Erich Traub

Erich Traub (27 June 1906 – 18 May 1985) was a German veterinarian, scientist and virologist who specialized in foot-and-mouth disease, Rinderpest and Newcastle disease. Traub was a member of the National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK), a Nazi motorist corps, from 1938 to 1942. He worked directly for Heinrich Himmler, head of the Schutzstaffel (SS), as the lab chief of the Nazis' leading bio-weapons facility on Riems Island under the direction of Kurt Blome.

Both Traub and Blome were rescued from the Soviet zone of Germany after World War II and taken to the United States in 1949 under the auspices of the United States government program Operation Paperclip, meant to rescue the scientific knowledge in Germany, and protect it from the Soviet Union.

Since the early XXIst century, Traub has been a common target of false and disproven conspiracy theories centred about his claimed role in the development or modification of the Lyme disease, despite Lyme disease having been present in human populations for thousands of years.