Pencil sketch of a Nazi by Dr K Prabhakar Rao

BRUNO BEGER

Bruno Beger (27 April 1911 – 12 October 2009) was a German racial anthropologist who worked for Ahnenerbe   . In that role he participated in Ernst Schäfer's 1938 journey to Tibet, helped the Race and Settlement Office or SS-Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt of the SS identify Jews, and later helped select human subjects to be killed to create an anatomical study collection of Jewish skeletons
Service in the SS

In 1934, Beger began working a part-time job in the Race and Settlement Office of the SS where he eventually became a section head. Beger was asked to be part of an expedition to Hawaii, but while this was awaiting final approval, he was invited on a trip to Tibet led by Ernst Schäfer which he accepted instead.

In a proposal he wrote to Schäfer, Beger stated his contribution to the expedition would be "to study the current racial-anthropological situation through measurements, trait research, photography and moulds... and to collect material about the proportion, origins, significance and development of the Nordic race in this region.

German Ernst Schäfer Tibet Expedition

All through the expedition, Beger kept a travel diary which was published in book form 60 years later, Mit der deutschen Tibetexpedition Ernst Schäfer 1938/39 nach Lhasa(Wiesbaden, 1998). Only 50 copies of it exist

Jewish skeleton collection

Beger worked together with August Hirt at the Reichsuniversität Straßburg. His assignment, which he carried out, was to provide the Nazi physician with detainees of diverse ethnic types from various concentration camps in order to serve Hirt's lethal racial experiments   The work involved selecting over 100 individuals from Auschwitz to be murdered  for their skeletons. They were mainly Jews, and the crime was exposed during the Nuremburg trials in 1946  The victims were sent to Natzweiler concentration camp for gassing ^] by Joseph Kramer. Their corpses were then sent to Hirt in Strasburg. In these endeavours he was assisted by doctors Hans Endres, Hans Fleischhacker, Heinrich Rübel and Rudolf Trojan. 

  ^{After War}

 In 1974 he was convicted by a German court as an accessory to 86 murders for his part in procuring and preparing the victims of the Jewish skeleton collection at Auschwitz concentration camp. The victims were transported to Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in August 1943 and gassed there by Josef Kramer, the commandant who was later hanged by the British for war crimes committed at Belsen concentration camp. Beger was sentenced to 3 years imprisonment, the minimum sentence, but did not serve any time in prison.

According to his family, Beger died in Königstein/Taunus on October 12, 2009.