THE MARSHAL: Persons in the court will please find their seats. The Tribunal is again in session.
KURT BLOME — Resumed DIRECT EXAMINATION (Continued)
BY DR. SAUTER (Counsel for the defendant Blome):
Q: Witness, we were interrupted in the midst of a particularly important point; namely, the question of Dr. Rascher, and I wanted to ask you before did you, together with this man Rascher, carry out any war experiments, particularly freezing or polygal or cancer experiments and such experiments on human beings?
A: No.
Q: Never?
A: Never.
Q: Did you give any orders to this Dr. Rascher to carry out such experiments on human beings?
A: No.
Q: I shall now show you what you set forth in an affidavit of the 25th of October 1946. This affidavit was submitted by the Prosecution in Prosecution in Prosecution Document Book No. 11, regarding blood coagulation, and carries the number 471, Prosecution Exhibit 238. Under point 8 in this affidavit it is stated, and I chose verbatim — this is your statement:
Dr. Rascher told me that in the Concentration Camp Dachau he had carried out experiments on human beings. One served the purpose of testing the effectiveness of polygal for blood coagulation in the case of war wounds and operational wounds, etc.
That is all under point 8 in your affidavit. Then follows point 9, which reads:
It was quite clear to me that experiments on human beings were being carried out in concentration camps. Dr. Rascher informed me of experiments on human beings that had been concluded.
I repeat: "that had been concluded".
I remember that he answered my questions with the reply that one fatality had occurred.
That is the extent of the quotation I wish to put to you. Now, this statement of your on the 25th of October, 1946 in your affidavit — do you still make those same assertions and what do you have to say regarding them?
A: What I said is true, Racher informed me briefly of his concluded experiments on human beings and also about the technical way in which they were carried out. I asked him then whether nothing had happened during these experiments and he thereupon told me that there had been only one fatality.
Q: Witness, I should like to have it stated perfectly clearly — did Dr. Rascher on this occasion or on another occasion tell you about experiments on human beings that were to be carried out in the future, or only about experiments that had already been concluded?
A: He spoke of experiments that had already been concluded. Incidentally, he did mention that he had delivered a lecture on experiments regarding parachute jumps. I understood this mean at that time — to be sure, I have subsequently learned in the trial that these were low-pressure experiments — that actually these were parachute jumps from airplanes. That of course interested me. I should have liked to know what happened during such parachute jumps from great altitudes and I therefore asked Rascher but he told me that he was not at liberty to tell me about this; moreover, the experiments were not yet concluded and he needed for these experiments a low pressure chamber but that he had been refused this low pressure chamber by the Luftwaffe. He told me who the gentlemen in question were — he called them traitors — and mentioned the names of Hippke, Weltz and Ruff.
Q: You told me before that he spoke only of experiments that had been concluded, namely experiments in the past. But in connection with the testing of a method of combatting cancer, did he not speak of experiments he intended to carry out in the future, and what did you say about that?
A: In the conference in my office that I already mentioned which Himmler arranged for and in which Sievers, Professor Holz, Herr von Wuetzelburg and Rascher took part, there was discussion of experiments. From the very beginning I made clear my point of view, that we should not begin testing a medium before a precise chemical analysis of this medical means had been undertaken. I asked Professor Holz to undertake the analysis of this vegetable extract and to carry out no experiments, including experiments on animals, until that was concluded, because it was scientific nonsense to attempt to find any means to combat cancer without knowing what the effectiveness of the treatment could be traced back to if it were effective.
After I had informed Himmler of this conference he spoke to me of experiments. He told me he intended to set up a so-called cancer station for Rascher so that this vegetable extract could be tested there. He had instituted inquiring in all concentrate camps but had been informed that there were none or only one person suffering from cancer in all the concentration camps. I reminded Himmler of the results of that aforementioned conference and told him that it was nonsensical to undertake experiments without the necessary scientific basis.
A: Did you then have the feeling or did it occur to you then that the experiments that Dr. Rascher was carrying out with Dr. Wuetzelburg — now means against cancer — were criminal experiments on human beings, or could be criminal because of their dangerousness or because of the pains that were connected with them, or criminal for some other reason?
A: No, there was no question of that at all because after what Dr. von Wuetzelburg had told me I saw that this was a continuation of work on the part of physicians who had worked on this problem until 1933. If, therefore, patients sick of cancer had been given this vegetable extract to drink, or if it had been used for inoculations, that could never have done them any harm or caused then any particular difficulties. Moreover, it is a well know fact that if a means of combatting cancer turns up, that seems to have prospects, persons with cancer apply in great numbers for this drug — that it should be tested on them. Every doctor who has had experience in cancer research has had this experience.
Q: From Siever's affidavit we heard and now know that Rascher was to set up an institute for cancer research in Dachau or perhaps even did set it up. This is stated in an affidavit on the part of Sievers on 25 October 1946, in Document Book 11 of the Prosecution. As a cancer researcher did you have anything to do with this institute of Rascher's in Dachau?
A: No, there was no cancer institute under Rascher.
