1947-05-09, #2: Doctors' Trial (late morning)

THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.

DR. PFANNMUELLER — Resumed DIRECT EXAMINATION (Conitnued)

MR. HARDY: May it please, Your Honor, this Brack exhibit which is Document No. 145 is contained in Life Magazine of 6 May 1946 edition; it narrates the Bedlam of 1946; the title is "Most U. S. Mental Hospitals are a shame and a Disgrace." I want to pass the exhibit up to the tribunal for their perusal much as the Prosecution deems it immaterial. The conditions in the Insane hospitals of the United States are not at issue here. The question whether or not the inmates shown therein as fit subjects for euthanasia. It does not seem — the prosecution fails to see the relevancy of the document.

DR. FROESCHMANN: Mr. President, I state expressly that the text to these pictures was in no way intended by me as evidence in the case of Viktor Brack. I limit myself exclusively to the question to the witness whether such types as pictured, there are the types of incurably insane persons, and I also limit myself to the question of whether the photographs in this German text book of psychology by Pleussner, on page 405, following are also such types. The book itself has been given me by a third party and I cannot offer it in evidence, but I believe that an inspection of these photographs would be of interest to the Tribunal and would be useful for the examination of the witness as to whether these are types of incurably insane persons.

MR. HARDY: With reference to this book containing the see pictures, Your Honor, has stated the Tribunal will take Judicial notice of the conditions of such people as existing all over the World, hence I don't see the necessity of showing these pictures to the witness.

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal takes Judicial Notice of the fact that all over the World, in every country, civilized or uncivilized, there are insane people, incurably insane people of various degrees, many who have no mentality at all, as described by the witness, and the Tribunal is of the opinion that admitting exhibits containing pictures showing such people is submitting a matter of no probative value before the Tribunal, and adds nothing to the Judicial Notice which the Tribunal will take of such situations.

Counsel may further interrogate the witness as to what class of persons he deems subjects for euthanasia, if the witness does deem any person a proper subject for euthanasia. That is a different matter, but insofar as counsel showing pictures and descriptions of incurably and hopelessly insane people the Tribunal takes Judicial Notice that there are such people everywhere.

The objection to the admission of these exhibits is sustained.

DR. FROESCHMANN: In view of this ruling may I at least show this book for their notice?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, counsel may exhibit the book to the Tribunal.

Q: Witness, You have heard the statement of the Tribunal just now. Later when I speak of euthanasia of incurably insane persons I shall come to this question. Now I shall continue in may case, and I ask you did your institution in Egelfing have a children's ward?

A: Yes.

Q: How were these children treated?

A: The children's ward, the so-called children's house I took over from my predecessor under the doctor who always was in charge of this house, and the children were all without any distinction as to the nature or course of their disease, or their social position were all treated in the same way, were all given the same ration, the same that according to regulations existed in such institutions.

A: The children had especially good food even during the war. They had whole milk, hot cereal, marmalade, additional fruit rations and easily digestible childrens' food and that food prescribed by childrens' doctors, milk in all forms. The children were treated just as they always are elsewhere.

Q: Witness, what is meant by children with serious hereditary and genital diseases?

A: This means children who are completely incapable of taking a place in human society, who are mentally or as a result of disease, a severe infection, for example, a brain disease in their early youth, who are so ill that any social care of the child outside of a specialist in an institute is quite impossible. That those children have a life span which is limited, and may I add something else, this includes serious physical deformities, for example, the lack of members. I had one child who had no arms and legs, only just the trunk, and deformities where it is hardly possible to feed the child; where the children have to be fed artificially. I had a child with an open heart, and a deformity of the bones so that the brain is exposed, and spinal deformities with paralysis as a result of congenital blindness and deaf and dumbness, other serious defects, microcephaly and macrocephaly.

Q: Please speak a little more slowly, witness.

A: Microcephaly, macrocephaly, and I believe that is about enough and idiots, complete idiots.

