Horst Schumann (1 May 1906 – 5 May 1983) was an SS-Sturmbannführer (major) and medical doctor who conducted sterilization and castration experiments at Auschwitz and was particularly interested in the mass sterilization of Jews by means of X-rays. Early life Schumann was born on 1 May 1906 in Halle an der Saale. His father, Paul Schumann, was also a doctor. Schumann entered the Nazi party in 1930 and joined the Sturmabteilung in 1932. In 1933, he received his medical degree after producing a thesis entitled "Frage der Jodresorption und der therapeutischen Wirkung sog. Jodbäder" ("The Question of Iodine Absorption and the Therapeutic Effects of so-called Iodine Baths"). He started his career as an assistant doctor in the Surgical Clinic of the clinic of Halle University. Nazi doctor From 1934, Schumann was employed in the Public Health Office in Halle. He was recruited to the air force as a physician in 1939. He joined the Aktion T4 Euthanasia program in early October 1939, after a meeting with Dr. Viktor Brack in Hitler's chancellery. In January 1940, Schumann became head of the Grafeneck euthanasia centre in Württemberg, where mentally ill people were gassed with carbon monoxide in the first gas chamber. In the early summer of 1940, he was ordered to the Sonnenstein Euthanasia Centre. Schumann also belonged to a commission of doctors called "Action 14f13", who transferred weak and sick prisoners from Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Flossenbürg, Gross-Rosen, Mauthausen, Neuengamme and Niederhangen concentration camps to the euthanasia killing centers. Auschwitz On 28 July 1941, Schumann arrived in Auschwitz. He worked at Block 30 in the women's hospital, where he set up an X-ray station in 1942. Here men and women were forcibly sterilized by being positioned repeatedly for several minutes between two X-ray machines, the rays aiming at their sexual organs. Most subjects died after great suffering, or were gassed immediately because the radiation burns from which they suffered rendered them unfit for work. Schumann "...chose his test persons himself. They were always young, healthy, good-looking Jewish men, women and girls who looked like old people afterwards. The parts of the body that were treated with the rays experienced severe radiation burns and suppuration (i.e. discharge of pus). Men's testicles and women's ovaries were then surgically removed and sent to Breslau for histopathological examination. Part of Schumann's control tests, to check whether the radiation had worked, was the so-called semen check: a