1947-07-19, #21: Doctors' Trial (Wilhelm Beiglboeck's personal statement)
THE PRESIDENT: The defendant Beiglboeck.
DEFENDANT BEIGLBOECK: May it please the Tribunal, the experiments which I conducted, I did not carry out on my own initiative, neither according to the plans of my own, nor spontaneously, but the medical part was played, with the knowledge and approval of my clinical teacher for more than ten years, I was a disciple of Eppinger.
During those ton years I had come to know and respect his ways of thought and his superior knowledge. My relations to him were based on personal gratitude and awe-inspired devotion. If there was anything which he considered right and important, then for psychological reasons alone, it would be imperative for me to share his belief.
The experiments were to solve the problem of saving human life and that had to be approved. It was a military order which compelled my to carry them out in the atmosphere of a concentration camp. I objected against that, but I was not successful. So we had to carry it out in the concentration camp.
May it please the Tribunal, in your evaluation of this fact, please do not fail to consider that this did not happen in times of peace, nor in a country which granted its citizens individual freedom of decision in all matters, personal and professional, but during the bitter days of a most horrible war. What I carried out, I did in accordance with a plan previously determined and specified. If I had to require of my experimental subjects to undergo hardships and they suffered from thirst with all of its unpleasant sensations, those physical and mental characteristics, I did that in the nature of the experiments and this could not be avoided. I have not, however, done this without informing myself first by an experiment on my own system how it felt what I expected them to undergo, nor did I expect it of anyone else, unless I was firmly convinced that he undertook it voluntarily. It is not true to say that I might have forced anybody to do it, neither psychologically, nor by reprisals raised by threat, or force of arms.
Many eye witnesses have agreed that my conduct was never brutal on anyone of the experimental subjects under my care. Among these witnesses are even some who were brought here to testify against me.
At last, in the final stage of this trial, one experimental subject could be found who thought it appropriate to introduce — a dramatic note in an atmosphere artificially created. Based on a layman's interpretation of indeed harmless medical procedures, combined with the uncertain recollection emotionally presented by more or loss distorting and misconstruing my motives the attempt was made to lend an impression to my experiments and the part I played in them.
In contradiction to that a defense document was offered be others who came from outside the concentration camp and who preserved their objectivity which reveals that my behavior in the medical sense, as well as from the human point of view was correct, to say the least. By my experiments, no human life was sacrificed, nor did they result in any lasting damage to their health. I also believe, that I have presented proof that I intervened for the inmates, as far as that was within my power and that I did not consider experimental subjects as individuals of an inferior type whom I could well afford to ill treat, for idealogical reasons, as has been charged.
For over 15 years as a physician I always felt the strongest responsibility for those entrusted to my care. Thousands who were my patients will confirm it. My assistants and colleagues have testified to it. At no time was my conduct other than that of humaneness, that of a physician. The experiments as they were actually conducted have never gone beyond that which can be justified by the physician.
I consider myself as a physician and a human being free of guilt.