Hans Delmotte (15 December 1917, in Liège – 1945) was a Nazi SS doctor at the Auschwitz concentration camp in the branch of the Hygiene Institute of the Waffen-SS. He came from Liège, Belgium.[1]
Initially he refused to take part in selections, allegedly going as far as to tell his superiors "You can send me to the front or gas me myself, but I won't do it."[2] By the late fall of 1944 he finally was persuaded to take part in selections. For Delmotte's dissertation, he reserved a Jewish prisoner doctor and professor to assist him. For this research, Delmotte took part in typhus experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz. Delmotte's dissertation entitled "Contributions to pathological physiology of gastric secretion in typhoid fever" was already completed in 1944.
After the evacuation of Auschwitz in January 1945, Delmotte briefly continued to work in Dachau concentration camp.
While trying to make his way back to Belgium, he was arrested by U.S. Army soldiers. During the transfer to a prison, Delmotte had somehow managed to shoot himself, he instantly died from his gunshot wound.[3]
Auschwitz, die NS-Medizin und ihre Opfer. 3. Auflage. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1997, .
People in Auschwitz, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Wien: Ullstein, 1980; .
The Hygiene Institute of the Waffen SS in Auschwitz: Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (Hrsg.): Die Auschwitz-Hefte, Band 1, Hamburg, 1994; .
Literature on Hans Delmotte in the German National Library.
. Robert Jay Lifton. The Nazi Doctors. 309 . www.holocaust-history.org.