1947-07-14, #3: Doctors' Trial (late morning)

Mr. Hochwald continues the Prosecution's closing argument

BY DR. HOCHWALD:

May it please the Tribunal:

This Tribunal is faced with no difficult legal questions as to whether the acts proved in this case constituted crimes. Many of the medical experiments with which this case is concerned have long since been held to have been criminal by a number of different courts, The International Tribunal stated that:

The inmates were subjected to cruel experiments at Dachau in August 1942, victims were immersed in cold water until their body temperature was reduced to 28° Centigrade, when they died immediately. Other experiments included high altitude experiments in pressure chambers, experiments to determine how long human beings could survive in freezing water, experiments with poison bullets, experiments with contagious diseases, and experiments dealing with sterilization, of men and women by X-rays and other methods.

The International Military Tribunal held that the foregoing experiments constituted War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity.

In the case against Erhard Milch, recently concluded before Military Tribunal No. II, the high altitude and freezing experiments performed at Dachau were adjudged to be crimes. Similarly, in U.S. vs. Weiss at al., tried before a Military Commission in Dachau, a large number of Dachau concentration camp officials were found guilty on proof including the high altitude, freezing, malaria, sepsis, and seawater experiments. Dr. Claus Schilling was sentenced to death for his part in the malaria experiments. In a recent case in the British Zone concerning atrocities committed in the Ravensbruck Concentration Camp, Scheidlausky, Rosenthal, and Treite, who were camp doctors in Ravensbruck, were all tried and sentenced to death, in part on the basis of evidence of the sulfanilamide and bone, muscle, and nerve regeneration experiments which were performed by the defendants Gebhardt, Fischer and Oberheuser.

The law with respect to the criminality of the so-called euthanasia program in the Third Reich is equally clear. This Tribunal is not called upon to define with juridical nicety what a state may lawfully legislate with respect to euthanasia. The Prosecution asks only that this Tribunal find, as other Tribunals have already held, that there was no valid law in the Third Reich permitting euthanasia and that the execution of persons under the guise of euthanasia, with the connivance and assistance of the defendants Karl Brandt, Brack, Blome and Hoven, constituted the crime of murder and was a War Crime and Crime Against Humanity. Again, the foremost authority on the legality of euthanasia as practiced under the Nazis is in the Judgment of the International Military Tribunal. It was there held that:

During the war nursing homes, hospitals, and asylums in which euthanasia was practiced as described elsewhere in this judgment, came under Fricks jurisdiction. He had knowledge that insane, sick, and aged people, 'useless eaters', were being systematically put to death. Complaint of these murders reached him but he did nothing to stop them. A report of the Czechoslovak War Crimes Commission estimated that 275,000 mentally deficient and aged people, for whose welfare he was responsible, fell victim to it.

This finding draws no distinction between German nationals executed under the program and non-German nationals.

These executions are described with the word "murder" and constitute War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity under the Charter and Control Council Law No. 10. This was one of the principle crimes which led to the judgment or guilty and the sentence of death against Frick. How much greater is the guilt of the defendant Karl Brandt.

The review of the Deputy Theater Judge Advocate in the case of the U.S. vs. Klein, Wahlman, et al., held at Wiesbaden, Germany from 8 through 15 October 1945, is a clear precedent that the execution of non-German nationals pursuant to the euthanasia program constituted the crime murder. Since the end of the war, German and Austrian courts have repeatedly held that the killing of persons of any nationality under the guise of euthanasia was in violation of German Criminal Code and punishable as murder. It is interesting to note that in a case before the District Court for Criminal Cases in Vienna in July 1946, Dr. Ernst Illing, who was charged with putting to death children under the euthanasia program, testified that he was called up by Hefelmann, one of the subordinates of the defendant Brack, and given a letter signed by Adolf Hitler according to which the defendant Karl Brandt was given the task of putting into effect and working out administrative regulations for the killing of incurable idiotic children. Illing stated that after examination and decision by a scientific medical committee, Dr. Brandt, or the deputy designated by him, would give the order in each individual case. Illing was found guilty as charged and sentenced to death by hanging.

