Q This was Bavaria, wasn't it?
A Bavaria, Suebia. I completed that task and during my activities in this sanitorium a number of scientific works were developed which dealt with the question of the care for an hospitalization of drinkers, etc. I don't want to list them all, but that was the bulk.
Q When were you finally transferred to Egelfing-Haar?
A First of all there was something else. In 1935 the Municipal Committee at Augsburg through the local medical officer, appointed me the head of the Local Health Department, and the department for which I worked dealt with racial questions. As head of that department my leading task was the listing of hereditary diseases of the population, and the carrying out of a hereditary health law in the capacity of an experiment, and also the carrying out of the marital hereditary health law; also the psychiatric care for children, particularly school children and the liaison department from the medical department to the Psychiatric Department at Augsburg, and the transfer of cases that were in need of hospitalization.
Q Did you get to Egalfing-Haar?
A Let me add first of all that during this period from 1935 until my resignation from Augsburg I was honorary head of the Catholic nursing home for drinkers, and its department at Meitingen, which activity lead to it that lawyers consulted me in connection with hospitalization of drinkers -- according to Paragraph 42-C - consulted me as a medical expert. I do think that this is important. In 1938 without applying for this position and without having anybody's protection or help I became a director and head -- from a medical point of view -- of the mental sanitorium of Egelfing, which is the biggest of its type in Bavaria.
Q That is in Munich?
A Yes, 15 Kilometers from Munich.
Q How many beds did the mental sanitorium at Egelsfing have?
AAt the beginning of my work about 2500 and we increased that to about 3,000 beds.
Q And how many insane patients were there on the average?
A Well, again between 2700 and 2800, and approximately 3000. The figure of 3000 was, however, after exceeded.
Q Which age groups were represented in this hospital?
A Every age group, beginning with the smallest children to really old people, since I had a children's house which I had taken over from my predecessor.
DR. FROESCHMANN: Mr. President, the Prosecution in the course of its case introduced a number of documents which were showing that from 20 September 1940 transports left Egelfing which included Jewish insane people. For this reason I should like to put the following question to the witness:
Q Did your mental institution at Egelfing during the years 1939 to 1942 treat Jewish Insane people?
A Yes, in my hospital Jewish insane patients were present in two categories, they just as much as any other patients, were treated normally and they weren't in wards of their own.
Q What type of instructions did you receive regarding the transfer of these Jewish Insane people in 1940 and if so from what source did you get them?
A I don't know for certain what the date was, but I did receive a decision from the Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior, according to which a number of Jewish patients from all Bavarian Institutions, were to be collected in my hospital, that they should be placed in special wards, which I would have to clear for the purpose and that they were to be fed. in the regular categories, and that they were to be taken care of and treated until they were transferred by authority of this Bavarian Ministry or the Department concerned in the Department of the Ministry of Bavaria. As far as my own insane persons were concerned, my own Jewish patients, they remained in their original wards until they were called away.
Q Did you have further instructions according to which these Jewish insane people were to be taken from their hospitals and should be brought away. 7295
A Yes, they came from the State Ministry of Bavaria, and as far as I remember this stated these patients had to be handed over.
Q Is it possible that the transporting of Jewish Insane patients took place on or about the 20th of September 1940?
A Yes, I think that is the approximate time when these patients left.
Q Do you have any knowledge about the fact whether this departing transport of Jewish insane patients was connected with euthanasia measures of any kind?
A. No, it was stated that these patients were being transferred to a Jewish Institute.
Q. You were especially told that?
A. Yes.
Q. Thank you. Now another question. Witness, you have described in great detail what your career was and you have spoken about your psychiatry training, which basic attitude did you adopt with regard to the welfare and care of insane people, first of all with regard to their treatment, and, secondly, with regard to taking care of them?
A. Without wanting to speak about my own past, I want to tell you that I was a definite follower of therapeutic treatment. In psychiatric circles, in the pessimistic circles. The circles of Falkenhauser, I was called the Poli-pragmatic. It is my opinion with regard to curing of these patients that everything must be done and that every attempt is essential to help the insane patients and to make available to him curative treatment. I, therefore, belong to those practical psychiatrists who, together with Falkenhauser my friend and teacher, I do want to say that we, made every effort that the admission of patients and the release of the patients was a decision which should be made generally easier for the head of an institute, in order to get the cases there quickly when they were fresh and to remove them as quickly as possible from the atmosphere of a curring home, which always has a favorable influence. Likewise, for the same reason I was a convinced and fanatic follower of the principle of separating mental institutes and so-called curring homes which were to be looked after by psychiatrists, experts, people with scientific and expert knowledge, medical personnel from these institutes where the more simplified care of cases could be carried out, no longer a therapy, I mean patients who couldn't be helped by therapy.
Q. So I can summarize that it was your point of view that every type of treatment should be employed in order to bring about a care for such insane persons as could be cured?
A. Yes.
Q. And that they should be accomodated in so-called mental institutes, and on the other hand incurable insane people who only needed to be looked after - in other words, maintenance of their life should be accomodated in special institutes?
