Weleda allegedly supplied cream used on prisoners in Dachau by SS doctor | Second world war

The pure cosmetics firm Weleda provided a pores and skin cream to the Dachau focus camp that went on for use for human testing, a historian specialising in Nazi Germany has claimed.Weleda, based 104 years in the past and recognized worldwide for its holistic treatments, sourced giant portions of medicinal herbs in the course of the Nazi period from an agricultural plantation overseen by the SS in Dachau, southern Germany, in response to a significant report by Anne Sudrow commissioned by the Dachau Focus Camp Memorial Website.Prisoners at Dachau focus camp cheer troops who liberated the camp in 1945. {Photograph}: Horace Abrahams/Getty ImagesIn return, the corporate offered the camp with a supposedly “anti-frost” cream it had developed as a safety in opposition to hypothermia, Sudrow’s 700-page, two-volume research says.The cream was supposed for the usage of troopers on the frontline, however Sigmund Rascher, an SS physician, used the product on prisoners at Dachau between August 1942 and Could 1943, the report alleges. The report claims that hypothermia experiments had been carried out on as much as 300 prisoners and that between 80 and 90 died on account of being stored in freezing circumstances – baths of water containing blocks of ice – for hours on finish.The Dachau camp, just some miles from Munich, opened in 1933, lower than two months after Adolf Hitler turned chancellor. It was first used to incarcerate political prisoners, however in the course of the second world warfare it turned a focus camp the place greater than 41,000 Jewish folks and different prisoners had been slaughtered earlier than US troops liberated it on 29 April 1945.Swiss-based Weleda, recognized for its bestseller Pores and skin Meals vary of moisturisers, and different merchandise together with salt toothpaste and citrus deodorant, responded to Sudrow’s report this week by promising a “full clarification” of its historical past.Based in 1921 by a gaggle together with the Austrian “non secular scientist” and self-proclaimed clairvoyant Rudolf Steiner, Weleda says its merchandise are nonetheless based mostly on the ideas of anthroposophy, a mix of holistic non secular and scientific philosophy established by Steiner’s teachings. On its web site Weleda explains anthroposophy and its dedication to it as “a worldwide analysis technique that explores spirituality with science”. As an organization, it says, it views “people, society and nature as a holistic complete”.Throughout her five-year analysis challenge, Sudrow, who has revealed extensively on points associated to the Nazis, says she discovered shut ties between Weleda and the SS-controlled German Analysis Institute for Vitamin and Meals (DVA) from no less than 1941 till the tip of the second world warfare.A customer to Dachau stands on the foremost gate on Worldwide Holocaust Remembrance Day in January. {Photograph}: Angelika Warmuth/ReutersIt was allegedly in return for herb and different plant merchandise from the DVA that Weleda gave Rascher the cream that it had promoted to the Nazi management from 1940 as a product which might be helpful for the German navy, particularly on the jap entrance, claiming that its use would make amputations from frostbite pointless.Sudrow says her work additionally exhibits shut private connections between Weleda and the SS at Dachau. The SS was house to a robust community of anthroposophists, regardless of some Nazi officers viewing the motion as an ideological menace to the occasion.The previous head of Weleda’s medicinal plant backyard, Frank Lippert, labored for the SS from 1941 and joined it in 1942, Sudrow discovered. After the warfare he had a contract with Weleda to work as a guide, her analysis confirmed. It claims he tried to proceed his analysis on the plantation at Dachau, however was forbidden from doing so by US navy authorities, and continued till his demise in 1949 to attract on his analysis findings based mostly on the experiments he had labored on on the camp.Sudrow stated that her findings had shaken her personal perception in biodynamic merchandise, which stay widespread within the German talking world and past. “How ought to we as shoppers behave in relation to biodynamic merchandise once we know what occurred right here within the Dachau focus camp? I consider that it’s essential to throw mild on this,” she instructed Der Spiegel.In a press release revealed on its German-language web site, Weleda stated: “As Weleda we condemn the atrocities of the Nazi regime within the strongest attainable phrases. Fascism, antisemitism, racism, or rightwing extremist ideology don’t have any place in our midst.”It added that as an organization it was “dedicated to transparently reviewing our historical past”, and stated it had “already actively offered a number of famend historians with full entry to our archives over a number of years”.It pointed to the 2024 publication on its web site of a report into its previous which it had commissioned from the Society for Company Historical past (GUG) in 2023.On this, the cream delivered to the SS by Weleda is talked about. Nevertheless, it says it’s unclear whether or not or not Rascher used it for human experiments or whether or not it had ever been his intention to take action.It stated Lippert’s work at Dachau had “on no account been related to his earlier work at Weleda”.The assertion concluded: “We would like a whole clarification of our historical past. Weleda is a cosmopolitan firm working in 50 nations on the earth and we stand for tolerance, variety and humanity.”Weleda didn’t reply to a request for remark. This text was amended on 10 September 2025. Dachau was a focus camp, not a demise camp, as an earlier model stated. Additionally the 41,000 individuals who died there weren’t solely Jewish folks however included different prisoners.