Sigmond Rasher

Sigmond Rasher was a Nazi doctor who performed many illegal experiments on victims during the Holocaust, he is comparable to war-criminals such as Mengele and his experiments including submerging people in ice cold water, forced to sit naked in the freezing cold for hours to induce hypothermia and testing the use of a blood clotting agent known as Polygal in which victims were given the substance before being shot in the neck or chest or having their limbs amputated without any painkillers.

He is also infamous for forcing victims into altitude tests using rooms that stimulated high-altitude environments, knowing that it was often fatal but believing human testing was necessary as previous tests on monkeys were "unsatisfactory" - even Himmler, himself a war-criminal, believed those who survived the pressure chambers should be "pardoned" to life imprisonment but Rasher responded that because his victims were Poles and Russians he believed they should receive "no amnesty whatsoever".

In an attempt to please Himmler by demonstrating that population growth could be accelerated by extending the childbearing age, Rascher publicized the fact that his wife had given birth to three children even after becoming 48 years of age, and Himmler used a photograph of Rascher's family as propaganda material. However, during her fourth "pregnancy", Mrs. Rascher was arrested for trying to kidnap a baby and an investigation revealed that her other three children had been either bought or kidnapped. Himmler felt betrayed by this conduct, and Rascher was arrested in April 1944. As well as complicity in the kidnappings of the three infants, Rascher was accused of financial irregularities, the murder of an assistant, and scientific fraud. He and his wife were executed. Rascher was executed in Dachau shortly before Allied forces liberated it, and his wife was hanged at an unknown location