Selection, executions, and experiments

The SS physicians were formally responsible for the medical service for the prisoners, but in reality they paid scant heed to the needs of the prisoners or their basic medical responsibilities. They only cared about creating the appearance of competent medical care. They were mainly occupied with camp extermination operations, carrying out the selection of the arriving Jewish transports and the patients in the prisoner hospitals, supervising the killing of Jews in the gas chambers, being present at executions, conducting experiments on prisoners on behalf of German pharmaceutical companies or out of their own private interests, and signing thousands of prisoner death certificates with fictitious causes of death.