Q: Now, doctor, have these children whom you have just described so vividly, were they treated in any other way than children who, so to speak as a layman, have less severe mental diseases and who were taken into your institution?

A: No.

Q: Doctor, I may point out to you that the Prosecution has submitted a document. This is No. 863, Exhibit No. 333, in the German document book 14, part I, page 17, and in the English document book 14, page 21. This document contains the testimony of a certain Ludwig Lehner, who in the fall of 1939 was at your institute for a visit as a medical student.

Now I show you from my document book, I show you this document and I ask you first to comment on his statement that you, doctor, and it could only have been you according to the description which he makes of the person, that you, doctor, on this tour took such a poor child out of the bed and showed the child around like an animal as it were, and said:

We let these children starve to death. This is much simpler. People abroad will not be able to object if we starve them this way.

I have already given you a copy of that document. You have this?

A: Yes.

Q: Now, please doctor, comment on this document No. 863.

A: When I read the document I was not only astonished at the incredible contents, but horrified. First of all lecture tours with demonstrations in my institute were conducted in exactly the same way as my predecessor conducted them. The purpose of these tours was to inform the public about the necessity of preventing various diseases, mental and nerve diseases, and the misfortune which falls upon humanity when such children are born, and to inform and instruct the people about this misfortune. First, I may say one thing, an admission ticket, I never issued in my whole life, and I never saw one. That is an invention. Second, the tour which Mr. Lehner speaks about, he is apparently a teacher, not a medical student according to the document, this is supposed to have been in the fall of 1939. I never spoke about euthanasia at all. Euthanasia was a top secret matter. Besides in the fall of 1939 as far as I know euthanasia had not been started and nothing was done to children. I talked about hereditary diseases, and for example I showed feeble mindedness was hereditary and I showed conditions and I told the people how important it is to pass a law like the hereditary health law to carry it out thoroughly and openly. If one says, and I must go into individual things here — if he says I tore a poor child out of its bed with my fat hands, I would say in my life I never had fat hands.

I certainly never grinned at such a thing. I never laughed. I was always fully aware of how serious the matter was. I never pulled a child out of its bed. The child was quietly picked up by the nurse according to the condition it was in, and held in her hands and in her arms and shown to the people who were present. The priest Hans Jacob from Baden, a writer who is famous for his description of his Swiss tour, a Landtag [Parliament] delegate, a Catholic priest, described such children after going to an insane asylum in Baden, in one of his Swiss tours, and said — and I never said that he believed that these children — I can't remember his exact words, — but this about what he said: Nobody knew how they were created, whether they were the work of a devilish invention. I never said that. I only pointed out the horror of this condition and the necessity for relieving these poor creatures and their relatives of pain and the child of suffering, and by passing the hereditary health law as the greatest good given to the Nation.

Q: Doctor, just a minute. May I point out something to you at this point. You are supposed to have said that these creatures, meaning those children, of course, represent for me as a national socialist merely burdens for our national health, please explain that?

A: I can say even if this child was to be charged from the point of view of euthanasia, I never looked at this child from the point of view of national socialism. Euthanasia and the affairs of the Reich Committee in my opinion had nothing to do with national socialism. It is like the law for the prevention of diseases of progeny and the Marriage Laws, which are laws, legal measures, which happened to arise under the National Socialist regime. The cause, however, goes back for centuries. Gentlemen, regarding such a child starving to death was not mentioned at all, for nothing was being done at all in the children's house at this period. I reject such a thing. Those are probably the subsequent interpretations of an opponent.

Q: Doctor, what did the Reich Ministry — I shall repeat — what did the Reich Ministry of the Interior do, in fact, what regulations did it issue concerning these children that you have spoken of, these cretins and deformed children, in 1939?

A: In 1939 no regulations were issued concerning these children. I know nothing about it and my pediatrician knows nothing about it either.

Q: Then when did you learn of such regulations?