The Court of Assizes in Berlin, in the session on 25 March 1946, found the defendants Hilde Wernicke and Helene Wieczorek guilty of murder and sentenced them to death for their activities in the euthanasia program. The Court of Appeals in the same case rejected the appeals of both defendants. The court stated that,

It cannot be mistaken that the defendants Wernicke and Wieczorek are only the last links of a long chain, and that they were preceded by persons whose guilt is still greater.

In Karl Brandt and Victor Brack we have in this dock the first and third links in that long chain. The second link, Mr. Bouhler, has found his salvation in self destruction with a time bomb. Not far behind in this chain of organized mass murder was the defendant Blome and while Hoven may not have sat among the leaders, he was more tangibly rewarded by way of bribes as the paid killer of Buchenwald.

Defenses Time does not permit a detailed analysis of the proof against these defendants.

The Prosecution is filing with the Tribunal briefs against each of the defendants, and I shall therefore restrict myself to a few observations about the common defenses and a number of the more interesting specific defenses.

The defense evidence comes from three main sources — affidavits, witnesses, and testimony of the defendants. The overwhelming bulk of the defense documents consists of affidavits. These, for the most part, are affidavits as to character, which are replete with such statements as:

I cannot imagine that he approved or even knew of the 'scientific' experiments which scorn all humanity and all medical ethics.

Then there was a great flood of affidavits swapped around among the defendants themselves, which usually take the form of saying, in effect, "I didn't mean what I said about you before the trial began." There is scarcely a defendant in the dock who was not the grateful beneficiary of a few kind words from that resistance worker Sievers. This reached the extreme when several defendants submitted affidavits in their own behalf.

When one sifts through this mountain of affidavits, a small residue is finally reached which bears, to a greater or lesser degree, upon the ultimate facts in issue. These we find are, in the most part, sworn to by parties to the very crimes which they seek to explain away. Among them, to name a few, are statements by Miss Crodel, assistant to Haagen in the Natzweiler typhus experiments; Blemenreuter, chief of the office for Chemical and Pharmaceutical Service under Genzken and supplier of equipment for a number of experiments, including the sulfanilamide and freezing crimes; Cremer, Chief of the Medical School for Mountain Troops at St. Johann under Handloser, and a collaborator with Rascher; and Vonkennel, chief of the Experimental Department V in Leipzig and a collaborator of Poppendick in the Buchenwald typhus experiments. Such affidavits lack any credibility whatever.

Vonkennel, to give a specific case, solemnly assured us in his sworn statement that his Research Department V:

never had anything to do with the hormone experiments of Dr. Vaernet, with typhus, or with experiments concerning burns.

However, in a letter from Poppendick to Mrugowsky, which was submitted by the Prosecution after Herr Vonkennel's affidavit, he requested that a drug developed by Vonkennel be tested as to its therapeutical effect on typhus in the experimental, station in Buchenwald and concluded his letter by stating that:

Professor Dr. Vonkennel considers it very advisable that Dr. Ding should call on him in his clinic in Leipzig for the purpose of discussing this rather different therapy. The necessity for absolute secrecy is stressed to all institutions concerned.

I need not remind the Tribunal that the drug was in fact sent to Buchenwald for testing in the criminal typhus experiments.

Then there are the affidavits which attempt to explain away this or that document which shows the crime on its very face, Schroeder and Becker-Freyseng, finding themselves in this embarrassing dilemma with respect to the report on the seawater conference of 19 and 20 May 1944, obtained from the obliging Christensen, who signed the damning report, an answer to their figurative appeal to "say it ain't so". Christensen in his sworn statement said, in effect, that the report was drawn up from memory several days after the event by his assistant Schickler, who was really a pretty stupid fellow anyway and was not apt to understand or remember much which went on in the meeting, that although he (Christensen) signed the report he didn't read it, and in any event Schroeder's office called him after their receipt of the report and pointed out numerous, but unspecified, mistakes, and that he didn't change the report because it was superseded by a latter meeting.

Yes, it was all sweetness and light, if one finds if possible to believe the statements of these parties to the crimes.