Q: Then it was merely planned?
A: Those were big ideas on the part of Himmler.
Q: Himmler, of whom you have just been speaking, and this is also to be seen from Siever's affidavit, apparently frequently expressed the wish that his favorite, namely Rascher, should collaborate with you, and, if you remember, he wished that Rascher should tell you regularly of his work. I ask you, did such collaboration between you and Rascher take place on the basis of Himmler's wish and did you receive any reports of this sort from Rascher?
A: There was no such thing as regular scientific collaboration between us. Himmler asked me to work together with Rascher in the fields of cancer, of polygal, the blood coagulant, and also in connection with a newly developed canned potato, which was of great interest to us from the point of view of providing food. But I did no work in this field of any sort. The work that was done is to be traced back to the efforts on the part of Herr Falks, who was supported in this by Rascher. There was no regular reporting on Rascher's part about his work or at least I can speak of it only relatively. I did not receive written reports but from time to time Rascher told me that again improvements had been reached in the production of polygal and also in the field of this aforementioned canned potato. I assured myself of how good these potatoes were when I visited Rascher and found them excellent.
Q: What I brought up with you just now is to be traced back to an affidavit on the part of co-defendant Sievers on the 25th of October, 1946, Prosecution Document Book 11, Page 7, where he writes:
An order was issued that all concentration camp inmates with cancer in the various concentration camps should be transferred in the future to Rascher's Department. Experiments were to be carried out on such inmates that could serve cancer research, and that you Dr. Blome had visited Rascher several times, had received reports from Rascher and knew all about Rascher's work.
Is that assertion correct on the part of Sievers, which he made under oath in an affidavit?
A: This is his assertion and it is in part true. As I said Himmler asked me in the fields of cancer, Polygal and these potato matters, to work together with Rascher, and to support him, and actually Rascher did report to me on these matters. What other assignments Rascher may have had from Himmler I do not know. There was no mention of them, and if that was the case at least Rascher did not report to me on them. I cannot conceive that Rascher received from Himmler the order to carry out forbidden experiments, and that Himmler could have wanted him to report to me on them, because my connections with Himmler were not so close as all that. Moreover I must point out that I was not an SS Leader, so that in this respect I was neither subordinate to Himmler nor was Rascher in any way subordinate to me.
Q: In this connection, however, the co-defendant Sievers in his affidavit of 25th October 1946, which has already been mentioned several times now, made the assertion to Dr. Blome,
that Dr. Blome had specifically asked Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler to put Rascher at your disposal for research at your Institute in Nesselstedt in Posen, and apparently some such thing was agreed upon;
would you care to make a statement on this subject?
A: Rascher asked me to use him in my Institute. He told this to Himmler and I also spoke with Himmler about this. All this is true, but Rascher was never actually used by me. First of all I had no opportunity or possibility of using Rascher with me because my Institute in Posen was under construction, none of the necessary equipment was at hand, and even in January 1945, when the Russians reached Posen it was not yet completed.
Q: Witness, in Prosecution Document Book 3 regarding cold or freezing experiments, we were shown a few documents in which you are incriminated, namely documents from which it is to be seen that Dr. Rascher on the basis of his Dachau experiments had attempted to be habilitated by a German University in order to become a university professor. It is concluded from this that you were very precisely informed of Rascher's Dachau experiments, and that you nevertheless approved of them; what can you say about this?
A: First of all it is not correct to conclude that I approved such experiments, because first of all I did not know that these experiments were being undertaken; secondly, I found out about them only after they had long since been concluded; it is true that Himmler asked me to be of assistance to Rascher at his habilitation in a German University. First of all Rascher would have to be certified as a specialist. Rascher made efforts so to be certified, came to me and said that the Institute office in Munich had refuse to certify him as a specialist. Then I asked him to hand in the necessary documentation and data to the Reich Physicians Chamber in Munich himself. These documents went to the Institute specialist to be worked on and he then reported to me and stated actually the certification as a specialist was in order. The only thing that was missing was a certificate to the effect that Rascher had carried out a certain number of surgical operations of a specific nature himself. He told this to Rascher. Thereupon Rascher went to his Munich teacher, well known surgeon, and also brought the certification to the effect that he had himself carried out the surgical operations in question. I then turned the matter over to my specialist. He again reported to me, saying that the certification of Rascher as a specialist was now in order and I then told my specialist to give Rascher a temporary certification as specialist. No final certifications of that sort were issued during the War. This provided certain of the prerequisites for a habilitation. He then took up the question of this habilitation with Professor Menzel in his capacity as Office Chief in the Science Department of The Ministry of Culture, particularly because the works that Rascher had carried out in his Institute on Himmler's order were considered in general secret.
I proposed that he should not turn to Professor Pfannenstiel in Marburg in the matter of this habilitation. The reason I mentioned this name lies in the fact that in the end of 1942, I had made Professor Pfannenstiel's acquaintance on the trip to Marburg, and had ascertained that he had once been Ordinarius [full professor] and was moreover an SS Standartenfuehrer [standard leader], in the Waffen SS which corresponds to a Colonel in the American Army. I then wrote a letter to Professor Pfannenstiel. I received from him a reply in the negative. Thereupon I did nothing further, but told Rascher that he concern himself with this business of a professorship with a professor who could get him this habilitation, he would do best to turn to an SS comrade. I myself, however, knew no likely names.
