Heinz Baumkötter was an SS-Hauptsturmführer

Hauptsturmführer

Hauptsturmführer was a Nazi rank of the SS which was used between the years of 1934 and 1945. The rank of Hauptsturmführer was a mid-grade company level officer and was the equivalent of a Captain in the German Army and also the equivalent of captain in foreign armies...

 and concentration camp doctor in Mauthausen

Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp

Mauthausen Concentration Camp grew to become a large group of Nazi concentration camps that was built around the villages of Mauthausen and Gusen in Upper Austria, roughly east of the city of Linz.Initially a single camp at Mauthausen, it expanded over time and by the summer of 1940, the...

, Natzweiler-Struthof

Natzweiler-Struthof

Natzweiler-Struthof was a German concentration camp located in the Vosges Mountains close to the Alsatian village of Natzwiller in France, and the town of Schirmeck, about 50 km south west from the city of Strasbourg....

 and Sachsenhausen

Sachsenhausen concentration camp

Sachsenhausen or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in May, 1945. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used as an NKVD...

, who conducted medical experiments on concentration camp inmates.

Baumkötter was tried in the Sachsenhausen trials by a Soviet military tribunal in 1947 in a trial held in the former city hall in Berlin-Pankow. Among his co-defendants were the former commandant of Sachenhausen Anton Kaindl

Anton Kaindl

Anton Kaindl was an SS-Standartenführer and commandant of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp from 1942-1945....

, the record keeper Gustav Sorge

Gustav Sorge

Gustav Hermann Sorge Gustav Hermann Sorge Gustav Hermann Sorge (April 24, 1911 (Rydzyna) – 1978 (Rheinbach, prison), nicknamed "Der eiserne Gustav" (The Iron Gustav) for his brutality, was an SS-Hauptscharführer and a guard at Esterwegen concentration camp in the Emsland region of Germany prior to...

 and the Blockfuhrer of the punishment block Kurt Eccarius

Kurt Eccarius

Kurt Eccarius was an SS Hauptscharführer who was in charge the of the prison block inside the Sachsenhausen concentration camp from 1939-1945. He was born in Coburg, Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Eccarius was captured by the British and then handed over to the Soviets...

.
At the trial Baumkötter was asked what his duties were at the trial: