Two such projects were the installation and extension of crematoriums in the Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration camps. Later in the war, Amtsgruppe C undertook such large scale construction as the erection of V-2 plants and the movement of the aircraft and other war industries underground. This work was carried out under such atrocious conditions that literally tens of thousands of human beings were sacrificed. Chief of this department was the fabulous SS Obergruppenfuehrer Kammler, rumored as the successor to Speer. His chief deputy was the defendant Eirenschmalz and the office for special construction tasks was under the defendant Kiefer.
Amtsgruppe D was in direct charge of the administration of concentration camps, including the infamous Auschwitz extermination camp. Apart from the actual imprisonment of prisoners, which was a function of the Reich Main Security Office, the WVHA and Amtsgruppe D were entirely responsible for this branch of SS activity. There are only two defendants in this dock who were members of Amtsgruppe D, Sommer and Pook. The defendant Sommer was deputy chief of Amt D II which handled the commitment of inmates for labor. The defendant Pook was Chief Dentist in Amt D III and had supervisory control over all dentists in concentration camps. It was their task, among others, to remove gold teeth from deceased inmates. However, substantially all of Amtsgruppe D has been accounted for. Gluecks, Chief of the department, is dead as is Dr. Lolling, Chief of the medical office. Liebenhenschel, Hoess, and Kaindl were surrendered by the United States for trial by other countries. The notorious Hoess was camp commander of Auschwitz until December 1943. He confessed to having supervised the extermination in Auschwitz of two and one half million persons, while at least an additional half million succumbed to starvation and disease. Pohl was so impressed with his ability that he was recalled to become Chief of Amt D I. Gerhard Maurer, Chief of Amt D II and the immediate superior of the defendant Sommer, is now in custody but his apprehension came after the indictment in this case had been filed.
The same is true of Wilhelm Burger who was Chief of Amt D IV.
Amtsgruppe W managed the economic enterprises run by the WVHA. At the top was the DWB Combine, a holding company through which the various industries were controlled. The defendants Pohl and George Loerner were the managing directors of the DWB, assisted by the defendants Baier, Volk, and Hohberg, who were members of the so-called Staff W. The offices or Aemter of Amtsgruppe W managed the industries controlled by the DWB. Amt W I under the defendant Mummenthy supervised primarily the German Earth and Stone Wreks, Ltd. which was abbreviated DEST. It controlled granite queries at Flossenburg, Gross-Rosen, Mauthausen, and Natzweiler; brick factories at Neuengamme, Stutthof, and Buchenwald; and two porcelain manufacturing plants. The commander Franz Ziereiss of Mauthausen has related how 1,000 Dutch Jews were worked and tortured into committing suicide in the quarry there.
In 1943, it was decided to employ more prison labor in armament work by the German Equipment Works Ltd. which was under the supervision of Amt W IV. However, since Amt W IV was not represented in all camps, Amt W I took over payment and accounts and put large underground stone quarries at the disposal of armament factories where the prisoners could carry out work without danger from air attacks. In this way, Amt W IV, using the facilities of Amt W I, worked as sub-contractors to the armament factories. For example, aircraft assembly of the Messerschmidt 109 and Messerschmidt 262 for Messerschmidt was carried out at Mauthausen.
After the defeat of Poland in 1939, spoliation of property, especially that of Jews, occurred on a large scale. Under the direction of Staff W and particularly of the defendants Pohl, George Loerner, Daier, Hohberg, and Volk a company called Eastern Industry Ltd, or. Osti was used to exploit Jewish property and manpower in Poland. A report states that this concern had to be liquidated because in November 1943 it was "deprived" of the Jewish workers.
Of course, the truth of the matter is that these Jews were exterminated in the gas chambers of Auschwitz or Treblinka. In addition to the Osti action, Pohl took over in 1940 some 292 brick and tile factories which were managed by the East German Building Materials Works Ltd. under the defendant Bobermin in Amt W II. Bobermin also controlled a cement factory using inmates from Auschwitz.