Q: Dr. Blome, this matter interests me mainly from the following point of view; I ask myself whether at that time from the documents that Rascher gave you regarding himself, would you have had to say that these experiments were criminal ones; in other words, whether you thought from these documents that they were experiments in concentration camps, or whether you could conclude from these documents something about the nature of the experimental persons, for instance, whether they were Germans or foreigners, whether political or criminal prisoners, whether they had been condemned to death or not, whether they were to be pardoned, or not; it is only from this point of view I am interested in this whole business of Rascher's habilitation, and so I ask you now to make statements regarding the question, what did you learn from these documents of Rascher's on the points I just mentioned, and if you did tried out something in this way how did you react?
A: When in the late summer of 1943, Himmler asked me to support Rascher in his efforts to be habilitated, I spoke with Rascher about this matter. Rascher told me that he wanted to be habilitated in a work that concerned the coagulation of blood. Once when I visited him in Dachau Rascher showed me extensive statistical preparations and charts of his experiments with Polygal, and all of these were perfectly permissible laboratory experiments, and then for a while I heard nothing further about this matter, the question of having Rascher certified as a specialist, namely. And then as I recall, at the end of 1943 I received from Rascher a very extensive paper with the request that I help him become habilitated. I opened up this paper, read through it, paged through it, that is. I remember it was full of charts, but I didn't actually read the paper, which did not interest me, nor was it my job to study this paper, because I was not the Professor who was to carry out Rascher's habilitation. I had only, on Himmler's request, played an intermediary role in this whole matter. I state this now under truth, I did not read this work, because it didn't interest me. In no respect did it follow under a specialized field that touched on my own interests, and moreover I received so many special scientific papers from all over Germany, that I would have had to have several heads and much more time to study all of these matters; consequently I really cannot give you any information about even what the title of this paper was or the contents were; if I knew it I would be only too happy to do it.
Q: Witness in Prosecution Document Book 3, No. 432, Exhibit 119 on page 140, there is a letter from Dr. Rascher to Neff of 21 October 1943, which is presented by the Prosecution. Neff is the man who was heard here as a witness. In this letter to Neff, Rascher writes to the effect that the Reich Research Counsel had commissioned him to carry out freezing experiments in open air; they were to be carried out in winter on the Sudelfeld, that is a skiing terain in the Upper Bavarian Alps and this letter of Rascher to Neff on 21 October, 1943, is compared with a card in the card index file of the Reich Research Counsel. Now please make some statement about these experiments in the open air; did you issue the orders for these freezing experiments in open air?
A: No, I did not issue such an order and I consider it out of the question that some other department of the Reich Research Counsel should have issued such an order.
JUDGE SEBRING: Before this other point is left; I should like to ask you one or two questions concerning the exhibits which you have referred to. Witness, as I understand your statement, certain experiments that were conducted by Rascher during the period of time you knew him were classified, or were to be classified as secret, or as top secret; is that correct?
THE WITNESS: No, Your, Honor, that is not correct. During the time that I knew Rascher such experiments were not carried out; at the very most it could only have been experiments that were carried out long before I made Rascher's acquaintance.
JUDGE SEBRING: Well now then, of the experiments carried out before you made Rascher's acquaintance; do you know which ones were at the time classified as secret or top secret?
THE WITNESS: So far as I knew, all Rascher's experiments in his institute were called secret; for example also this business of the canned potatoes that I mentioned before.
JUDGE SEBRING: In Prosecution Document Bock No. 3, which has been referred to by your counsel, Document No. 240 is offered in evidence as Prosecution Exhibit 112, there appears a letter supposed to have been written by Rascher to Himmler bearing the date of 11 April 1943, which reads as follows:
Dear Reichsfuehrer! Enclosed I beg to submit a brief report concerning freezing experiments on human beings exposed to the open air.
Early in May I hope to be in a position, dear Reichsfuehrer, to submit to you my habilitation thesis. SS Obersturmbannfuehrer [Lieutenant Colonel], Professor Dr. Pfannenstiel of Marburg is prepared to use and accept it as a secret thesis of habilitation.
How, is that, or is that not, the thesis that was presented to Pfannenstiel for the habilitation of Rascher or attempted habilitation of Rascher?
THE WITNESS: Of this habilitation thesis or application to Pfannenstiel which you just mentioned, I knew nothing. Rascher told me nothing about that and it is purely an accident that I also turned to Pfannenstiel, which I did because on this trip at the end of 1942 to Lemberg, I made Pfannenstiel's acquaintance. Because an ordinarious, a full professor was necessary as the person to approve a habilitation thesis. When I discussed with Menzel my suggestion about Pfannenstiel, Menzel also certainly did not know that Rascher had already made efforts to achieve his habilitation through Pfannenstiel, as can be seen from Rascher's letters to Himmler, which were I believe in April of 1943 and this, as you can see, it was long before the time I made Rascher's acquaintance.