What has been said with respect to the defense affidavits is also true of the defense witnesses. Those few who were in a position to know what they were talking about were testifying as much for themselves as for the defendants. It is patently impossible to deal with the testimony of all those witnesses, but one may take Bernhardt Schmidt and Eugene Haagon as typical cases. The Ding Diary on the typhus experiments in Buchenwald proves that on 8 February 1943; Dr. Eyer of the Typhus and Virus Institute of the OKH in Cracow, which was subordinated to Handloser, and Dr. Schmidt, a hygienist attached to Handloser's staff, inspected the typhus experimental station. This entry in the Ding Diary was corroborated by the work report of the Typhus and Virus Institute of the Waffen SS in Buchenwald for the year 1943. Schmidt was called as a witness for the defendant Handloser and testified that he and Eyer made the long trip to Buchenwald for the very important purpose of demonstrating to certain SS doctors, whom he could not name, how a glass container of yellow fever vaccine should be broken open. Although Eyer and Schmidt were very much interested in typhus problems, and although there was a typhus experiment in progress in Buchenwald on the very day they were there, Dr. Schmidt asks the Tribunal to credit his testimony that they knew nothing of that. Even the defendant Rose found Dr. Schmidt's testimony somewhat hard to accept. He said:

Berhardt Schmidt's testimony is clear proof to me what sort of nonsense a witness can say when he is under the pressure of fear and is afraid he will express himself to publicity and to the public eye by his testimony.

Eugene Haagen, who was called principally on behalf of Schroeder, Rose and Becker-Freyseng, to explain his typhus experiments in Schirmock and Buchenwald, told an equally incredible story.

He carried out vaccinations in these concentration camps only because the camp commander feared an epidemic and Haagen wished to do what he could to avoid this danger.

Although there was insufficient typhus vaccines in Germany to vaccinate all personnel especially exposed to the disease, Haagen showed admirable concern for the concentration camp inmates. He affirmed to the Tribunal time and again that he carried out no vaccinations in Schirmeck after May 1943 and in Natzweiler after February 1944. He testified that the Prosecution witness Hirtz perjured himself when he said that two of the inmates used by Haagen as experimental subjects in Schmirmeck in the Summer of 1943 died. Haagen was squarely impeached on these and other significant points by the notes on his own typhus experiments, which he identified as having been written by Miss Crodel, his trusted assistant for many years. The entry for 6 July in these notes proves that on that day Haagen was in Schirmeck for the purpose of withdrawing blood from ten inmates who had been used to test a new living typhus vaccine. The entry gives the serum titer value of 8 of the experimental subjects, and is concluded with the laconic note:

the other two were not here any more.

Thus, it would seem to even the most critical observer that the testimony of Hirtz, who personally sewed up the bodies of these two inmates in paper bags and delivered them for cremation, is somewhat more reliable than that of Haagen. The Crodel notes show that not only did Haagen conduct experiments in Schirmeck after May 1943, but that he was still doing so as late as January 1944. With respect to the criminal experiments in Natzweiler which he swore were finished in February 1944, the entry for 25 May 1944 states that 30 persons were inoculated in Natzweiler:

during the incubation period (a transport containing also sick people) 13 became sick in the period from 29 May to 9 June, of these 2 died.

Insufficient time is available to give the perjurious testimony of Haagen the attention it so richly deserves. But I think it fair to say by way of summary that substantially the only truthful answer he gave to questions propounded both by the defense and prosecution was when my distinguished opponent, Dr. Tipp, opened the examination by saying:

Your name is Dr. Eugene Haagen. You were born on the 17 June 1898 in Berlin. At present you are a prisoner in the court prison in Nurnberg. You are a doctor of medicine by profession and your specialty is hygiene and bacteriology—

to which the witness responded:

Yes, that is correct.