A. Yes, and in fact that happened in Egelfing. I refused patients who only were in need of care in order to make room for those patients who needed treatment and to keep any staff for the treatment of the insane patients.
Q. Then what type of insane people would psychiatrists describe as incurably insane people?
A. To put it briefly, is very difficult but let me say this: The point of view ought to be approximately that: incurably insane are those who are permanently in need of treatment in a institute and those for whom any contact with their surroundings from a social psychiatrist's point of view, in other words, the point of view maintained where the common feeling of a human being is lacking, that may be a final condition or it may be the condition of the beginning of idiocy. For instance, those insane patients who suffer from organic diseases of the brain, suck as paralysis, epileptics----
Q. Now, doctor, may I interrupt you please. Would you mind speaking into the microphone?
A. I didn't know there was one - paralysis, epilepsy, idiocy, certain cases of idiocy are due to seriuus diseases of the brain, and in that case these due to interior disturbances, usually they are hereditary causes, but most of all the schizophrenia, also dementia praecox, those cases which we consider as hopeless persons who must be denied any contact with their surroundings and with the human community, and who also lack the capability of thinking normally, those who were in perpetual need of care and for years and those that could only be taken care of through outside help in a nursing home.
They would have to be removed permanently from the community, because of the type of their disease, and the practical psychiatrist would best describe them as permanently in need of confinement to a mental institute they are a-social
Q. Doctor, you have just used the word "a-social", do you mean by that in the psychiatrist's conception of the word a-social?
A. Yes, and in connection with it I want to point out that the a-social insane might be particularly aggressive as the disease goes on and particularly as the type an development of the disease shows itself, and that he can be considered an a-social because of his aggressiveness.
Q. Doctor, might I ask you to perhaps illustraty by means of two or three brief examples to this Tribunal, just what such cases are, such cases of incurably insane people, I mean would you offer a descriptive example of such people?
A. I don't want to quote those cases of serious idiocy who are bodily reduced who cannot be spoken to with whom one cannot make contact, that fall into a coma, who are anxious to destroy are physically agressive and who need feeding by hand and who can no longer cope with the normal requirements of their body, who are dirty, not only dirty with dirt, and urine, but who would smear about such excretions, have no feeling of pain and who no longer demonstrate even simple emotions.
I only want to deal with the final stages of schizophrenia, that is, with human beings who commit senseless actions, senseless not only towards their fellow humans, but who actually become a-social because they may kill members of the medical staff. I myself have experienced four cases when the most valuable members of the staff became the victims of such insane patients. Many fell ill, and many at the age of forty or forty-five, became useless and old, let me talk about those who inflicted upon themselves serious damages, who removed their testicles and tore them out, patients who damaged their mouths, not because they wanted to commit suicide but simply because they did not understand their own actions, patients who maioned themselves in the most serious manner, I think that ought to be enough.
DR. FROESCHMAN: Mr. President, in this connection I want to submit from my document book the appendix No. 3, I beg your pardon, it is appendix 2, appendix 2, and I am referring to document No. 45 on pages 36 to 44, which is an edition of the periodical "Life."
THE PRESIDENT: We don't have that appendix to your document book.
DR. FROESCHMAN: I have submitted it Mr. President, it follows Brack No. 2, and it is at least a fortnight ago that I did so.
MR. HARDY: The Prosecution does not have a copy of that, Your Honor. However, it is apparently a magazine which gives conditions in the US mental hospitals, United States, and this evidence will come under the category of that evidence with the Tribunal has ruled will not come up and will not be offered in evidence until a later date.
DR. FROESCHMAN: Mr. President, I was going to ask the witness, Dr. Pfannmueller, just one question, namely, whether such types as are depicted in this periodical by means of photographs, whether they are the types which he has just talked about.
THE PRESIDENT: It is a matter of common knowledge that such types exist all over the world, such types, of defective mental exist everywhere and the Tribunal will take judicial notice that such types are found everywhere.
DR. FROESCHMANN: In any case, Mr. President, I wasn't trying to make the impression, if I have, of only describing the condition of insane patients in America.
THE PRESIDENT: We understand that counsel.
DR. FROESCHMANN: There was a German book I was going to submit to the Tribunal which contains the same type of pictures. May I then, Mr. President, submit the document No. 45, as Exhibit No. 3, may I submit that to the High Tribunal as my next exhibit?
THE PRESIDENT: We do not have the document book.
MR. HARDY: I want to object to the submission of this document until such time as I have time to pursue the document. I haven't seen the document and the Prosecution hasn't been presented with the document defense counsel refers to.
DR. FROESCHMANN: In that case I will put that back until the document book is ready.
THE PRESIDENT: We will recess for thirty minutes and possibly during that time counsel can examine the document book.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
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 tupes 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 vest book of psychioly 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 Judical 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, microcephal and macro cephals.
Q Please speak a little more slowly, witness.
A Hicrocephals, macrocephals, 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 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 euthenasia, I never looked at this child from the point of view of national socialism. Euthenasis 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 heriditary situation. Then it was asked, as far as I car 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 yon 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 19it2, 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.