JUDGE SEBRING: Why is it that in the event the efforts of Rascher to be habilitated were successful that his appointment as a lecturer was to be a secret appointment; can you tell me that?
THE WITNESS: I only know that during the war such secret habilitations were frequently undertaken. In these cases the habilitation thesis was of great importance for one military reason or another and should be kept secret. For example, the thesis in the field of physics or in the field of the physics of explosives or such fields. May I add one point; the awarding of the title itself Doctor Habil was not kept secret, only the thesis was kept secret on the basis in which the person in question was habilitated. So far as I know this secret was kept within the medical department of the University in question and was confined to the three or four specialists who gave their opinion of the value of the habilitation thesis in question.
In other words, this thesis was not presented in any scientific period.
JUDGE SEBRING: The fact, however, that an appointment had been made would be made known; is that true it would not be a secret?
THE WITNESS: Yes, that is true; it would not have been a secret.
JUDGE SEBRING: Then will you please explain: in document book 3 of the Prosecution, Document NO-229, Prosecution Exhibit 118, from Sievers to Rudolf Brandt there is a letter dated 27 September 1943:
Re: Appointment of SS-Hauptsturmfuehrer [Captain] Dr. Rascher as a lecturer. Habilitation.
Dear Comrade Brandt:
I have taken up the matter of the appointment of Dr. Rascher as lecturer. I myself brought together Dr. Rascher with Professor Dr. Blome as well as with SS-Brigadefuehrer [Brigade Leader] Menzel. The procedure and the possibilities were thoroughly discussed.
Professor Blome talked with Professor Pfannenstiel at Marburg, so that the path toward effecting this appointment, which is to be a secret appointment and, therefore, causes some difficulty, is smoothed.
Kind regards and Heil Hitler!
Yours, Sievers.
What do you have to say about that?
THE WITNESS: On the whole these statements of Sievers are true except the statement that I had previously spoken to Pfannenstiel. You read there "Blome spoke to Pfannenstiel," but at that time I had not seen Rascher's habilitation thesis nor had I spoken with Pfannenstiel.
This talk with Menzel is the same as the one I mentioned before. Sievers also took part in this talk. In this talk it was a question of determining what was to be the formal way in which this habilitation was to be achieved, and in order to be clear in my mind about this, I had to turn to Menzel because he was the chief of the scientific office of the Ministry of Culture.
JUDGE SEBRING: The point I am talking about, though, is the reference by Sievers to Brandt of the fact that any appointment that would come to Rascher would have to be a "secret appointment," and from that I get the impression that not only is the subject of the thesis to be secret, but that the appointment of Rascher as well is to be secret.
THE WITNESS: No. Your Honor. Sievers expressed himself poorly in this letter of his. I know of no single case in which anyone was secretly appointed a "Dr. Habil," and I believe everyone would have himself objected to receiving such a secret appointment because the purpose of a habilitation was that the person in question could perfectly publicly call himself a "Dr. Habil," and the appointment as "Dr. Habil" was the necessary prerequisite for a later professorship.
So here it can only be a question of Sievers having expressed himself clumsily or poorly.
JUDGE SEEDING: Well, then, on page 157 of the same document book, Document NO-290, Prosecution Exhibit 212, is what appears to be another letter written by Sievers to Brandt dated 21 March 1944:
Dear Comrade Brandt:
My last letter to you on this subject was written on 27 November 1943. In spite of the intervention of SS-Bridadefuehrer [Brigade Leader] Professor Dr. Menzel and the deputy Reichsaerztefuehrer [Reich Medical Leader] Professor Dr. Blome, of which I informed you at the time, admission to the faculty with Professor Pfannenstiel at Marburg was not possible.
On the 30th of November Pfannenstiel wrote to Professor Blome on the subject as follows:
I quote:
I tried to pave the way for admission to the faculty here since it was clear from personal discussions with Dr. Rascher that our spheres of work ran parallel to a great extent. The fact that Rascher's activities have to be kept secret makes the affair very difficult to handle. In these circumstances I was unable to persuade the Marburg medical faculty to admit Rascher.
Then there is some discussion about an attempt to have Rascher, admitted to the faculty in Frankfurt or Munich. Then he says:
I am genuinely sorry that I cannot fulfill as I originally hoped to do Dr. Rascher's justifiable desire to gain admission to the faculty in Marburg on the basis of his scientific work, with which I am acquainted, and I ask him to consider my other proposals on the subject.
And:
To undertake such an attempt in Munich would serve no purpose since, as you know, a similar attempt was already made with negative results.
The director of the Institute for Aviation Medicine in Frankfurt, who had already consented to take part in the presentation of the thesis in Marburg, would most certainly have been induced to favor admission to the faculty in Frankfurt. However, owing to the need for secrecy, we would have been exposed to the same difficulties with the medical faculty in Frankfurt.