That other great source of defense proof — the testimony of the defendants themselves — must also be described, if one wishes to be charitable, as not above reproach. How many times have the defendants said, "I have heard of that for the first time here in Nurnberg." This propensity for perjury on the part of the defendants was typified by the "highest Reich authority" in the medical services, Karl Brandt. Under questioning during cross-examination as to his connection with the phosgene gas experiments performed by Otto Bickenbach, Brandt testified that this research came to his attention in the fall of 1943 on the occasion of a visit to Strasbourg to see a cyclotron; that later he helped Bickenbach to obtain a laboratory for his work; that he assisted him in obtaining experimental animals even to the extent of having them flown from Spain; that Bickenbach did not conduct experiments on human beings; that he helped him in 1944 after the laboratory had been established in the vicinity of Strasbourg. The defendant Rostock was with Brandt when he saw Bickenbach in 1943 and later classified his research as "urgent". The Sievers Diary for 1944 proves that Bickenbach was performing his work under the control of Brandt. The entry for 2 February states that:

met Prof. Bickenbach in Karlsruhe, and he advises that he has put his research work under the control of General Commissioner Prof. Dr. Brandt.

Brandt admitted that he was in Natzweiler with Bickenbach but insisted that, strangely enough, only animal experiments were conducted in this concentration camp.

Evidence submitted by the Prosecution following this cross-examination proved beyond controversy that Brandt was advised of the details of Bickenbach's criminal experiments on Russian prisoners of war and that, indeed, this research was carried out with his support.

An affidavit from Bickenbach himself states that he discussed the necessity of carrying out phosgene gas experiments on human beings with Brandt before they were performed and that Brandt later advised him that the experiments had to be executed.

The Reports by Bickenbach on his experiments were all addressed to Brandt as Commissioned General of the Health and Medical Services. They show on their face that the experiments were performed on forty Russian prisoners of war and that four were killed as a result.

The defendant Gebhardt, who figuratively beat his chest and loudly proclaimed his willingness to tell the full truth, was not above false testimony on his own behalf as well as a few gratuitous perjuries for his colleagues Genzken and Mrugowsky, among others. Gebhardt, while assuming responsibility for the sulfanilamide experiments on Polish women in the Ravensbruck Concentration Camp. attempted to dissociate himself from the vivisections performed in the course of the bone, muscle, and nerve experiments. He testified that his sulfanilamide experiments were completed by December 1942 and he had no further connection with experimental work in Ravensbruck. The affidavit of Fritz Suhren, Camp Commander of Ravensbruck, squarely contradicts Gebhardt in that regard. He stated that in the beginning of 1943 he contacted Gruppenfuehrer Mueller of the RSHA to have the experiments stopped because, among other reasons, they could not be kept secret, and that Mueller agreed. A short time later an assistant of Gebhardt's requested additional women for experimental purposes which Suhren refused. That same evening Gebhardt reprimanded Suhren and threatened to submit the matter to the Reichsfuehrer. Sometime later Suhren was forced to go to Hohenlychen and apologize to Gebhardt, as he puts it "in a very humiliating way". He was ordered to make three additional women available for Gebhardt's experiments. No one who has had occasion to observe Gebhardt's vain and overbearing manner in this courtroom can doubt the truth of Suhren's statements.

In his zealousness to protect his fellow defendants and heap all the guilt on Grawitz, Gebhardt testified that neither the Hygiene Institute of the Waffen SS nor the defendant Mrugowsky, who at that time was subordinated to Genzken, played any part in the sulfanilamide experiments, and that the infection material was sent to him by Grawitz.

Genzken and Mrugowsky, needless to say, ardently supported Gebhardt on this point. A preliminary report by Gebhardt on these experiments, certified as a true copy by Grawitz's assistant Poppendick, proves precisely the contrary. It states that:

SS Oberfuehrer Dr. Blumenreuter put the complete surgical instrumentations and medications at my disposal. SS Standartenfuehrer Mrugowsky put his laboratory and co-workers at my disposal.

The report also states that:

Since in this experiment too a definite gangrene could be produced clinically speaking, yet its picture did not in any way correspond to the one known in war-surgery, after further consultation with the collaborators in the Hygiene Institute of the Waffen SS the vaccine was changed by adding wood shavings.

CAPTAIN HOCHWALD: The Prosecution requests an adjournment for noon recess at this time to permit the interpreters to complete the translation of the documents.

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will now be in recess until 1:30 o'clock.

(A recess was taken until 1330 hours.)