This first experimental series was only slightly effective. It was ascertained that the way in which we were innoculating the bacteria culture which we were doing very carefully was not satisfactory and resulted in something which we surgeons would call primary healing. In all fifteen cases the convalescence took place only with slight delay. There were no untreated persons in the experimental series.
Q Was there no subsequent damage as a result of these experiments or permanent damage in these patients?
A No, as I said it was something which we called delayed primary recovery. I checked their bandages until the conclusion of the experiment and was assured that no one suffered any further consequences of it above the scar which resulted.
Q How was Professor Gebhardt informed of the course of these experiments if he himself was not present at them?
A So far as Professor Gebhardt was not himself at Ravensbrueck, he was informed by me in the evening after the bandages had been checked in the clinic. Our clinic was very strictly organized. Every morning at 7:30 we turned in reports on all patients who had a temperature above 37.5 centigrade, and then in the evening at seven o'clock we reported personally on those patients whose case was somewhat more serious. In the course of these reports on the various patients in the surgical department, the ambulance departments and so on, I also mentioned to Gebhardt the patients from Ravensbrueck as to their general state and their temperature.
Q Please describe to the court the course of a normal visit which you paid to see the experiments in Ravensbrueck?
A Preceding such a visit was a telephonic announcement. I then rode over to Ravensbrueck and drew up before the large Commandatur building and reported there to the resident physician. This was really outside the camp itself. The resident physician then went with me into the camp. Once one had gone through the gates one entered a large court yard about 100 meters square, and to this the camp street lead. One of the barracks in the immediate vicinity of the gate was the barrack of the camp hospital, namely the operation al building. I crossed this court yard and together with the resident physician I entered this first barrack. This was a wooden building with a cement or stone foundation, which gave one a good impression so far as it was constructed. There were two large operational theatres in this building, one for septic and one for asceptic operations, and as I recall, one or two small offices there, and then a room in which medical mechanical treatment could be carried out, namely, treatment for broken arms, and a heat treatment, and then there was a special x-ray room, and then a drug room and a bath.
When I came there, the visits to the building were rather few in number. I brought various equipment with me from Hohenlychen, and then the experimental patients were taken to the experimental location on portable conveyances, either in chairs or being carried. Initially they went on foot, but since we had patients brought in Hohenlychen I had asked the resident physician to make the arrangement I have just described. Then the bandage changing, which I then did, I carried on in the same way I would have in our clinic at Hohenlychen. I must state that because of the great amount of work we had at Hohenlychen I could only take care of this dressing between two and four in the afternoon, and when I got there I came directly from the sick beds of the patients in Hohenlychen, and I acted in the case of these Ravensbrueck patients exactly as I would have acted at Hohenlychen. I was assisted by prisoner nurses, who gave me the materials I needed, the change of dressings was carried out under anesthesia, and if the process of changing the dressings promised to be painful, it was carried out when the person was under complete anesthesia. I always tried to be as considerate of the experimental subject as I would have been of a private patient And I came from a clinical private hospital environment and returned to it: before 2 p.m. and after four o'clock. When I returned, I was again attending to our patients at Hohenlychen.
Q That impression did this camp hospital in its external organization make on you? Was it clean?
A I can only make statements about the buildings and the equipment. I must also state that my arrival was announced before hand always. When I got there I saw a hospital situation which seemed very clean to me, such as one might find in a medium range hospital. The cleanliness was perfectly satisfact ory. I also happened to know that the question of sanitation is not too great a problem there because there are so many persons around who can carry out sanitation measures.
Q You then cane to the experiments on female Polish prisoners?