A: I should like to say that the date of the establishment of the Reich Committee Station for handling and dealing with deformed children, I don't know exactly the proper term now, I cannot remember the date, but I always thought it was in 1941, but it is not entirely impossible that it might have been in the late Summer or Fall of 1940. I cannot say exactly today. But may I continue and tell you how it happened. First, I was called to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior, the Health Department; there were some gentlemen there from Berlin. I remember Dr. Wenzler, and the establishment of the Reich Committee Station in Bavaria was discussed. So far as I can recall, the head of the children's clinic in Munich was present, and I believe this station was to be set up in the children's clinic, because of the necessity of operating on these deformed children frequently. If I remember correctly, that is, please, I can tell you only what I just happen to remember, this was explained because of the lack of space and lack of personnel, that this Reich Committee Station could not be set up there, and then the conclusion was reached that the Reich Committee Station was to be set up in my institution, because there was a children's house there, and because there were a number of cases who were idiots, cases of children psychiatry, deformity, neurological cases, and, I believe it was the Deputy President of the District Association who was to have economic supervision in my institute, who put the children's house at disposal, and I was told to take over the Reich Committee Station. I asked them for a doctor to take charge of this station and he was given to me to take care of the children's clinic.

DR. FROESCHMANN: Mr. President, may I ask whether Supplement 3 of my document book is in the hands of the President as yet. I handed this Supplement 3 in, as I have already said, only a few days ago, because I had just obtained this final document. If that is not the case, then I shall come back to this supplement later.

THE PRESIDENT: We have only the document books one and two.

BY DR. FROESCHMANN:

Q: Doctor, you were saying that in 1940, you think, and in the beginning you said '41, you learned that the Reich Committee to deal with such people existed, is that true?

A: Yes.

Q: It was only at that time that you learned that the general directives were finally issued by the Reich Ministry of the Interior at Berlin?

A: Yes, I learned of that first at the time.

DR. FROESCHMANN: Since the Tribunal does not yet have this supplementary document book, I shall not now wish to present the document.

THE PRESIDENT: We have just received what is entitled "Supplement I of the Brack Document Book". Is that the supplement to which you refer?

DR. FROESCHMANN: No, Mr. President, I am now speaking of Supplement 3.

THE PRESIDENT: Now we have Supplement 2.

MR. HARDY: Your Honor, I have Document Book No. 1, which takes me to Document No. 25, and I have Document Book No. 2, which takes me to Document No. 40. Then I have the supplement which is an excerpt of the Life Magazine, that is Document No. 45. Other than that I have no other document.

THE PRESIDENT: Supplement 1 contains the documents Nos. 41 to 44 inclusive.

MR. HARDY: I don't have that, Your Honor.

THE PRESIDENT: Copy must be available because it was just handed to us.

DR. FROESCHMANN: Mr. President, I shall not go into this Supplement 3 at this point in order to avoid delaying the Court. But in the course of the examination of the defendant Brack I shall come back to this document. However, I may tell you, Doctor, that the prosecution in the course of the trial has submitted a document with a number 1696-PS, Exhibit No. 357, which is in the English Document Book 14 — will you find that in 14. I will give you the exact page. In the German Document Book it is page 128. I shall find the page in the English Document Book. This document, Mr. President, was submitted only in part by the prosecution. I got a photostatic copy of the original document from the Secretary General; I see from it that the photostatic copy has other pages which the prosecution did not submit and, because these pages were not submitted, I have, by way of precaution, included these pages as a document exhibit in Document Book 3. Pages which were not submitted contain a reference to the ministerial decree of the Reich Ministry of the Interior on 18 August 1939. They contain first of all an information for the official doctor showing that such severely deformed children can be sent to a special asylum; second, that every attempt will be made there to treat these children with all modern means of therapy, and, thirdly, that this may be done only with the approval of the parents.

BY DR. FROESCHMANN:

Q: Doctor, now I will ask you, do you know of such instructions of the Reich Ministry of the Interior, such instructions as I have just described to the Tribunal.