The defendant Klein was Chief of Amt W VIII, an office with the anomolous title "Special Tasks". There were several sections in Amt W VIII, one of which was called "Society for the Improvement and Upkeep of German Monuments". But even this high sounding society involved itself in concentration camp crimes with the assistance of Klein. He supervised the financing and construction of an SS school at Wewelsburg near the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Approximately 500 prisoners were detained in a small sub-camp at Wewelsburg to assist in the construction of the school. A number of these prisoners died due to undernourishment and overwork.
The WVHA controlled many other economic enterprises which used concentration camp labor as well as supplied slave labor to such private industries as I.G. Farben and the Hermann Goering Works. These matters will be dealt with somewhat more fully at a later point.
MR. McHANEY: Mr. Hart will continue with the opening statement.
MR. HART: On the Concentration camps.
Substantially all of the crimes charged in the indictment against these defendants were committed in concentration camps upon inmates foreibly detained there. Therefore, it will perhaps be helpful to consider this institution of terror, mass crime, and human degradation.
According to German law, a concentration camp provide protective custody for persons who were not legally sentenced to imprisonment by a court of law, and those who, having served a term of imprisonment, were then committed for further detention by the Security Police and SD. Protective custody orders were issued by the Reich main Security Office.
There were two general categories of protective custody, namely Political Custody and police Custody. Persons placed in political custody were those considered to be enemies of the Nazi State or otherwise undesirable, but who could not be convicted of any crime. This type of custody was theoretically not enforced as a punitive measure. Included among political custody prisoners were members of parties opposed to National Socialism as well as non-party individuals of the same mind; Nazis guilty of some party crime; persons who listened to foreign broadcasts or expressed a "defeatist attitude"; and those whose general outlook on life was considered undesirable, such as church opponents of the regime and Jehovah's witnesses.
Habitual criminals who had served their term of imprisonment could be placed in preventive custody as well as less serious offenders such as drunkards, bagrants, and persons who changed positions without consent of the Labor Office - all of whom were regarded as "asociais".
Another large group of inmates were the Nazi described "racial inferiors", which included Jews, Poles, Slavs, and Gypsies. The extermination policies of the SS were particularly directed against this group. Prisoners of war were also committed to concentration camps in great numbers, especially the Russians.
A special category of prisoners were Nacht und Nebel or Night and Fog inmates. These were persons alleged to have committed offenses against the Reich or the German forces in occupied countries. The offenders were punished in the occupied territory only if the death penalty could be executed without delay. If this could not be done within one week of apprehension, the accused were taken secretly to Germany and handed over to the Security Police and SD for punishment. No words of the prisoners was permitted to reach their relatives or the country from which they came.
In 1941, concentration camps were graded according to the type of prisoners to be committed there.
Grade I was for persons who had committed minor offenses. Grade II for persons who had committed major offenses but were thought subject to correction, while those beyond the pale were sent to Grade III camps, the "bone-mills" which one rarely left alive. This classification was, of course, a relative concept; a former inmate of Dachau would regard it a gruesome joke to be told he had resided in a Grade I concentration camp. The best that can be said is that his catastrophe might have been worse in Mauthausen, which was for Grade III prisoners. In any event, later developments apparently necessitated deviations from the classification plan. Inmates were transferred from one camp to another solely according to their working capabilities and the needs of the economic enterprises run by the WVHA.
As to the number of concentration camps and inmates during the war period, it is only possible to give approximate figures. In April 1944 the defendant Pohl informed Himmler that there were 20 concentration camps and 165 labor camps in the Reich and German occupied territory. A post-cript to this letter in Pohl's handwriting boastfully states that: "In Eicke's time there were altogether six camps. Now: 185!"
But even those figures are apt to be misleading as there were dozens of outside camps surrounding the so-called "mother camp". In the case of Mauthausen, for example, Camp Commander Ziereis estimated that there were 45 outside camps. Among the large camps centrally administered by the WVHA were Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Lublin, Mauthausen, Natzweiler, Neuengamme, Ravensbrueck, and Stutthof. It is interesting to note that war crimes trials have been hold with respect to most of those camps.
