1947-03-04, #2: Doctors' Trial (late morning)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
THE PRESIDENT: I shall now read into the record the order of the Tribunal in connection with the absence of the defendant Oberhauser.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA vs KARL BRANDT, et al, Order Case No. I.
There having been filed in the Office of the Secretary General, directed to Military Tribunal I, dated February 25, 1947, a written certificate by Charles J. Roska, Medical Corps, United States Army, Prison Surgeon at Nurenberg Germany, describing the physical condition of Herta Oberhauser, a defendant now on trial in the above entitled cause; and, Captain Roska, having stated in the certificate that the defendant Oberhauser is laboring under certain described serious physical disabilities, and. is in need of an operation to relieve her.
And, Doctor Alfred Seidl, representing Herta Oberhauser, as Counsel before Military Tribunal I, on the trial of the above entitled cause having, February 28, 1947, filed in the Office of the Secretary General, for the adaption of Military Tribunal I, a written statement in the German language, signed by him personally, stating defendant Oberhauser's serious physical condition, and requesting that defendant Oberhauser be immediately treated in the American Army hospital at Nurnberg; and, that the defendant Oberhauser evidence may be presented to the Tribunal after her release from the hospital, which may be expected within two or three weeks.
And, defendant Oberhauser, herself, having filed in the Office of the Secretary General, March 3, a signed statement in the German language and in the English language, requesting that she be transferred to a hospital for an operation, stating her reasons for desiring that the operation be performed.
And, the Tribunal having been furnished with the above described documents, together with the English translations of the documents written in the German language, the original documents here to attached marked Exhibits A,B, and C, respectively.
And, it appearing to the Tribunal, expresses a finding, from said medical certificate and other documents filed with the Tribunal, concerning the physical condition of defendant Oberhauser; and from the documents here and above referred to, that the defendant Oberhauser is in a serious physical condition and in need of medical and surgical attention.
And, that her physical condition has been and is now such that she cannot adequately present her defense to the Tribunal and, if an operation is performed on her, it is to be expected that she will be able to attend the trial prior to its close and present her defense.
And, it appearing to the Tribunal, and the Tribunal finding that the interest of defendant Herta Oberhauser will not be prejudice, but on the contrary, will be best served by granting her request, and that of her Counsel for immediate hospitalization of said defendant.
Now, therefore, it is ordered that the defendant Herta Oberhauser be, and, she is hereby excused from attendance at the trial in the above entitled cause, and, until her physician reports that she is able again to be in attendance at the trial, and, that the surgeon in charge of her case shall proceed in the exercise of this judgment and discretion for the best interest of the defendant Oberhauser.
The Counsel may proceed.
Dr. Seidl: May it please the Tribunal, I now turn to the examination of Dr. Gebhardt, as a witness. And, I request that the witness be called to the witness stand.
THE PRESIDENT: The defendant Gebhardt will take the witness stand.
BY JUDGE SEBRING:
Will you repeat this oath after me:
I swear by God, the Almighty and Omniscient, that I will speak the pure truth and will withhold and add nothing.
(The witness repeated the oath.)
JUDGE SEBRING: You may sit down.
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY DR. SEIDL:
Q: As Exhibit 25, the Prosecution has presented a document which was given by you. The subject of this affidavit is your history and the position which you occupied within the SS. In addition to this affidavit, I now ask you to please give us a short description of your life history, and please tell the Tribunal what caused you to take up the study of medicine?
A: In order to give an exact answer to the first question, may I use the word "addition", and to take that word from the question of my defense counsel, and I want to give and clarify the efforts and the defense in my description.
Aside from the evidence which has been presented by the Prosecution, details of my personal life do not seem to be very important. The most important thing in the situation, as I see it, and the most important thing, to be contained in the situation itself. I want to report about a period which was, in my life, from one war which was lost, that was the defeat in 1913, and the period to the other war, which led to the catastrophe of the present time. And, I take it upon myself to limit certain fields in my description. My medical training, and my expressly medical intentions, my life as a citizen, and that all under the power of the political events; my relationship to Himmler, my military service with the Waffen SS. Then, in order to clarify the matter, I want to draw these lines of limitations without trying to make any excuses; all without over evaluating the human action, the decency, which after all, are only natural.