A: Subsequently, after the Reich Committee Station in the children's house was created in the Egelfing-Haar Mental Institution, I learned of these directives, which were not sent to me as head of the institution, which I did not know about, because I was not a government doctor, and I had not been informed that there was any obligation to report such a case.

I don't know why, because I had children who fell under the provisions of this law; but now I refer to a document which I have obtained from the defense counsel, and I have noted it down here. It is in Volume 14,2, pages 88-90, NO-1138/349.

Q: That is NO-1138, Exhibit No. 349 in the German document book 14, volume 2, page 88, and I shall find out later what the page of the English document book is. It is page 151 in the English document book, 151. Go on please, witness.

A: Gentlemen, I think this is an important document. On 1 June 1944 I had transferred a child which from a psychiatric and pediatric point of view fell under the obligations to report on 1 June 1940 to the Institute Schoenbrunn for highly idiotic children, near Munich, for care. Then I was told from Berlin that I was to give the report on this child, on the child's condition. On 1 June 1940 there could not have been any Reich Committee Station, or institution, because I sent this child to Schoenbrunn. In the second place I obviously had no idea when I transferred this child that I had to report it, because I sent it to a mental institution without reporting it, and I was asked to get an opinion on this child. Apparently this child came under the provisions of the law at Schoenbrunn when this institution was registered, and because it was a child, the registration form was forwarded to the corresponding Reich agency. That is my assumption. Of course, I don't know that from my own knowledge.

THE PRESIDENT: Counsel, the witness is not on trial before this Tribunal and I fail to see the relevancy of much of this testimony in regard to the case against the defendant Brack. The witness has been explaining certain documents which apparently reflect on him, but he is not on trial here.

DR. FROESCHMANN: Mr. President, I singled out this case only because in the examination of Brack I shall have to deal with this document as an example of the prosecution's evidence because the prosecution with these documents, including this particular document, intended to prove that all the things in which Brack was concerned which are stated in these documents, were against humanity and are war crimes. Therefore, since this witness can give information about these documents, I have asked him about them. I realize that I must avoid everything that might be a personal defense of the witness. I have nothing to do with that. I am merely commenting on these documents in the course of my defense against Count II of the indictment.

THE PRESIDENT: Counsel may proceed.

BY DR. FROESCHMANN:

Q: Doctor, we'll go on now and come to the questionnaires, very generally, which were introduced under the Reich Committee. Unfortunately, we do not have such a questionnaire in the documents. Can you remember the contents of these questionnaires of the Reich Committee?

A: Yes, I will tell you everything that I can remember. First, the personal data were required of the child, then the hereditary situation. Then it was asked, as far as I can remember, about difficulties at birth.

Q: We don't need to hear all these details. Just a general outline. I understand you correctly, the causes were asked about?

A: Yes, and then the causes of the condition of the child has to be described very carefully and it finally asked whether any measures had been taken — any therapy against the disease — and then; as far as I can remember, it was asked what the child's life expectancy was and whether the child could be expected to take any useful place in society.

Something like that.

Q: These questionnaires, Doctor, were later sent from Berlin to the government doctors with instructions that when such births occurred the questionnaires were to be filled out and sent back to Berlin?

A: Yes.

Q: If I speak of Berlin, I don't know whether you and I understand the same thing. You were talking about Berlin before, what did you mean by that?

A: When I said Berlin I was talking about the Reich Committee. That's the only agency I had anything to do with there, and to complete my answer to the last question I can say that the questionnaire was published in some ministerial journal or some law journal. It was printed there I believe by the Reich Ministry of the Interior. I learned of that only later when the Reich Committee Station already existed in my institute. I think my clerk told me so. At any rate, the duty of midwives to report and doctors, etc., was mentioned.

Q: Another question. In the proceedings before the Reich Committee there were experts working?

A: Yes, I learned of that later.

Q: You knew nothing of it at the time?

A: No, I knew nothing of it at the time. I knew nothing about the method.