Figures on the number of concentration camp inmates are even more difficult. Here one must distinguish between the total number of prisoners present in the camps at a given date and the total number delivered to the camps during the Nzi regime.
It is know that in August 1944 there were approximately 524,000 inmates of whom 145,000 were woman. But the same document shows that an additional 610,000 persons were on their way to concentration camps. Some 4000,000 of these were Poles from warsaw, which shortly before had risen in arms against the german occupation force. Another 150,000 were Jews from Hungary and the Litzmannstadt Ghettp , and 15000 Poles from the General Government 10,000 " convicts" from the eastern territories 17,000 Polish officers, and 20,000 Frenchmen.
As to the total number of prisoners delivered to the camps, tonly a reasonable estimate can be made. If the number of dead at Auschwitz alone is considered, amounting to at least 3. 5 million, it is safe to assume one time or another incarcerated in a concentration camp.
Much could be said about the horrible living conditions of concentration camps and the proof of the Prosecution will leave no doubt that the prisoners were subjected to systematic cruelty. One former inmate has stated that there stood invisible over the camp gate, the Inscription from Dante's Inferno:
" Through me you enter the City of those elected for grief, Through me you enter the eternal pain, Through me you enter the people of the lost. ......................................... All hope abandon you who enter here."
The cols statistics of death rates in concentration camps shows an utter lack of hygienic conditions. In September 1943 the defendant Pohl reported to Himmler that the natural death rate for the last six months of 1942 averages 989% per month. Such figures, of course, in no way reflect the agonies of slow death through starvation and over-work.
In April 1945, a Committee of the Congress of the United States made an official investigation of the conditions in concentrations camps of Buchenwald, Nordhause, and Dachau shortly after they had been over run by the American Armies.
The report submitted by the Committee contained the following conclusions:
" While the above three camps which were visited by the joint committee differed in some details, they were all of the same general pattern and design and administered for the same purpose.
" Although different in size, they all carried into effect the same pattern of death by hard labor, starvation, hanging strangulation, disease, brutality, gaz chambers, gallows, and filthy and unsanitary conditions, which meant inevitable death eventually to every imprisoned person.
" We found that this entire program constitute a systematic form of torture and death administered to intellectuals political leaders and others who would not embrace and support the Nazi Philosophy and program. We found the extent, devices, methods and conditions of torture almost beyond the power of words to describe.
" The treatment accorded to these prisoners in the concentration camps was generally as follows. They were herded together in some wooden barracks not large enough for one-tenth of their number. They were forced to sleep on wooden frames covered with wooden boards in tiers of two, three and even four, sometimes with no covering, sometimes with a bundle of dirty rags serving both as pallet and coverlet.
" Their food consisted generally of about one-half a pound of black bread per day and a bohl of watery soup for noon and night, and not always that, owing to the great numbers crowded into a small space and to the lack of adequate sustenance, lice and vermin multiplied, disease became rampant and those who did not soon die of disease or torture began the slow process ofstarvation.
Notwithstanding the deliberate starvation program inflicted upon these prisoners by lack of adequate food, we found no evidence that the people of germany as a whole were suffering from any lach of sufficient food or clothing. The contrast was so striking that the only conclusion which we could reach was that the starvation of the inmates of these camps was deliberate.
" Upon entrance into these camps, newcomers were forced to work either at an adjoining war factory or were placed "in commando" on various jobs in the vicinity, being returned each night to their stall in the barracks ..... A refusal to work or an infraction of the rules usually meant flogging and other types of torture, such as having their fingernails pulled out and in each case usually ended in death after extensive suffering. The policies herein described constituted a calculated and diabolical program of planned torture and extermination on the part of those who were in control of the German Government. These camps on the whole, were conducted and controlled by the SS troops and the Gostap , who acted under orders from their superiors or who given wide discretion in the methods which they were to adopt in perpetrating these hideous and inhuman sufferings.