Perhaps I can only site one thing in advance: The I came from a bourgeois family, and that in spite of the worries and hopes, I personally found a bourgeois style of living, and. quite aside from any political considerations and school, it is probably characteristic for the German citizen that an exaggerated faith exists in obedience, in discipline, which comes from above to the lower levels, but which to the contrary, never relieves the top authorities from their responsibilities. To my assistants and to my collaborators, and the soldiers who were at the front under me, I would like, at this time, to say expressly that just because I have represented something else than the average bourgeois in the state, and that I was not at all in the characteristic political line, and just because before 1933 and after 1933, I had international relations to a very great extent, as was really the case with regard to any German physician, and especially because of this all my worries and decisions, and untruth and advice — I have obtained advice, and I have seen untruth in many countries. May I, in accordance with the question by my defense counsel, give a rather uncertain answer with regard to my medical status.
First of all my life was not such that at the age of eighteen I knew exactly what decency was and that I had gone this way with the utmost feeling and conviction. Later on as a teacher I have always doubted that. The Junk people in that early period know so clearly what the worries are which confront a physician. If, in spite of this, so many physicians are successful, then this is not due to their choice of a profession, but the decisive thing is hat the medical profession offers an opportunity to a man as a scientist, as an official, as a practicing physician and as a person who is earning his own living, and it offers the opportunity to gave a personality more of a manifold picture and in order to go into the details of my beginning it seems more important to me that I came from a bourgeois house and that I fought in the first world war as a little soldier; that I saw the end of the war as a prisoner of war, and that suddenly I was in a mass without any leadership and without any aim or goal and I was given another political education and we obtained the newspapers from the Leftist Party, heard the reports and we heard about the things which were alleged to have happened at home, in which everything that had been regulated in an orderly manner in our previous lives, the Emperor, the King, the oath, the relationship to our superiors, was just stopped and discontinued very un-dramatically and without any resistance on the part of the bourgeois citizens. On the other hand the want was so great for everybody who returned that the choice of a profession was made according to the conditions that prevailed.
My father was a physician and I knew a little bit about the profession and I was able to assist him to some extent. I studied with him and in the Munich schools there was a groat class of teachers but at that tin., the position of the teacher at the schools of higher learning was subjected to some extent to the pressure of political tendency, so that actually it only thanks to my father that I learned the beginning of the medical profession.
I came to the Sauerbruchs Clinic because of my father's influence. My teacher Sauerbruch was always telling us about some political development and had a large staff of assistants around him where he exercised an iron discipline in accordance with his principles.
I received the general surgical training of this classical school for seven years and it will not be necessary to explain that in detail. However, I think it is more essential for me to emphasize that there was a dissatisfaction with the developments of the time and people were assured that the situation would never change in Germany unless the social need of the time was combatted.
Without any political connections I felt the call of a doctor who concerned himself with the social questions of a general nature. The most impressive things at this large clinic were that a patient was clinically cared for in the truest sense of the word, that the many institutions of welfare in that clinic with reference to the individual were intolerant according to political and confessional view point or with us in Bavaria, according to the Landsmannschaft to diminish the welfare.
Today, particularly in my despair, I think that I can well say that I in Germany was the first one to make the attempt of saying that wealthier institutions and clinics as an institution should be cared for by the State, but for the real interest of the people that such a welfare is instituted in the sense that impressed me to help and assist all of the workers and students, everybody who was impoverished, and help them see beyond their mere treatment and bring about a healthy condition of the entire human being, that is to say, it is a declaration of war against the very individual and comfortable and ordinary activities of the physician, when their aid is dependent upon the money that they may receive from the individual.
From the last war up to this war I never earned considerable amounts of money because of my patients. I was not paid by the Party, the SS or the State, and I remained at Hohenlychen in spite of my international practice for reasons of principle. When I had to defend myself before various honorary courts, I have said that I was of the opinion that one may sell articles of luxury at more expensive prices because people can do without them; one can be very expensive in performing cosmetical luxurious operations on a film star because that woman can be dispensed with.
However, as a specialist as I was one, one cannot apply that to operations which are necessary in the case of people who are impoverished and one cannot just connect it with a public enterprise.
I want to emphasize these principles initially because that explains my position and there was a great many German physicians who thought the same way as I did. We were the men who started the students and who again and again had to interrupt their corners because of the necessity of living to earn money, because of war, events and other incidents. I think that I can say one thing in favor of that group, he were the most outspoken pacifists in Germany because we wanted to connect ourselves with ordinary civil life, but I think we were also the ones who were most ready to make sacrifices. At any rate we didn't embark upon a career where working hard demanded reprimands and burdens could be applied to us. During my career because of the pressure exercised on me at the Sauerbruch clinic I desisted from any political activity. I remained the friend and physician of the poor and the ones who were in need.
