1947-07-19, #6: Doctors' Trial (Karl Genzken's personal statement)

THE PRESIDENT: The defendant Genzken.

DEFENDANT GENZKEN: During my testimony I stated before the Tribunal that I took no part in the types of experiments of which I was accused. I have nothing to add to what my defense counsel Dr. Merkel has said. For the duration of a human life I have striven to live decently, as a doctor and as a soldier.

If my fatherly concern for my 2,500 doctor and 30,000 medical men was attacked here in this courtroom, then it is nevertheless my duty to speak from this place on behalf of those men who, in the majority, were decent and brave doctors and medical men.

THE PRESIDENT: Please speak a little slower, the interpreters have difficulty in translating.

DEFENDANT GENZKEN: I am proud to have been their leader, a leader of those who sacrificed their lives and blood with unceasing effort to help me in building up the organization of the Medical Section of the Waffen SS, and who suffered tremendous losses from the ranks of our comrades at the fronts.

The soldiers of the Waffen SS have proven historically, in the focal points of uncounted battles during an uneven struggle, that they were able to meet the best equipped troops on this earth as far as training, efficiency, readiness of sacrifice, soldierly valor, and contempt of death were concerned. Actions of modern warfare presented a picture, partly, of murder and horror, and, I say, on either side. Who wants to raise his head before God and gainsay it?

We, the men of the Waffen SS, went into captivity out of anguish, out of unheard physical and mental war distress. That captivity was not free of bloodshed, ill treatment and dishonor of various kinds. To the men of the Waffen SS there was added to the weight of such captivity the frightful realization of the fact that their supreme commander, Himmler, had misused their cloak of honor and deceived them, that they had been cheated and then deserted by him. These decent men of the Waffen SS certainly did not deserve that fate, the fate of being branded members of a criminal organization.

My request and my wish is that our former opponents should realize the true idealism of these victims, do justice to it, and give them back the true belief in justice.