" It is the opinion of your Committee that these practices constituted no less than organized crime against civilization and humanity and that those who were responsible for them should have meted out to them swift, certain and adequate punishment."
The international Military Tribunal in Case No 1, made the following findings of fact in its judgment on pages 16896-7 of the English transcript:
" In the administration of the occupied territories the concentration camps were used to destroy all oppositions groups. The persons arrested by the Gestapo were as a rule sent to concentration camps, They were conveyed to the camps in many cases without any care whatever being taken for them, and great numbers died on the way. These who arrived at the camp were subject to systematic cruelty. They were given hard physical labor, inadequate food, clothes and shelter, and were subject at all times to the rigors of a soul-less regime, and the private whims of individuals guards .....
" A certain number cf the concentration camps were equipped with gas chambers for the wholesale destruction of the inmates, and with furnaces for the burning of the bofies. Some of them were in fact used for the extermination of Jews as part of the " final solution" of the Jewish peoples. Most of the non- Jewish inmates were used for labor, although the conditions under which they worked made labor and death almost synonymous terms. Those inmates who became ill and were unable to work were either destroyed in the gas chambers or sent to special infirmaries, where they were given entirely inadequate medical treatment, worse feed if possible than the working inmates, and left to die."
I come new to a very special group of crimes committed in concentration camps under the guise of medical science. Throughout the whole period of the war, medical experiments were performed on thousands of inmates with a wanton disregard for human life. It is an impossible rask for the Prosecution adequately to portray the tortures to which those helpless human beings were subjected.
In these crimes, the WVHA was an essential party to the conspiracy - a conspiracy which embraced leaders of the Military and civilian medical services of the German Riech. It was only through the SS, the WVHA with its control ever concentration camps, that the human experimental material could be obtained. A number of the doctors who performed these criminal experiments are now on trial before Military Tribunal 1, but in this dock sit the man and his confederates who made the human guinea-pigs available to be kept naked for 14 hours in freezing weather, infected with typhus, and the like.
It is unnecessary in this trial to explore the details of the experiments. We will content ourselves with showing that experiments were performed in concentration camps on non-volunteers, that hundred of the subjects died or were severely injured as a result, and that the WVHA had a substantial connection with the commission of such crimes.
As to the involuntary character of the experimental persons, I think there were be little dispute. The defendant Pohl puts it very well in his affidavit of 16 October 1946:
" The WVHA did not set up any basis for the selection of inmates. They were simply picked out and assigned for the experiments. Sometimes Himmler specified that inmates condemned to death, should be used, but this was not always the case and all experimental subjects had not been condemned to death. There was no requirement that the experimental subjects volunteer. We conducted no campaigns in the camps for volunteers, if these doctors were experimenting on volunteers, they need not to have gone to Himmler and the concentration camps. It was for the very reason they could not get volunteer subjects or did not want to take the time and trouble, that they went to Himmler to get him to consent to consent to experiments on concentration camp inmates."
On 4 December 1942, Maurer, Chief of Amt D II of the WVHA directed that prisoners assigned for experimental porposes should be listed as such on the daily roster and that directors of employment should be informed accordingly.
In a letter of May 1943, POhl, considered the appointment of a doctor to supervise for the SS all experiments in concentration camps. He stated that eight to ten series od experiments were going on at that time. We shall prove that, after 15 May, 1944, the opinion of Gluecks, Chief of Amtsgruppe D, had to be secured before any experiments could be performed on inmates.
Nor was support of these criminal experiments by the WVHA limited to Amtsgruppe D. Personal had to be assigned to assist in the experiments, money, equipment, and other facilities had to be made available, and in some instances laboratories and wards had to no constructed. This required, to a greater or lesser degree, the cooperation of all of the Amtsgruppen in the WVHA.
