English source-aligned edition
Horst Paul Silvester Fischer
Horst Paul Silvester Fischer served as camp doctor and deputy garrison physician at Auschwitz-Monowitz. The profile reconstructs the person’s function in Auschwitz-Monowitz, occupied Poland through documented office, decisions, supervision or operational conduct. It does not assign every crime committed by an institution or region to one individual.
Confirmed findings
- From 1942 until January 1945 he served as camp doctor and deputy garrison physician at Auschwitz-Monowitz. (Source: Bundesarchiv, cited passage)
- The Bundesarchiv states that in this capacity he was directly responsible for selections and therefore for the murder of prisoners. (Source: Bundesarchiv, cited passage)
- Auschwitz Museum documentation names him among SS physicians without surgical qualifications who performed medically unnecessary operations on prisoners for practice. (Source: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, cited passage; Source: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, cited passage)
Place in the chain of responsibility
Responsibility rests on his individualized role in selections and on preserved documentation of operations. The indictment’s numerical allegation is not reproduced as a separately established victim total. (Source: Bundesarchiv, cited passage; Source: Bundesarchiv, cited passage; Source: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, cited passage; Source: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, cited passage)
Key events and mechanisms
- From 1942 until January 1945 he served as a physician at Auschwitz-Monowitz. (Source: Bundesarchiv, cited passage)
- On 25 March 1966 the GDR Supreme Court sentenced him to death. (Source: Bundesarchiv, cited passage; Source: Bundesarchiv, cited passage)
- On 8 July 1966 the sentence was carried out in Leipzig. (Source: Bundesarchiv, cited passage)
The circle records authority, function and agency. Several profiles may describe different parts of the same persecution chain, so profile-level totals must not be added together.
Postwar accountability
Arrested in 1965, he was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death on 25 March 1966. The sentence was carried out on 8 July 1966. (Source: Bundesarchiv, cited passage; Source: Bundesarchiv, cited passage)
Limits of the evidence
Bundesarchiv sources discuss the political instrumentalization of Nazi-crime prosecutions in the GDR. That context does not erase the documented role and judgment, but it requires separating findings from the trial’s propaganda setting. No portrait was selected because rights to a particular file were not verified. (Source: Bundesarchiv, cited passage; Source: Bundesarchiv, cited passage)
Sources
The source set combines institutional, archival, trial or scholarly material from at least two independent publishers.