A: (continued) I remained the friend and the physician of the poor and the ones who were in need. My camps had no very special attributes, but, perhaps, I can quote from the early report which is contained in my next document. I would like to quote two or three sentences because they illustrate the tendency of our desire and I think it is my perfect right to defend myself against these slogans against the simplicity of description as if only a black and white, and I feel I have to passionately define my position in that regard and in the interest of the young.
The yearly report states by saying "To help and to be a physician must never have anything to do with money." Many of our officials did not like the sense of this sentence because it effected their personal earnings. The most important thing, it seems to me, is to emphasize the following quotation:
That I see an extreme danger in the fact that in all welfare questions laymen are concerning themselves with judgment of medical affairs and very easily when judging over-estimate external systems — cosmetical and general systems, without understanding the essential point of the development of the disease and to understand things concerning fate, the fateful points of the disease.
I think that I repeated the sentences which originated from 1929 up to the year 1945 and I sincerely represented it.
And from trial the year of 1931, that is the time in Munich, when as Dr. Leibbrandt stated, a group came up and only represented the negative side of the physician. My camp of the physically injured for the first time accepts insane persons and I may use this example because it is of some importance with reference to the discussion here, You know that there are countries abroad from our point of view who speak about the position of the feeble minded. Through this experiment I have proved that even in the case of juvenile feeble minded it is hard to decide what cannot be changed and is born heritage or, on the other hand, what may be the inferences of a bad education which caused him to follow the example of other feeble minded with which he came into contact. During the so-called controlled experiments at the Munich-Augsburg Institute, and I shall later submit proof for all my statements, I included youthful persons into the healthy sport groups, whose feeble mindedness had been finally established from a psychiatric point of view.
By virtue of this living together — this community life with the healthy people — with the good example, people were educated by me — the result was that of 20 feeble minded young persons, ten left the institution, were released from the institution and the other half had to return to the institution, either immediately or during the course of the time. I only want to cite this example because this is a medical educational experiment which in many cases even in the United States had been repeated and is only here to prove that we in Germany aren't people who were just cowards and stupid, but that we had concerns about people who were impoverished and who were in need and we wanted to embark on our bit together with them.
Q: During the year of 1942, witness, you became lecturer of surgery at the University of Munich. How did this appointment come about and what was the subject of your habilitation thesis?
A: I may give you a few dates because of the year of 1933 which was such an important change and since I am being accused of being stupid, not educated, and having acted without any feeling of responsibility, and that only because of my youthful acquaintance ship with Himmler I achieved my high rank. In 1932 I was a fully pledged surgical assistant. I had professional education in pathology and surgery in 1932 and 1933 and at that time already had two special fields, one of which was the follow-up treatment through gymnastics and the disease itself by surgery. I was the first physician of the Surgical Clinic of the Sport Clinic. I had connection with all Sport Associations. I was a member of the workers Sport Association by virtue of my camps. I was one of the first professional advisors, medical advisors of Munich, and assisted in cases of retraining, reeducation, etc. I was teacher at the school for gymnastics of patients and I think that the tendency of Germany with reference to surgical gymnastics would not quite be silent about my name and my participation. On the other hand it was never my intention to become a university professor and in the year 1932 I endeavored to go to a little hospital which was in the scope of activity of my father, when in the year 1932 Dr. Lexer offered me a university career.
During the transition period of 1932 and 1933 I already was a member of customary associations. I don't think it is necessary for me to list all these national associations because one just cannot be accepted into Germany society otherwise, just as it is true abroad, one only needs two warrantors. I was also a member of many international associations and societies which was a little more difficult and oven after 1933 remained a member. In the year 1934 I held a speech in Poland about the problems of surgical tuberculosis. It was a common discussion with an Italian and a Frenchman. In the year of 1935 I spoke at the Saubonne at Paris and the French Chairmanship, I was a member of the International Association of Sport Physicians and of the International Surgical Association. All that wasn't very important but at the same time I want to demonstrate these matters in order to show that before 1933, after 1933, until the very end I was a person with whom people were in communication, that I have much to thank the many people abroad for, and that on the other hand I have been a person to help quite a number of people abroad.
Q: I think there is a slight mistake with reference to your professional education between 1923 and 1933.
A: Yes.