For example, in the summer of 1942 an Institute for Military Scientific Research was formed within an SS organization known as "Das Ahnenerbe". The Ahnenerbe was originally concerned, as stated in its charter, with research into the capacity, spirit, accomplishments and heritage of northern racial Indo-Germanism. It endeavored to promote heraldry, the study of family and national hereditary history, and the dissemination of racial theories. With the formation of the Institute for Military Scientific Research, however, it became deeply involved in criminal experimentation on concentration camp inmates. The International Military Tribunal made the following finding with respect to the Ahnenerbe, and I quote from the judgment on pp. 16952-3- of the English transcript:
"Also attached to the SS main offices was a research foundation known as the Experiments Ahnenerbe. The scientists attached to this organization are stated to have been mainly honorary members of the SS. During the war an institute for military scientific research became attached to the Ahnenerbe which conducted extensive experiments involving the use of living human beings. An employee of this institute was a certain Dr. Rascher, who conducted these experiments with the full knowledge of the Ahnenerbe, which was subsidized and under the patronage of the Reichsfuehrer SS who was a trustee of the foundation."
The expenses of the criminal activities of this organization were met out of funds of the Waffen-SS and the financial arrangements were gabdked by the defendants George and Hans Loerner and their confederates in Amtsgruppe A and B of the WVHA.
I shall now outline briefly some of the experiments as to which the Prosecution will offer proof.
Between February and July, 1942, high altitude or low pressure experiments were conducted at the Dachau Concentration Camp. This Tribunal has heard considerable proof in the case against Erhard Milch on these experiments as well as the freezing experiments to which I shall come in a moment. The Prosecution will show that the high altitude experiments were performed on approximately 200 inmates, most of whom were Russian prisoners of war, Polish, political prisoners, and Jews.
Between 70 and 80 of the experimental subjects were deliberately killed. The experiments were designed to terminate with death. These deaths were frequently followed by gruesome autopsies, sometimes in the low pressure chamber itself. Several cases were recorded in which tests persons who had survived the experiment were drowned and dissected under water in order to observe the formation of air embolism. The purpose was to establish the highest altitude from which the air crew could be rescued in case of damage to the pressurized cabin of the plane. These experiments were supported by the Luftwaffe, Das Ahnenerbe, and the SS, They were executed by Dr. Rascher and the defendant Romberg in the Medical Case. The defendant Pohl actually observed one of these experiments being performed.
The freezing experiments in Dachau lasted from August 1942 until approximately May 1943. Nearly 300 inmates were experimented on and over 80 of them died as a result. In one series of experiments the subjects were forced to remain in a tank of ice water for several hours. Narcosis was frequently not used and the pain was extreme. Death usually occurred after 80 minutes where the subject was unclothed, but it is known that two Russian prisoners of war did not die until after the 5th hour of torture.
In another series of experiments, naked victims were kept outdoors in freezing weather for 8 to 14 hours. Their hands and feet were frozen white.
The purpose of these-experiments was to determine the most effective way of rewarming severely chilled persons. The Luftwaffe was primarily interested in this problem because of the loss of pilots in the North Sea. Various methods of rewarming were tried, the most successful of which was a very hot bath. But the perverted and sadistic character of these experiments is perhaps best revealed in a report by Rascher on rewarming by "animal" warmth. He said:
"The experimental subjects were removed from the water when their rectal temperature reached 30°C. At this time the experimental subjects had all lost consciousness. In eight cases the experimental subjects were then placed between two naked women in a spacious bed. The women were supposed to nestle as closely as possible to the chilled person. Then all three persons were covered with blankets. A speeding up of rewarming by light cradles or by medicines was not attempted.
When the temperature of the experimental subjects was recorded it was striking that an after-drop of temperature up to 3°C occurred, which is a greater after-drop of temperature than that seen with any other method of rewarming. It was observed, however, that consciousness returned at an earlier pointy that is at a lower body temperature than with other methods of rewarming.
