slave labor at the concentration camps, aiding the SS industry and the Nazi cause through the exploitation of people and resources. Along those lines in December 1942, SS-Gruppenführer Richard Glücks (Inspector of Concentration Camps) sent a directive to the camp doctors telling them that, "The best doctor in a concentration camp is that doctor who holds the work capacity among inmates at its highest possible level. He does this through surveillance and through replacing [the sick or injured] at individual work stations... Toward this end it is necessary that the camp doctors take a personal interest and appear on location at work sites." Nuremberg trials In 1945, after the surrender of Germany, the SS was declared an illegal criminal organization at the Nuremberg trial. SS doctors, in particular, were marked as war criminals due to the wide range of human medical experimentation which had been conducted during World War II as well as the role SS doctors had played in the gas chamber selections of the Holocaust. Later charges were brought against SS intellectuals and SS physicians by the German state. Many SS doctors, however, were never brought to justice with such figures as Josef Mengele escaping to Argentina while still other SS doctors returned to civilian practice in Germany under assumed names and in some cases, even their original identities. In the former East Germany for instance, Hermann Voss became a respected anatomist, while Eugen Wannenmacher obtained a post as a professor at the University of Münster and Mengele's former sponsor and mentor, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, continued operating his medical practice. See also Glossary of Nazi Germany List of SS personnel Theodor Eicke References Notes Citations Bibliography Nazi SS