Q: And then, I assume, you knew nothing about who decided that a child was to be sent to such a specialized clinic?

A: No, I know nothing about that.

Q: Doctor, I come now to a question which, under German law, would give you the right to refuse an answer.

Mr. President, I should like to ask you to instruct the witness that, in the case of questions which might expose him to prosecution, he may refuse to answer.

THE PRESIDENT: Is the witness now under indictment or charges?

DR. FROESCHMANN: Not that I know of.

THE WITNESS: No, I have received no indictments. I have merely been interrogated.

THE PRESIDENT: The witness is however under restraint.

DR. FROESCHMANN: Yes, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, the witness is instructed that, if in his judgment, to answer any question propounded to him would tend to incriminate him or subject him to indictment, he has the right to refuse to answer the question.

BY DR. FROESCHMANN:

Q: Did you understand that? You have the right, if you are asked a question which might involve you yourself in a trial, to say, "I refuse to answer". You may answer it is you wish.

Now, I ask you — when, later, in your institute a Reich Committee Station was set up, were deformed children sent to this Reich Committee Station?

A: Should you please repeat that?

Q: Is it true that later — 1941 or 1942, I'll leave that time open — in the provincial mental station, there was a so-called Reich Committee Station for these children?

A: Yes.

Q: Who told you about that?

A: That was the result of a discussion in Munich in the Ministry.

Q: Now, did you receive authorization from any source to treat these children according to modern methods of therapy and, if the treatment was completely hopeless, to shorten the life of these children?

A: Yes, that was in the letter of authorization.

Q: From whom did this letter come?

A: As far as I remember, from the Reich Committee.

Q: And the Reich Committee was headed by —

A: (Interrupting) I must tell you I don't know from my own knowledge.

Q: Then you say that you received authorization? It was in writing?

A: Yes, it was in writing, authorizations for every individual case.

Q: You received separate authorizations for each case; that these deformed children — idiots, etc. — were to be treated by the modern methods of therapy and if these cases were hopeless then the life should be shortened? Is that true?

A: Well, it didn't say that the children's lives should be shortened.

MR. HARDY: May it please Your Honors, I object to these leading questions on the part of the defense counsel. It seems to me that the witness is a psychiatrist, he is the chief of a mental institution, and that he is familiar with the euthanasia program and is fully capable of answering the questions without being led in this manner.

DR. FROESCHMANN: Mr. President, I am not aware of having asked any leading questions.

THE PRESIDENT: Counsel may proceed.

BY DR. FROESCHMANN:

Q: Doctor, the last question in this connection. Do you know who, in Berlin, reached these decisions that a child was to be assigned to the Reich Committee Station?

A: I learned later that the questionnaires on children which were received were examined and the medical opinion was expressed on them. Who decided, I don't know.

Q: Then, I shall close this chapter about the Reich Committee for Children with Severe Hereditary Diseases and I come to the second procedure: Euthanasia of the incurably insane.

Q: I should like to ask you first to explain to the Tribunal your fundamental attitude on the question of euthanasia?

A: Gentlemen, I have a positive attitude toward the idea of euthanasia. I am an advocate of the subject of euthanasia. I know the literature on the subject. I have given considerable thought to the problem of euthanasia. I was interested in it already as a medical student. When my father was dying, he suffered severe uremic attacks repeated every few minutes, a terrible sight, not only for myself but for my poor father. The doctor finally shortened my father's life. Later I became an advocate of it as a practicing psychiatrist, after a sight of the misery in the mental institutions and the distress of the mothers and fathers of these children. That is why I looked at euthanasia positively. And I put myself at the disposal of the Reich Work Union when I was called upon. I know the opinion of important German professors and their attitude upon euthanasia, and I personally and seriously accepted the idea.

Q: Doctor, is it true that there are two kinds of euthanasia up to 1939, namely, aid in dying, that is relieving the pain or failure to administer stimulants, and aid to die, that is giving drugs if if was certain that death would occur very shortly, and the terrible death struggle such as you have just described in the case of your father could be shortened?

