Irmfried Eberl

SS Obersturmführer (1st lieutenant) Irmfried Eberl (Born in Bregenz on September 8 1910 - February 16, 1948), helped establish, and was the first commandant of, the extermination camp known as Treblinka. He was the only physician ever to command an extermination camp.

A 1933 graduate of the medical program at Innsbruck University, Eberl gained his doctorate a year later. Trained and practicing as a psychiatrist, he was a firm supporter of the mass murder of individuals with mental disorders (known as T-4 Euthanasia Program) Eberl spent two years helping implement the program at Brandenburg Psychiatry Facility and at Bernburg, before being transferred to command of Treblinka in July 1942.

He was dismissed six months later for incompetence in disposing of the bodies of the thousands people he had killed, and was replaced by Franz Stangl. In 1944 he joined the Wehrmacht for the duration of the war.

After the war, Eberl found himself a widower following his second wife's death, and continued to practise medicine in Blaubeuren until he was arrested in January 1948, and hanged himself the following month to avoid trial.

Eberl was one of two subjects of the 1998 film "Healing by Killing", the other subject being Carl Clauberg

Despite not being formally ordered to take part, psychiatrists such as Eberl were at the center at every stage of justifying, planning and carrying out the mass murder of those with mental disorders, and "constituted the connection" to the later annihilation of Jews and other "undesirables" such as homosexuals in the Holocaust. [Rael D Strous (2007) [http://www.annals-general-psychiatry.com/content/6/1/8 Psychiatry during the Nazi era: ethical lessons for the modern professional] Annals of General Psychiatry 2007, 6:8doi:10.1186/1744-859X-6-8]

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