A discussion with SS-Hauptsturmfuehrer [Captain] Dr. Hirt, who is thoroughly familiar with Dr. Rascher's work, revealed that the easiest thing would be to have him admitted to the Strassburg faculty. Here it is possible to have the work examined by SS Fuehrers only and admission to the faculty carried out in secrecy.
And so, frankly, I am rather confused. I gained the impression from these documents that not only was the habilitation thesis to be secret in its content and nature, but that also the appointment of Rascher as a lecturer. Could you help the Tribunal in that particular?
THE WITNESS: I can't really recall this letter. Permit me to ask is all that you read just now one letter to me from the beginning to the end?
JUDGE SEBRING: No. This is not a letter to you at all. It is a letter from Sievers to SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer [Lieutenant Colonel] Dr. Brandt, but throughout it talks not only of a secret thesis but also of a secret appointment, and I am interested in knowing whether within the framework of your knowledge it is a customary thing in Germany either in wartime or in peacetime to have secret appointments to the faculties of the universities?
THE WITNESS: I never ever heard of a secret appointment. I think it is out of the question. I do know, as I said, that there were secret habilitation theses, namely, that the papers on which the appointment was based were kept secret, but I think it is quite out of the question that there should be such a thing as a secret appointment.
JUDGE SEBRING: That is all.
BY DR. SAUTER:
Q: Dr. Blome —
THE PRESIDENT: It is almost time for the noon recess, and when the Tribunal takes its recess at noon today, it will recess until nine-thirty o'clock next Monday morning. There will be no afternoon session of the tribunal this afternoon.
(The Tribunal adjourned until 17 March 1947 at 0930 hours.)
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1947-03-14, #2: Doctors' Trial (late morning)
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THE MARSHAL: Persons in the court will please find their seats. The Tribunal is again in session.
KURT BLOME — Resumed DIRECT EXAMINATION (Continued)
BY DR. SAUTER (Counsel for the defendant Blome):
Q: Witness, we were interrupted in the midst of a particularly important point; namely, the question of Dr. Rascher, and I wanted to ask you before did you, together with this man Rascher, carry out any war experiments, particularly freezing or polygal or cancer experiments and such experiments on human beings?
A: No.
Q: Never?
A: Never.
Q: Did you give any orders to this Dr. Rascher to carry out such experiments on human beings?
A: No.
Q: I shall now show you what you set forth in an affidavit of the 25th of October 1946. This affidavit was submitted by the Prosecution in Prosecution in Prosecution Document Book No. 11, regarding blood coagulation, and carries the number 471, Prosecution Exhibit 238. Under point 8 in this affidavit it is stated, and I chose verbatim — this is your statement:
That is all under point 8 in your affidavit. Then follows point 9, which reads:
I repeat: "that had been concluded".
That is the extent of the quotation I wish to put to you. Now, this statement of your on the 25th of October, 1946 in your affidavit — do you still make those same assertions and what do you have to say regarding them?
A: What I said is true, Racher informed me briefly of his concluded experiments on human beings and also about the technical way in which they were carried out. I asked him then whether nothing had happened during these experiments and he thereupon told me that there had been only one fatality.
Q: Witness, I should like to have it stated perfectly clearly — did Dr. Rascher on this occasion or on another occasion tell you about experiments on human beings that were to be carried out in the future, or only about experiments that had already been concluded?
A: He spoke of experiments that had already been concluded. Incidentally, he did mention that he had delivered a lecture on experiments regarding parachute jumps. I understood this mean at that time — to be sure, I have subsequently learned in the trial that these were low-pressure experiments — that actually these were parachute jumps from airplanes. That of course interested me. I should have liked to know what happened during such parachute jumps from great altitudes and I therefore asked Rascher but he told me that he was not at liberty to tell me about this; moreover, the experiments were not yet concluded and he needed for these experiments a low pressure chamber but that he had been refused this low pressure chamber by the Luftwaffe. He told me who the gentlemen in question were — he called them traitors — and mentioned the names of Hippke, Weltz and Ruff.
Q: You told me before that he spoke only of experiments that had been concluded, namely experiments in the past. But in connection with the testing of a method of combatting cancer, did he not speak of experiments he intended to carry out in the future, and what did you say about that?
A: In the conference in my office that I already mentioned which Himmler arranged for and in which Sievers, Professor Holz, Herr von Wuetzelburg and Rascher took part, there was discussion of experiments. From the very beginning I made clear my point of view, that we should not begin testing a medium before a precise chemical analysis of this medical means had been undertaken. I asked Professor Holz to undertake the analysis of this vegetable extract and to carry out no experiments, including experiments on animals, until that was concluded, because it was scientific nonsense to attempt to find any means to combat cancer without knowing what the effectiveness of the treatment could be traced back to if it were effective.
After I had informed Himmler of this conference he spoke to me of experiments. He told me he intended to set up a so-called cancer station for Rascher so that this vegetable extract could be tested there. He had instituted inquiring in all concentrate camps but had been informed that there were none or only one person suffering from cancer in all the concentration camps. I reminded Himmler of the results of that aforementioned conference and told him that it was nonsensical to undertake experiments without the necessary scientific basis.
