born March 16, 1911, Günzburg, Ger.
died Feb. 7, 1979, Enseada da Bertioga, near São Paulo, Braz.
German Nazi doctor.
Influenced by the racial ideology of SS . In 1943 he was appointed chief doctor at Auschwitz -Birkenau, where he selected incoming Jews for labour or extermination, becoming known as the "Angel of Death," and conducted medical experiments on inmates in pseudoscientific racial studies. After the war he escaped to South America, where he died in 1979 under the name of Wolfgang Gerhard, a Nazi he befriended in Brazil and whose identity he assumed.