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He was a professor of anatomy and human genetic at Münster and he joined the Wehrmacht on May 20, 1941. He was ordered the Auschwitz concentration camp on August 29, 1942 to replace another surgeon and remained there for less than three months.

Medical Experiments
The main priority of the SS doctors was not to provide basic medical services to prisoners but rather they wished to give the appearance of competent medical care. Mostly they were busy with the camp exterminations, the selection of the newly arrived Jewish transports and the prisoners as well as being present at the executions, conducting experiments and lastly signing thousands of prisoners’ death certificates with fabricated causes of death. . The experiments conducted by the SS Doctors were done for three main reasons: to improve the health of the soldiers, post-war plans and to support the bases of racial ideas. Some other reasons for experimenting were also done on the behalf of pharmaceutical companies and medical institutes, for their own interests and to benefit their personal careers. Kremer was particularly interested in the effects starvation had on the body, especially on the liver and seeing as Kremer was responsible for examining the prisoners that sought admission to the camp hospital he was able to select the prisoners that he believed would make good test subjects, he often performed autopsies in order to extract samples from the liver, spleen and pancreas. Kremer states at his hearing on July 30, 1947 that “I observed the prisoners in this group [to be liquidated] carefully and whenever one of them particularly interested me because of his advanced stage of starvation, I ordered the medical orderly to reserve him and to inform me when this patient would be killed by injection.”.

Testimony and indictment
Johann Kremer was tried in the Auschwitz trials throughout November and December of 1947. Based on the contents of his diary and his own confessions Kremer participated in fourteen gassings as well multiple public executions. During his testimony he describes the process by which he selected his victims, the process of gaining the necessary information required for his research and states that “[a]fter I had been given this information a medical orderly would come and kill the patient with an injection in the heart area. To my knowledge all these patients were killed with phenol injections. The patient died immediately after being given such an injection. I myself never administered fatal injections.”. The number of prisoner’s whose deaths he was responsible for is not certain, but due to his involvement in the gassings it can be assumed that he was involved in the deaths of several thousands of prisoners. Kremer was ordered to be put to death but his sentence was later amended to life in jail.