Q: Witness, when did you become chief physician at the institute at Hohenlychen and how did this appointment come about? Where were these institutions, what was the special purpose that you had in mind and what was the situation when you took over these institutions as chief physician?
A: The institutions at Hohenlychen were not concentration camps and have nothing to do with the concentration camp of Ravensbruck. My decent collaborators had nothing to do there except under some order which didn't affect the camp Hohenlychen. Hohenlychen had before been under the leadership of Geheimrat Bier who is the third one of the three classical surgeons of Germany — Bier, Sauerbruch and Lexer. This had been a purely tuberculosis institution. It was a privat welfare institution and in 1933, since all the entire tuberculosis movement had undergone a change, it had become no longer necessary because the transportation of tuberculosis diseased to the sea and mountains was preferred. When the Third Reich was created and newly founded, the Reich Sport Leadership originated. That is to say, it was endeavored to comprise the entire sport activities which, on one side, led to many individual limitations but which, on the other hand, over-emphasized the importance of the Reich sport associations — the sport associations of the people who were well off or of the so-called "semi-amateur" who was paid by industry. On the other hand, the Reich sport leaders Von Tschammer and Osten attempted to further support the sport movement of the youth, the sport association of the worker. My dear friend, Hans Von Tschammer, was an old man who had been wounded during the war and had social interest — to care for the man who had been wounded.
On the basis of my work and my experiments in Munich I, who was not a member of the Party — and that is something I want to mention, by the way — was appointed as consulting physician of the German sport and hold this loading position from the year 1933 to the end and throughout the entire war, and that about this time I had no connections with Himmler. That was because of the understanding by the chief of the Wehrmacht Medical Service who realized the necessity of caring for war wounded also by way of sport. That is to say, if they were to be taken out of the Amy and to be included into sport associationsin very many cases Hohenlychen. In order to be able to carry out my work, I needed support from the Reich sport leader, Hohenlychen, at that time, had great difficulties and I had taken it over as a private chief of a private clinic. The insulting words "the Nazi fortress" certainly is not true of the initial period of time. Hohenlychen was the most tolerant institution of Germany, included a thousand bods, and was organized only to concern itself with the three concepts of disease. That is in contrast to the typical German hospital which concerned itself with general care and of which there were a number already under the leadership of experienced physicians. I tried to limit my institution to three concepts of disease. Tho first; sport accident, and it was not my intention to help only people who had money and who load a comfortable professional life and to alleviate only their lives because of our treatment, but, to the contrary, we were mainly concerned with these pure sport people where had work was connected with the joy of sport but whose external conditions of life were so unfavorable that they exhausted themselves because of hunger and because of need. There by a paradox situation came about; namely, that the least incident, the least small accident would load to severe physical injury in the case of those pooplo who lived under such bad conditions. More important than any other results during treatment seems to me to be one thing and that is something that couldn't just be left out even after my death, and that is to say that I created the German sport aid.
I originated that suggestion between the bureaucratic social insurance of Germany and the private insurance or the money of the individual. I tried to institute an institution of insurance which, while led by the state, could still be generally applied to everybody and that in order to enable any man who are still had joy in sport to care for his injury without having to undergo any sacrifices. Since another example was mentioned before, I may touch upon that too. Every entrance fee that was paid for any sport event in Germany was taxed by 10 or 20 pfennigs and these were placed at the disposal of the Reich sport leader for the purpose of welfare and I want to emphasize that because this shows the contrast of our thinking and our opposition to any old customary state insurance system. The individual, after being injured or after having an accident, received full medical care. However, we didn't want any continual payment of sick money, so to speak. We didn't want any pension and we thereby avoided all that of which Germany is accused by foreign countries — and rightly, in reference to their insurance system; namely, that it paralyzes the working capacity of the individual relying upon some compensation by the state which is far from sufficient. But on the other hand, we created working places for our people who were severely injured. From Hohenlychen, up to the year of 1937, I had 4800 injured workers and sportsmen under my continual control. We created working pairs from them. That is to say, whenever anyone lost his arm we didn't just take him out of his profession as a locksmith or whatever it may have been in order to just let him stand around in some pseudo-activity, but told him to go back to his profession, I left him there in order that his experience would be maintained. But to other with him I added an apprentice who would support his old master who had lost his arm and who would be an additional aid. All these thins have shown their value and they are being re-introduced today under small changes of the names.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will now be in recess until 1:30.
(A recess was taken until 1330 hours.)