible for experiments regarding the human immune system and tolerance of phenol. These experiments took the form of giving camp inmates injections of typhus and phenol, leading to the deaths of many test subjects. He was also involved in Action T4, the Nazi euthanasia program during which children with disabilities were Murdered, alongside Jews, who were deemed unfit to work.
In 1934, Hoven was arrested as part of the investigation into the activities of Karl-Otto Koch, commandant of Buchenwald, and his wife Ilse Koch. He was accused of killing a witness who was going to testify against Ilse Koch, with whom he was allegedly having an affair, via a phenol injection, and using the phenol experimentation program to write off the death as one of the test subjects. He was convicted and sentenced to death, but was released in March 1945 before his sentence could be carried out due to the shortage of doctors in Nazi Germany.
At the end of World War II, Hoven was arrested by Allied forces and charged at the Doctor's Trial, the trial at Nuremberg of those involved in Action T4 and the Medical Experimentation program. He was convicted on counts of War crimes, Crimes against humanity and membership in a criminal organization and sentenced to death, alongside co-defendants Karl Brandt, Viktor Brack, Rudolf Brandt, Karl Gebhardt, Joachim Mrugowsky and Wolfram Sievers. Hoven was executed by hanging at Landsberg Prison in June 1948.