"Once the subjects regained consciousness they did not lose it again, but very quickly grasped the situation and snuggled up to the naked female bodies. The rise of body temperature then occurred at about the same speed as in experimental subjects who had been rewarmed by packing in blankets. (Fig. 2) Exceptions were four experimental subjects who, at body temperatures between 30°C and 32°C, performed the act of sexual intercourse. In these experimental subjects, the temperature rose very rapidly after sexual intercourse, which could be compared with the speedy rise in temperature in a hot bath.
"2. Another set of experiments concerned the rewarming of intensely chilled persons by one woman. In all these cases rewarming was significantly quicker than could be accomplished by two women. The cause of this seems to be that warming by one woman only, personal inhibitions are removed, and the woman nestles up to the chilled individual much more intimately. Also in these cases, the return of complete consciousness was strikingly rapid. Only one experimental subject did not return to consciousness and the warming effect was only slight. This person died with symptoms suggesting cerebral haemorrhage, as was confirmed by subsequent autopsy."
The women used in this obscene manner were transferred from Ravensbruck to Dachau by order of the WVHA. Rascher refused to use one of the girls because she had what he described as unquestionable Nordic racial characteristics. She had volunteered for the camp brothel for half a year on promise of release. As she put it: "Better half a year in the brothel than half a year in the concentration camp." This so outraged Himmler that he ordered Pohl to investigate the matter.
The WVHA also manufactured experimental clothing at the plant at Dachau under the defendant George Loerner for use in these experiments.
Dr. Rascher was not content with his murderous achievements in the high altitude and freezing experiments. In 1943, he turned his attention to the development of a blood coagulation drug. Simple and innocuous clinical tests with the drug were not considered realistic enough, so prisoners at Dachau were shot in order to study the rapidity of blood coagulation. The WVHA not only made the inmates available for these macabre studies, but a pharmaceutical laboratory controlled by Amtsgruppe W assisted in the manufacture of the coagulant on a commercial scale.
Experiments with poisonous food were performed on prisoners in the Mauthausen Concentration Camp. These were suggested by the defendant Pohl and were carried out by a Dr. Schenk who was attached to Amtsgruppe B of the WVHA under the defendant George Learner. On 9 September 1942, Pohl wrote to Himmler as follows:
"We shall have to make two groups of food experiments. First such which cover the examination of poisonous ingredients of our food or such as are slowly growing poisonous.
"The prisoners can very well be used for these experiments, Secondly, however, experiments will perhaps be necessary concerning the amelioration by food. These experiments cannot yield valuable results when made on racially inferior people, i.e., inferior as to the bodily structure and physical state. For this, volunteers have to put themselves at our disposal as usual, researchers who do not only note physical phenomena in themselves, but also physical changes. Both of them play a part in appraisement of food."
These experiments resulted in the death of scores of inmates.
Perhaps the most frightful of all the experiments in concentration camps were those to test the effectiveness of typhus vaccines at Buchenwald. The attack against Russia in 1941 found the German Wehrmacht unprepared to combat frequent typhus epidemics among the troops. Frantic efforts were made to develop and test vaccines and therapeutic drugs and for this purpose hundreds of human guinea pigs were used. In the course of these experiments 75% of the selected number of inmates were vaccinated with one the vaccines or nourished with one of the chemical substances and, after a period of several weeks, were infected with typhus.
The remaining 25% were used as controls and were infected without previous protection. We shall offer in evidence a diary kept by the doctor who conducted these experiments. It shows that no less than 725 prisoners were used in these experiments, over 150 of whom died.
The typhus infections were usually brought about by the injection of typhus infected blood. In order to insure a constant supply of such blood, four to six inmates per month were deliberately infected with typhus. Substantially all of these so-called "passage persons" died.
The WVHA assisted in these murders at Buchenwald by the construction of a block for vaccine production. This was done by Amtsgruppe C. It will also be proved that Dr. Lolling of Amtsgruppe D and Dr. Schenk of Amtsgruppe B inspected the experimental station at Buchenwald.
