Dr Carl Vaernet April 1893 –1965 Danish Nazi War Criminal
Born Carl Vaernet in April 1893 in the village of Astrup (by Arhus) in Denmark
To a wealthy farming family in Jutland. He attended the University of Copenhagen where he received his medical degree in 1923. He built up a successful medical practice near Copenhagen, he was noted for being involved mainly with hormone therapies for various diseases and he led research into shortwave and micro shortwave therapy. In 1940 he claimed that he had found a cure to convert homosexuals into heterosexuals, this was to insert a capsule (by surgery into a homosexual) that would release the male hormone testosterone thus converting the homosexual male to heterosexual. He was an active member of the Danish National Socialist Party from the late 1930s, when Denmark was occupied by the Nazis in April 1940 fewer and fewer patients would visit his surgery because he openly viewed his positive attitude towards the occupiers, thus branding him a collaborator.In December 1943 he became an SS-turmbannfuhrer (major) and was sent to Prague to work for a medical company known asDeutsche Heilmittel GmbH. He visited Buchenwald concentration camp six times between june and December of 1944 from his base in Prague.In total it is known that Carl Vaernet operated on 17 male concentration camp inmates who were forced to undergo the artificial gland treatment, his test subjects varied from Homosexuals, non-homosexuals, criminals and non criminals were his test subjects.Many homosexual prisoners in the concentration camps were subjected to medical experiments like the one above as well as others such as castration, such procedures reflected the desire by Heinrich Himmler and others to find a medical solution to homosexuality as he believed it to be a mental illness. He was arrested in 1945 in Denmark and sent to prison, after he was hospitalised in 1946 he was later released by the Danish and British authorities who are implicated in aiding his escape, he then fled to Buenos Aires where he lived openly with the full knowledge of the authorities back home in Denmark until he died in the November of 1965. |