A: Yes, this distinction was made. I once talked of a major and a minor euthanasia, the minor euthanasia the simpler aid in dying and the major euthanasia which is intended for individuals incapable of living, such as Kretschmer and Hans Jacob and others have advocated.

Q: Doctor, what was done in 1939, if I judge the matter correctly, is considerably different from the type of euthanasia customary up to that time, that is to shorten the lives of the incurably insane who might live for years or decades possibly in this painful condition in as painless a way as possible, is that true?

A: That is true only insofar as those patients, of course, were not in eminent danger of death and were included in the drive of the Reich Working Union, but even these cases could not in any case be expected to live very long.

Nobody can predict that, of course, but I wrote a paper once on the life span of incurably insane people and I proved my statistics that, outside of institutions these cases have a shortened life span. This work was given great attention in Dutch medical circles, and I got a good criticism in a Dutch paper which was sent to me by a Dutch doctor.

Q: Now, doctor, how did it come about that you worked in the so-called euthanasia program, in the general consideration of the procedure within the euthanasia program?

A: One day, I am afraid I don't know the time exactly, I thought it was in 1940, but I can't deny the possibility that it might have been in the early winter or late fall of 1939, I received a registered letter from the Chancellory of the Fuehrer with a request to report in Berlin at the Chancellory of the Fuehrer for a conference, at a certain meeting.

Q: Well, now let me interrupt you; do you know whether the invitation itself came from the Chancellory of the Fuehrer or from the Reich ministry of the Interior in the office of the Chancellory of the Fuehrer?

A: As far as I recall the envelope had a stamp on it "Chancellory of the Fuehrer", and as far as I remember it was signed "Bouhler."

Q: That will be enough, Witness, now what was the subject of the discussion at this meeting?

A: As far as I can remember this meeting, which was a very long time ago, my impression was that the separation of the mental institutions into curable cases and incurable cases. That was my impression at this conference. The transfer of certain patients, to provincial institutions, was discussed. I thought that certain serious cases who could not be treated psychiatrically were to be transferred to special institutions.

Q: Was the word "euthanasia" used?

A: As far as I can remember the word "euthanasia" was not used.

Q: Witness, after this meeting passed, a few weeks later, even longer, were you asked to work as an expert in a procedure judging these insane people?

A: Yes, I was in Berlin repeatedly. I took care of the questionnaires of the patients in my institute on whom questionnaires were drawn up, and then I was called into a meeting in Berlin where as far as I remember I think there were some professors there too, but in any case there were psychiatrists and doctors. I considered that a meeting of expert judges, and we had a discussion and were given directives on judging the questionnaires, and I believe this was beforehand that I was asked to work as an expert judge.

Q: Who was in charge of these conferences, was that Bouhler or Linden?

A: No, I think Linden was there. I think Dr. Brack was there, but I can't say for certain. I don't believe Bouhler was at this conference, maybe only temporarily, I can't say for certain.

Q: Now, what did you do as an expert judge?

A: I received an appointment, a letter from the Reich Ministry of the Interior. I can't say exactly whether it was signed by Linden, but I received a letter in the name of the Reich Work Union, and I don't know how it read, but in any case in the program of the Reich Work Union I was asked to work as an expert judge, and I considered it my duty to do so, because I was in favor of euthanasia.

Q: Now, this work consisted of passing judgment on these questionnaires, is that right?

A: Yes, photostatic copies of them.

DR. FROESCHMANN: Now, these questionnaires, Mr. President, are contained in the German Document Book NO. 825, Exhibit 358, in the German Document Book 14, part 2, page 133.

In the English Document Book, I shall give you the page number this afternoon.

Q: Doctor, do you remember the contents of these questionnaires or shall I show you the document?

A: I would appreciate it if you would give me the document.

THE PRESIDENT: Before going into this matter of the document book, the Tribunal will be in recess until 1:45 this afternoon.

(Thereupon the noon recess was taken.)