A: Did you then have the feeling or did it occur to you then that the experiments that Dr. Rascher was carrying out with Dr. Wuetzelburg — now means against cancer — were criminal experiments on human beings, or could be criminal because of their dangerousness or because of the pains that were connected with them, or criminal for some other reason?
A: No, there was no question of that at all because after what Dr. von Wuetzelburg had told me I saw that this was a continuation of work on the part of physicians who had worked on this problem until 1933. If, therefore, patients sick of cancer had been given this vegetable extract to drink, or if it had been used for inoculations, that could never have done them any harm or caused then any particular difficulties. Moreover, it is a well know fact that if a means of combatting cancer turns up, that seems to have prospects, persons with cancer apply in great numbers for this drug — that it should be tested on them. Every doctor who has had experience in cancer research has had this experience.
Q: From Siever's affidavit we heard and now know that Rascher was to set up an institute for cancer research in Dachau or perhaps even did set it up. This is stated in an affidavit on the part of Sievers on 25 October 1946, in Document Book 11 of the Prosecution. As a cancer researcher did you have anything to do with this institute of Rascher's in Dachau?
A: No, there was no cancer institute under Rascher.
Q: Then it was merely planned?
A: Those were big ideas on the part of Himmler.
Q: Himmler, of whom you have just been speaking, and this is also to be seen from Siever's affidavit, apparently frequently expressed the wish that his favorite, namely Rascher, should collaborate with you, and, if you remember, he wished that Rascher should tell you regularly of his work. I ask you, did such collaboration between you and Rascher take place on the basis of Himmler's wish and did you receive any reports of this sort from Rascher?
A: There was no such thing as regular scientific collaboration between us. Himmler asked me to work together with Rascher in the fields of cancer, of polygal, the blood coagulant, and also in connection with a newly developed canned potato, which was of great interest to us from the point of view of providing food. But I did no work in this field of any sort. The work that was done is to be traced back to the efforts on the part of Herr Falks, who was supported in this by Rascher. There was no regular reporting on Rascher's part about his work or at least I can speak of it only relatively. I did not receive written reports but from time to time Rascher told me that again improvements had been reached in the production of polygal and also in the field of this aforementioned canned potato. I assured myself of how good these potatoes were when I visited Rascher and found them excellent.
Q: What I brought up with you just now is to be traced back to an affidavit on the part of co-defendant Sievers on the 25th of October, 1946, Prosecution Document Book 11, Page 7, where he writes:
Is that assertion correct on the part of Sievers, which he made under oath in an affidavit?
A: This is his assertion and it is in part true. As I said Himmler asked me in the fields of cancer, Polygal and these potato matters, to work together with Rascher, and to support him, and actually Rascher did report to me on these matters. What other assignments Rascher may have had from Himmler I do not know. There was no mention of them, and if that was the case at least Rascher did not report to me on them. I cannot conceive that Rascher received from Himmler the order to carry out forbidden experiments, and that Himmler could have wanted him to report to me on them, because my connections with Himmler were not so close as all that. Moreover I must point out that I was not an SS Leader, so that in this respect I was neither subordinate to Himmler nor was Rascher in any way subordinate to me.
Q: In this connection, however, the co-defendant Sievers in his affidavit of 25th October 1946, which has already been mentioned several times now, made the assertion to Dr. Blome,
would you care to make a statement on this subject?
A: Rascher asked me to use him in my Institute. He told this to Himmler and I also spoke with Himmler about this. All this is true, but Rascher was never actually used by me. First of all I had no opportunity or possibility of using Rascher with me because my Institute in Posen was under construction, none of the necessary equipment was at hand, and even in January 1945, when the Russians reached Posen it was not yet completed.
Q: Witness, in Prosecution Document Book 3 regarding cold or freezing experiments, we were shown a few documents in which you are incriminated, namely documents from which it is to be seen that Dr. Rascher on the basis of his Dachau experiments had attempted to be habilitated by a German University in order to become a university professor. It is concluded from this that you were very precisely informed of Rascher's Dachau experiments, and that you nevertheless approved of them; what can you say about this?
A: First of all it is not correct to conclude that I approved such experiments, because first of all I did not know that these experiments were being undertaken; secondly, I found out about them only after they had long since been concluded; it is true that Himmler asked me to be of assistance to Rascher at his habilitation in a German University. First of all Rascher would have to be certified as a specialist. Rascher made efforts so to be certified, came to me and said that the Institute office in Munich had refuse to certify him as a specialist. Then I asked him to hand in the necessary documentation and data to the Reich Physicians Chamber in Munich himself. These documents went to the Institute specialist to be worked on and he then reported to me and stated actually the certification as a specialist was in order. The only thing that was missing was a certificate to the effect that Rascher had carried out a certain number of surgical operations of a specific nature himself. He told this to Rascher. Thereupon Rascher went to his Munich teacher, well known surgeon, and also brought the certification to the effect that he had himself carried out the surgical operations in question. I then turned the matter over to my specialist. He again reported to me, saying that the certification of Rascher as a specialist was now in order and I then told my specialist to give Rascher a temporary certification as specialist. No final certifications of that sort were issued during the War. This provided certain of the prerequisites for a habilitation. He then took up the question of this habilitation with Professor Menzel in his capacity as Office Chief in the Science Department of The Ministry of Culture, particularly because the works that Rascher had carried out in his Institute on Himmler's order were considered in general secret.
