26. This Evil Doctor Fed Prisoners Used Clothes
Doctor Walter Schieber (1896 – 1960) was a chemist who worked in textile manufacturing in Germany between the world wars. When World War II began, he joined the Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production. He held various positions, including Chief of Armaments Deliveries, and Head of the Central Office for Generators. He was also an SS member, and became an SS Brigadefuhrer – equivalent to an American brigadier general. He rose within the Ministry of Armaments’ hierarchy to become a deputy of its chief, Albert Speer, and head of the Armaments Supply Office. In 1943, Hitler awarded Schieber the War Merit Cross.
Schieber conducted some bizarre and needlessly cruel experiments on prisoners. In one evil experiment in Mauthausen concentration camp in 1943, he wanted to examine the impact of food shortage on slave laborers. So Schieber picked 150 slave workers, and instead of their usual watery broth, he gave them an artificial paste which he had personally designed, made up of used clothing. Not surprisingly, the experiment reached the obvious conclusion, that people can’t survive if you feed them used clothes. 116 of the 150 subjects died before the experiment ended.