A In my description of the first experimental series I said that the effectiveness of these medicants could not be effectively tested because there was no difference between the case history of those treated with sulfona mides and those who were not treated with sulfonamide. For this reason, Professor Gebhardt ordered that the inflammation should be intensified, so that the local inflammation would be brought about which would permit these preparations to be tested. I went back to Ravensbrueck and found out from the president physician there that female prisoners had been prepared for these experiments. I had always previously seen the patients under narcosis only because I first had to sterilize my hands, and by the time I got there the patients had been already anesthesized. When I was told this by the resident physician I did not operate, but went back to Hohenlychen and reported to Professor Gebhardt, who was then in station I as a patient. I described the situation to him and asked him to free me from the necessity of carrying out these experiments. He also was greatly impressed, because as I knew he also was spiritually opposed to this experimentation, and he told me that he would take care to clear up this matter. A period of about two weeks then elapsed before I was called to him, and in the meantime he had recovered from his sickness and had gone to the headquarters and returned; and he told me he had spoken of this matter with the competent quarters, and that the experiments were to be continued, and that he was passing on this order to me. That it had been decided that female prisoner were to be used for the experiments, particularly in consideration of the fact that the experiments would probably not be dangerous to life. I was then told that Reichsarzt Grawitz was to visit this next experimental series, which was considered to be the final one, and that for this reason I should begin immediately. Therefore, on the same day I went over to Ravensbrueck and began with the next experimental series.
Q What was told you with regard to these Polish female prisoners? Were you told they had been condemned to death and were to be executed?
A Yes, I was told that they were female Polish prisoners who were about to be executed. Professor Gebhardt also told me that, because of the fact that experiments with male prisoners had been so harmless, this had females that had been condemned to death and wanted to give these prisoners the chance to save their lives by experimenting on them rather than on males.
Q You heard Professor Gebhardt's testimony regarding experiments on the second group of subjects, namely, this group of 36 women. Do you have anything to add to that description?
A No. My experiences with this second group of thirty-six was exactly what Professor Gebhardt described. This group was broken down in three series of twelve which were to be compared, one with the other. Among every twelve patient subjects, two were not treated with sulfonamide, and the other ten received sulfonamide after the inoculation, although in a varying scheme. There was one thing in common with all three groups, namely inflammation did not result in all cases when sulfonamide was injected into the wound at the same time as the bacteria. In the other cases on the other hand local inflammation arose, roughly the size of a boil as large as a walnut. In other words an inflammation that was altogether localized and which did not in any way endanger the whole organism; and, as I said, the only difference in these experiments was that there were some of there namely the six that received sulfonamide immediately with the bacteria culture, in which cases no inflammation resulted.
Q You heard Professor Gebhardt's testimony regarding Dr. Grawitz's visit to Ravensbruck in September 1942. Do you have anything to say in supplement to that?
A No. Professor Gebhardt described it clearly. Regarding the conversations that took place between Gebhardt and Grawitz, I am, of course, not informed. They were private conversations. I knew only that Dr. Grawitz was very intemperate, and expressed the opinion that these experiments were providing no answer to problem as he understood it, and were providing no answer to the question of the effectiveness of sulfonamide, especially the effect of katexyn and marphanil in the case of gas gangrene. I knew that he demanded that wounds should be treated that resembled war wounds, and that he gave directions these wounds were to be created by means of a shot.
Q What do you have to say about the third experiments series come about, with the two by twelve experimental patients
A On tho evening of Grawitz's visit I spoke with Professor Gebhardt in the evening conference. Even at that time he was determined not to do any wounding through shooting. He was considering how this question regarding the effectiveness of the medicine could be solved a general state of illness and in particular through anearobian infection. He told me a few days later that he had decided to test this effectiveness through changing the course or manner of tho experiments, namely, that t* anairobia should be tested in a part of tissue that was poorly irrigated by blood. I was then told to test tho effectiveness of anairobia in such poorly irrigated tissue, namely, on a tying of of certain muscles in order to keep this tissue isolated from the rest of the tissue of the body. These partly segregated muscles, were then examined under a microscope, and we found in the center of them a change that resulted from the reduction in irrigation and supply of oxygen. Now, subsequently to the first experiments we now planned experiments on two groups of twelve - which were to test these new ideas. The course then took place as Professor Gebhardt described.
Q You have heard various witnesses here, on whom experimen were carried out, and who show the damage that had been done on them. A Are these damages to be traced back to the experiments themselves, or are they the result of therapeutic means that word taken surgically to reduce inflammation and to save the life of the patient?