I proposed that he should not turn to Professor Pfannenstiel in Marburg in the matter of this habilitation. The reason I mentioned this name lies in the fact that in the end of 1942, I had made Professor Pfannenstiel's acquaintance on the trip to Marburg, and had ascertained that he had once been Ordinarius [full professor] and was moreover an SS Standartenfuehrer [standard leader], in the Waffen SS which corresponds to a Colonel in the American Army. I then wrote a letter to Professor Pfannenstiel. I received from him a reply in the negative. Thereupon I did nothing further, but told Rascher that he concern himself with this business of a professorship with a professor who could get him this habilitation, he would do best to turn to an SS comrade. I myself, however, knew no likely names.
Q: Dr. Blome, this matter interests me mainly from the following point of view; I ask myself whether at that time from the documents that Rascher gave you regarding himself, would you have had to say that these experiments were criminal ones; in other words, whether you thought from these documents that they were experiments in concentration camps, or whether you could conclude from these documents something about the nature of the experimental persons, for instance, whether they were Germans or foreigners, whether political or criminal prisoners, whether they had been condemned to death or not, whether they were to be pardoned, or not; it is only from this point of view I am interested in this whole business of Rascher's habilitation, and so I ask you now to make statements regarding the question, what did you learn from these documents of Rascher's on the points I just mentioned, and if you did tried out something in this way how did you react?
A: When in the late summer of 1943, Himmler asked me to support Rascher in his efforts to be habilitated, I spoke with Rascher about this matter. Rascher told me that he wanted to be habilitated in a work that concerned the coagulation of blood. Once when I visited him in Dachau Rascher showed me extensive statistical preparations and charts of his experiments with Polygal, and all of these were perfectly permissible laboratory experiments, and then for a while I heard nothing further about this matter, the question of having Rascher certified as a specialist, namely. And then as I recall, at the end of 1943 I received from Rascher a very extensive paper with the request that I help him become habilitated. I opened up this paper, read through it, paged through it, that is. I remember it was full of charts, but I didn't actually read the paper, which did not interest me, nor was it my job to study this paper, because I was not the Professor who was to carry out Rascher's habilitation. I had only, on Himmler's request, played an intermediary role in this whole matter. I state this now under truth, I did not read this work, because it didn't interest me. In no respect did it follow under a specialized field that touched on my own interests, and moreover I received so many special scientific papers from all over Germany, that I would have had to have several heads and much more time to study all of these matters; consequently I really cannot give you any information about even what the title of this paper was or the contents were; if I knew it I would be only too happy to do it.
Q: Witness in Prosecution Document Book 3, No. 432, Exhibit 119 on page 140, there is a letter from Dr. Rascher to Neff of 21 October 1943, which is presented by the Prosecution. Neff is the man who was heard here as a witness. In this letter to Neff, Rascher writes to the effect that the Reich Research Counsel had commissioned him to carry out freezing experiments in open air; they were to be carried out in winter on the Sudelfeld, that is a skiing terain in the Upper Bavarian Alps and this letter of Rascher to Neff on 21 October, 1943, is compared with a card in the card index file of the Reich Research Counsel. Now please make some statement about these experiments in the open air; did you issue the orders for these freezing experiments in open air?
A: No, I did not issue such an order and I consider it out of the question that some other department of the Reich Research Counsel should have issued such an order.
JUDGE SEBRING: Before this other point is left; I should like to ask you one or two questions concerning the exhibits which you have referred to. Witness, as I understand your statement, certain experiments that were conducted by Rascher during the period of time you knew him were classified, or were to be classified as secret, or as top secret; is that correct?
THE WITNESS: No, Your, Honor, that is not correct. During the time that I knew Rascher such experiments were not carried out; at the very most it could only have been experiments that were carried out long before I made Rascher's acquaintance.
JUDGE SEBRING: Well now then, of the experiments carried out before you made Rascher's acquaintance; do you know which ones were at the time classified as secret or top secret?
THE WITNESS: So far as I knew, all Rascher's experiments in his institute were called secret; for example also this business of the canned potatoes that I mentioned before.
JUDGE SEBRING: In Prosecution Document Bock No. 3, which has been referred to by your counsel, Document No. 240 is offered in evidence as Prosecution Exhibit 112, there appears a letter supposed to have been written by Rascher to Himmler bearing the date of 11 April 1943, which reads as follows:
How, is that, or is that not, the thesis that was presented to Pfannenstiel for the habilitation of Rascher or attempted habilitation of Rascher?
THE WITNESS: Of this habilitation thesis or application to Pfannenstiel which you just mentioned, I knew nothing. Rascher told me nothing about that and it is purely an accident that I also turned to Pfannenstiel, which I did because on this trip at the end of 1942 to Lemberg, I made Pfannenstiel's acquaintance. Because an ordinarious, a full professor was necessary as the person to approve a habilitation thesis. When I discussed with Menzel my suggestion about Pfannenstiel, Menzel also certainly did not know that Rascher had already made efforts to achieve his habilitation through Pfannenstiel, as can be seen from Rascher's letters to Himmler, which were I believe in April of 1943 and this, as you can see, it was long before the time I made Rascher's acquaintance.
JUDGE SEBRING: Why is it that in the event the efforts of Rascher to be habilitated were successful that his appointment as a lecturer was to be a secret appointment; can you tell me that?
THE WITNESS: I only know that during the war such secret habilitations were frequently undertaken. In these cases the habilitation thesis was of great importance for one military reason or another and should be kept secret. For example, the thesis in the field of physics or in the field of the physics of explosives or such fields. May I add one point; the awarding of the title itself Doctor Habil was not kept secret, only the thesis was kept secret on the basis in which the person in question was habilitated. So far as I know this secret was kept within the medical department of the University in question and was confined to the three or four specialists who gave their opinion of the value of the habilitation thesis in question.
In other words, this thesis was not presented in any scientific period.
JUDGE SEBRING: The fact, however, that an appointment had been made would be made known; is that true it would not be a secret?
THE WITNESS: Yes, that is true; it would not have been a secret.
JUDGE SEBRING: Then will you please explain: in document book 3 of the Prosecution, Document NO-229, Prosecution Exhibit 118, from Sievers to Rudolf Brandt there is a letter dated 27 September 1943:
What do you have to say about that?
THE WITNESS: On the whole these statements of Sievers are true except the statement that I had previously spoken to Pfannenstiel. You read there "Blome spoke to Pfannenstiel," but at that time I had not seen Rascher's habilitation thesis nor had I spoken with Pfannenstiel.
This talk with Menzel is the same as the one I mentioned before. Sievers also took part in this talk. In this talk it was a question of determining what was to be the formal way in which this habilitation was to be achieved, and in order to be clear in my mind about this, I had to turn to Menzel because he was the chief of the scientific office of the Ministry of Culture.
JUDGE SEBRING: The point I am talking about, though, is the reference by Sievers to Brandt of the fact that any appointment that would come to Rascher would have to be a "secret appointment," and from that I get the impression that not only is the subject of the thesis to be secret, but that the appointment of Rascher as well is to be secret.
THE WITNESS: No. Your Honor. Sievers expressed himself poorly in this letter of his. I know of no single case in which anyone was secretly appointed a "Dr. Habil," and I believe everyone would have himself objected to receiving such a secret appointment because the purpose of a habilitation was that the person in question could perfectly publicly call himself a "Dr. Habil," and the appointment as "Dr. Habil" was the necessary prerequisite for a later professorship.
So here it can only be a question of Sievers having expressed himself clumsily or poorly.
JUDGE SEEDING: Well, then, on page 157 of the same document book, Document NO-290, Prosecution Exhibit 212, is what appears to be another letter written by Sievers to Brandt dated 21 March 1944:
I quote:
Then there is some discussion about an attempt to have Rascher, admitted to the faculty in Frankfurt or Munich. Then he says:
And:
The director of the Institute for Aviation Medicine in Frankfurt, who had already consented to take part in the presentation of the thesis in Marburg, would most certainly have been induced to favor admission to the faculty in Frankfurt. However, owing to the need for secrecy, we would have been exposed to the same difficulties with the medical faculty in Frankfurt.
And so, frankly, I am rather confused. I gained the impression from these documents that not only was the habilitation thesis to be secret in its content and nature, but that also the appointment of Rascher as a lecturer. Could you help the Tribunal in that particular?
THE WITNESS: I can't really recall this letter. Permit me to ask is all that you read just now one letter to me from the beginning to the end?
JUDGE SEBRING: No. This is not a letter to you at all. It is a letter from Sievers to SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer [Lieutenant Colonel] Dr. Brandt, but throughout it talks not only of a secret thesis but also of a secret appointment, and I am interested in knowing whether within the framework of your knowledge it is a customary thing in Germany either in wartime or in peacetime to have secret appointments to the faculties of the universities?
THE WITNESS: I never ever heard of a secret appointment. I think it is out of the question. I do know, as I said, that there were secret habilitation theses, namely, that the papers on which the appointment was based were kept secret, but I think it is quite out of the question that there should be such a thing as a secret appointment.
JUDGE SEBRING: That is all.
BY DR. SAUTER:
Q: Dr. Blome —
THE PRESIDENT: It is almost time for the noon recess, and when the Tribunal takes its recess at noon today, it will recess until nine-thirty o'clock next Monday morning. There will be no afternoon session of the tribunal this afternoon.
(The Tribunal adjourned until 17 March 1947 at 0930 hours.)
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