A I must say to that the following: In this third group, consisting of a total of twenty-four experimental subjects, there were serious inflammations; but then not all twenty-four were inflicted with these serious inflammations. No inflammation resulted in the four who received bacteria in association with t* medicine and, as I remember, tho inflammation in the case of the eight more was relatively unimportant. Again inflammation was the size of a boil the size of a walnut.
In the other twelve, however, the inflammation was more intense and in them there was a true picture of gas gangrene, or, at least, a very intense inflammation. From these who had been isolatedly inoculated, three died because the inflammation spread in such a way as to make it impossible for us to control it surgically. We had hoped through giving them rest and through preventive splitting of tissue, and by standing always on hand to control the infection, but the results were the same as in clinics frequently, namely tho inflammation spread so rapidly that, in the case of the three perso* experimented on, unavailing in saving their lives. In other case on the other hand, from this group of twelve we succeeded, to be sure, only through repeated opening of the tissue, and because we followed regular orthodox procedure with the point of view the most important thing was saving the patient's life; and the next most important point was the preservation of the person's ability to move his member, and only in third order did we consid the cosmetic considerations, namely what the patient would look like.
Q. How did this third experimental series terminate?
A Let me add that we also carried out blood transfusions a* serum therapy, and in all cases after the inflammation spread we used sulfonamide. The series was terminated in this way: Professor Gebhardt had seen all these serious cases, had taken them under his immediate care. We had, through observation in the clinical course of the experiments, answered the cardinal question and had discovered that sulfonamides were not able to combat as a preventive such bacterial wound infections. For in the cases in which bacteria and sulfonamide had been injected into the wound simultaneously, this condition was an artificial one and would n* have happened in actuality, because surgically inflicted wounds have smooth, edges and there is no destruction of tissue around t* wound.
For this reason it was possible in our experiments to have this therapeutic effect. However, actual was wounds are much different - the tissue is crushed, and so on. Thus the results could not be transferred to military medicine. Professor Gebhardt was greatly upset, that contrary to our expectations that persons had died, and we were of the opinion that this question,no matter how responsible we felt toward military medicine, regarding the preventive effectiveness of sulfonamide would have to be answered in the negative.
Q You said that the experiment did not produce the expected results. But was not this result positive in the sense that, at least, it was a clarification of the question?
A Professors Brandt and Rostock have already testified here that clinical observations in medicine unfortunately do not always result in positive and useful conclusions, but that it is often the fate of the experimenter that the results he wishes to achieve are not attained, but that his negative discoveries contribute to medicine. We had demonstrated that the newest methods, even in their latest forms, were not able to control wound infections. In other words, that they could not be used as a preventive, and this was of great importance to the front line physician, because henceforth no physician could hope to conquer such wounds easily through sulfonamide, still hoping that they might, in some way, be effective, and thus hoping that he would be freed from the obligation to operate surgically.
Q Were the orders for these experiments drawn up by you, or were they given to you?
A I neither took part in the initiative in these experiments nor did I take part in drawing up the orders for these experiments. They were given to me.
Q The witness Broil-Pluter testified that in the choice of the experimental persons you participated, and that she had seen you choosing them. What do you have to say to that?
A The witness is in error. I never took part in the choice of the experimental subjects. I believe she must have confused me with someone else because she also said that she had seen me in the company of the commander and other officers of the camp in front of the prisoners' block. However, I never visited the prisoners' block and I met the commander only once in the company of Professor Gebhardt when the experiments were just beginning.
Q You carried out the changes of dressing in Ravensbruck. Did you also speak with the experimental persons?
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A Yes, I did change their wound dressings, and I have already described how this took place. I also spoke at that time with the experimental subjects. There was, of course, the language difficulty but, nevertheless, we did exchange words rather frequently. I was very sorry for the experimental subjects. Above all, because they were not free; and I found myself in an uncomfortable position because I had the feeling that I had done them harm. I do not wish to minimize in any way the pain that they must have felt. They certainly were in pain. As much pain as one has with an inflammatory disease; but whatever I could do to mitigate this pain I did, both as a human being and as a physician. At leaser, I attempted to. In changing these dressings and speaking to them briefly, I never had the impression that these were experimental persons who had been forced to participate in the experiments as has been stated here. The relations that I had with these persons were not essentially different from the relations that any physician has with his patients.
Q What was Dr. Oberheuser's position in connection with these experiments?
A I had not known Dr. Oberheuser previously to this. I saw her for the first time in Ravensbruck camp. She was really in the background there. I cannot recall precisely when it was, but at a later time she came to my attention. I knew of her - that she was in charge of the station, in which the experimental persons were kept after the operation and during their convalescence. Really, she had nothing to do with these experiments in the real sense of the word. She took no active part in them, but when the experimental persons came to the dressing station she accompanied them, and so far as I am informed, previously examined the experimental subjects who had been chosen for the experiments by authorities in Camp and the RSHA.
She told me in individual cases about these patients; that there were no objections on the basis of her physical examinations of these persons to their receiving an anesthesia, but this she was commanded to do by the resident physician and over and above that she did nothing that served these experiments in any way. She simply accompanied these patients to the dressing station, acted as a nurse during the changes of dressing, if I asked her to, and did various assistance of one sort or another during the innoculations, but it was of a completely subordinate nature such as holding the leg still or something of that sort. However, in the actual carrying out of the experiments she participated in no way. I had, in general, the impression that the experimental subjects liked it if Professor Oberheuser was present at the change of dressing, and it was a clinical rule of ours that we carried out a change of dressing on women always in the presence of other women, or another woman, and, for this reason also, it was pleasing to me that Dr. Oberheuser should be there playing an altogether passive role. She did not play an active role ever.
Q Did Dr. Oberheuser have anything to do with the choice of the experimental subjects so far as you can judge?
A So far as I can judge, no part whatsoever. She simply told me that she had given a physical examination, an X-ray to the persons chosen for the experiments. She had seen to it that they were bathed; that their temperatures were taken before; that the legs were shaved, and the other jobs that fall to a nurse, but she took no part in the choice of the experimental subjects beyo* this, as far as I know.
Q Did you have the impression that Fraulein Dr. Oberheuser had a scientific interest in the experiments herself? Let me add that she is a specialist in venereal diseases.
A No, I never had the impression that she had a scientific interest in the experiments. She simply took part in them to the extent that she did it because the experimental persons belonged to the station of which she was in charge, and had to take care of them because of that. The therapeutical care of the venereal problems in the camp, which was her field, had, of course, nothing to do with these experiments.
Q Did any of the experimental persons complain to you about Dr. Oberhauser?
A No, that never happened. I have already mentioned that, on the contrary, I had the impression that the experimental subjects were happier to have Dr. Oberhauser present than the camp physicians. I had the impression that Dr. Oberhauser had a human contact with the prisoners in the camp, in the same way that a woman can speak more openly with a woman.
Q Did Fraulein Oberhauser have anything to do with the scientific evaluation of the results of the experiments?
A No, she had nothing to do with this either. That was a matter which professor Gebhardt and I carried out alone. She did not take part in it, nor was she asked to by us.
Q Did she, in May of 1943, take part in the conference in which these sulfonamide preparations were reported on?
A No, she did not take part in it. That was a Wehrmacht matter, and she had nothing to do with it.
Q Did you yourself have any personal relations with the doctors in Ravensbrueck Concentration Camp, or with the other personnel there?
A No, no relations at all. I worked and lived entirely within the circle of Hohenlychen, and it was not a pleasant task for me to go over to Ravensbrueck. At Hohenlychen I had the same tasks I had had previous to when any of the experiments started-- ambulant patients and so on, and only between 2:00 and 4:00 in the afternoon, namely the time when there was a pause in our clinical work, did I have time to go over to Ravensbrueck. I have already stated that I was always announced beforehand. I simply changed the dressings, as ordered, and then returned immediately to Hohenlychen and to our clinic. I never had any personal touch with the personnel or the doctors at Ravensbrueck.
Q I come now to the Prosecution's point that concerns itself with the experiments regarding bones muscle and nerve regeneration and transplantation of bones. Did you carry out these or similar experiments?
A No, I did not carry out such experiments. So far as such experiments were carried out, they were carried out by Dr. Stumpfegger, and I shall speak later of the way in which I assisted him.
Q Did you know Dr. Stumpfegger personally, and what was his position at that time?
A Yes, I did know him. When I went to Hohenlychen in 1940, Dr. Stumpfegger was Chief Physician of the Clinic (Oberarzt), and had been so in peace time. He was considered one of the most skillful operators there. He was a very active and inconceivably industrious person. Then in the year 1941 he went to the front. I also know that his home town was the same as Himmler's, and that he was a very good friend of Himmler. The relations with Himmler were, as I heard, particularly characterized by the fact that he had become very early a member of the Youth Organization, that Himmler led, and that for various reasons Himmler thought very ell of him and promoted his career. Since 1940 Stumpfegger's contact with the clinic was loose and became looser as time went on.
Q Did you know about his experiments exactly?
A No, I did not know of them precisely. I was present when after Stumpfegger returned from headquarters, Gebhardt called several of us together and told us that Stumpfegger had been commissioned with a job in Ravensbrueck by Himmler, and he told me that it was Stumpfegger's wish that I assist him. I always made efforts at that time to avoid being an assistant, and since it was Stumpfegger's inclination to do all this work alone, I succeeded in this case. We went over a couple of times in the same car, and while I was changing dressings in one room, Stumpfegger was carrying out his operations in the other operation room, the aseptic room.
I knew only that he was dealing with the so-called osteogenic substance; he was attempting to prove that it existed in human tissue. I did not concern myself with his experiments further. It did happen at times when he was operating in one room and I was changing dressings in the other, that he asked me, via the camp physician or someone else, to come over to help him put on a plaster cast. Putting on this plaster cast took place after the operation, while he was carrying out a second operation, and took place in the plaster cast room, which was adjacent to the wound dressing room. I then did put on plaster casts on his patients, as he requested. I should mention that putting on plaster casts demands a special technique, if they are to fit well, and that we at Hohenlychen were of the opinion that we were particularly competent in this technique. I assume that it was for this reason that he asked me to put on the plaster casts, rather than someone else.
Q. The following question, Mr. President, relates to a document submitted by the Prosecution, an affidavit on the part of Gustava Winkowska, Document NO-865, Prosecution Exhibit 231, in Document Book 10 of the Prosecution, English, page 72. In this affidavit it is assorted that the witness had seen you with a package that allegedly contained an amputated leg. What do you have to say to that?
A. I knew nothing of the amputation of a leg within the framework of the experiments carried on at Ravensbruck. I did not carry out such an amputation nor do I know that anyone else did. The witness must be in error and I believe that the witness has already partly clarified, this error on her part; namely, she confused the transportation of the amputated shoulder blade with this amputated leg. The witness was Dr. Maczka.
Q. What did the witness, Dr. Maczka, say about osteomyelitis?
A. I know nothing of a deliberate infection with osteomyelitis. I never deliberately induced osteomyelitis, nor do I know that anyone else did. However, in two cases, so far as I know, there were case histories in the course of the innoculations in that last third group in which the cortical parts of the leg became involved in the infection; since Dr. Maczka was in charge of the X-ray department and saw this change in the X-rays, I assume that what she is talkie, about is an osteomyelitis of this sort.
Q. I come now to the Ladicz case, namely the transplantation of a shoulder blade in a patient in Hohenlychen. You have heard Dr. Gebhardt's testimony on the subject. Do you have anything to add to that testimony?
A. Yes, I do. This case appeared to me to be quite different from what Professor Gebhardt described it; but I believe that is because I saw it from a different perspective. Of the entire proceeding discussion and of the problem I know nothing. I must say something first in order to describe what my situation was. It was not infrequent in Hohenlychen, and no exception, if assistants were asked by the chiefs to carry out operations that were within Hohenlychen's special field in other hospitals nearby, namely, operations on limbs, let us say. In these operations it usually happened that the patient, on whom we were to operate, was prepared ahead of time by the hospital to which we went. We then went to the hospital in good faith and assumed that the situation, from a medical point of view, was perfectly on the up-and-up. This put severe drains on the work capacity of the individual assistants. Secondly, the problem of remobilizing limbs was a problem which was of concern in Hohenlychen and which was of particular concern to us at that time. At that time all of us gave much thought to how we could help out in this field. Professor Gebhardt he laid down the basic policy -- on the one hand the conservative method of exercise, in which the first chief physician, Schulze, helped him and on which he reported in the third meeting of the consulting physicians. We also worked with prothests in connection with this problem; that was all a part of it.
The above-mentioned. Schultze, for example, developed, a forearm prothesis through which he hoped to be able to develop a controllable or readily movable artificial hand, to be adjoined to the running stump of the forearm; and I myself was also working on artificial limbs for legs, where the danger of the legs collapsing under the patient was to be avoided by the intervention of an automatic or controllable breaking, and the remobilization of limbs was investigated from another point of view, namely, the plastic surgery, and Professor Gebhardt with his active surgical orientation turned particular to this approach. Gebhardt felt himself to be the pupil of his teacher, Lexer, at this specialty of Hohenlychen. Legs operated on are then provided with the necessary equipment to work independently again, but this also was no scientific solution, so that the search for other solutions continued, and in this search Gebhardt and others at the clinic turned to work that Professor Lexer had done after the First World War, at least that is the way he described it to me, namely, the free transplantation of limbs or part of limbs; and in Lexer's book the surgery of restoration and in the book on the free transplantation of limbs chapters are devoted to this subject. We In Hohenlychen had not carried out any such operations heretofore, and the assistants were allowed to pursue the problem of remobilization in their own way, and with their own approach. In the time after Christmas 1942, namely after the Ravensbruck experiments had already been concluded, and I had not been there for some time, Dr. Stumpfegger reappeared in Hohenlychen at the occasion of Himmler's Christmas visit, and in a way that I did not know about at the time the question of the free transplantation of a leg was discussed. We had the impression that Dr. Stumpfegger was the person who embraced this idea most enthusiastically. Then, as far as I remember, shortly before New Years there was the notice on the bulletin board on which operations for the next day were announced, that the third or fourth operation on the next day would be the free transplantation of a shoulder blade, and in the way Lexer had described it in his book "Free Transplantation". Dr. Stumpfegger was assigned to this experiment and other assis tants, but I was not.
I discussed this problem with the other members of the clinic. We discussed the prospect of the biological reaction to be expected. We also asked Dr. Stumpfegger from whence he was to take the shoulder blade and what the whole situation was, and he answered it was his intention to take the shoulder blade from a shoulder blade that did not function altogether perfectly because of the previous amoutation of a hand. On the next morning I was in the operation room end in the adjacent operation room the Ladicz operation was being prepared. Ladicz then was wheeled in and the Chief Physician came in, started washing his hands and preparing himself for the operation. He then came into the operation room in which I was working and said that a change had become necessary, for which reason I would have to go to Ravensbruck immediately to get the shoulder blade. Stumpfegger would telephone so that everything would be ready when I got there. I saw that Ladicz was lying on the table and ready for the first incision, and it was necessary that this shoulder blade which was to be transplanted did not suffer any drop in temperature. I was given a container which would see to it that the shoulder blade did not cool off during the 10 or 12 minute journey. I then asked hastily what technique I should use and was told to use Dr. Lexer's technique, the diagonal cut across the shoulder blade. I then climbed into the car that stood outside, went to Ravensbruck, and found a patient prepared. The camp physicians had already washed and dressed for the operation. I took off my second surgical apron, washed myself, tried out the incision as told by Lexer, cut out the shoulder blade with my own instruments, which I had brought along, stopped the flow of blood, then turned the patient over to the camp physician. Then I out the shoulder blade in a sterile container, out the whole thing into the container I had brought along, which had a temperature of 38 degrees, and returned to Hohenlychen as rapidly as possible. I then gave the shoulder blade to Dr. Stumpfegger, who had now got the patient to the point where it could be inserted.
Q. There was a mistake in the interpretation to the extent that the interpreter said, "Transplantation of a leg was discussed", but you did not make any such statement, did you?