Similar experiments were performed at Natzweiler by Dr. Eugene Haagen with the support of the WVHA. In November 1943 100 prisoners were made available to him by Pohl. Their physical condition was so poor that 18 died during transport from another camp. Haagen complained bitterly that only 12 of the inmates could be used for his purpose and even these would have to be given a special diet for two or three months. He therefore requested and received an additional 100 men in healthy condition. Pohl furnished still another 200 prisoners to Haagen in the summer of 1944, at least 50 of whom died as a result of these experiments. The WVHA was mentioned as having supported the experiments in a report by Haagen to the Chief of the Medical Service of the Luftwaffe.
In the sterilization experiments, the depths of degeneracy were reached. This research was not undertaken to benefit mankind, but to destroy it. But the latter part of 1941, it was the established policy of the Third Reich to exterminate the Jews in Europe. An effort was made to use sterilization to effectuate this policy. Those able to work wore to be preserved for the time being so long as their capacity to propagate was destroyed. This policy of genocide also included other peoples regarded as "sub-human" such as the Russians and Poles.
Experiments were carried out at Auschwitz, Ravensbrueck and other concentration camps in an effort to find an inexpensive, inconspicuous, and rapid method of mass sterilization. The defendant Pohl and other members of the WVHA took a personal interest in these experiments. Pohl was especially enthusiastic about medicinal sterilization since it gave the possibility of being performed without the victims' knowledge. Dr. Pokorny, who is now standing trial in the medical case, came upon an article by a Dr. Madaus which stated that the drug caladium seguinum derived from the plant Schweigrohr when taken orally or intravenously would bring about permanent sterility in animals. He wrote Himmler in October 1941 suggesting that experiments be conducted on criminals.
His letter stated, and I quote:
"If, on the basis of this research, it were possible to produce a drug which after a relatively short time, effects an imperceptible sterilization on human beings, then we would have a new powerful weapon at our disposal. The thought alone that the 3 million Bolsheviks, at present German prisoners could be sterilized so that they could be used as laborers but be prevented from reproduction, opens the most far reaching perspectives."
This proposal was passed on to Pohl and he personally supervised efforts to cultivate the plant Schweigrohr on a largo scale. He also made arrangements to perform experiments on concentration camp inmates.
Sterilizations by x-ray in Auschwitz were supported by the WVHA. With the full knowledge and consent of Pohl a Dr. Horst Schumann was permitted to destroy all normal life for a number of young Polish-Jews. After having been horribly burned by x-rays, most of these boys were then subjected to castration so that the destructive effects of the x-rays could be studied microscopically. The Prosecution hopes to afford the Tribunal the opportunity of hearing the testimony of one of the few survivors of this Nazi criminal depravity.
A Dr. Clauberg was also working at Auschwitz. He devised a method of sterilizing women by injecting an irritating solution into the uterus. He was assigned the task by Himmler of determining how long it would take to sterilize 1000 women by his method. His success was such that he estimated this might be accomplished in one day by a physician and 10 assistants. Several hundred Jews and Gypsies were the victims of his pseudo-science.
In addition to the experiments already outlined, the Prosecution will offer proof of other medical War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, including malaria, seawater, and sepsis experiments at Dachau, epidemic jaundice experiments at Sachsenhausen, poison gas experiments at Natzweilor, and hormone experiments at Buchenwald. Those crimes were perpetrated with the knowledge and assistance of the I pass now to a phase of mass extermination implemented by the concentration camp structure - the so-called enthanasia program.
On the opening day of the invasion of Poland, 1 September 1939, Adolf Hitler charged Prof. Karl Brandt, at that time his escort physician, and Phillip Bouhler, the Chief of the Private Chancellery of the Fuehrer, with the task of organizing and executing a program for the extermination of persons considered incurably ill.
The timing of the program with the initiation of a war of aggression was, of course, not a coincidence. By the elimination of insane, aged, and incurable persons, as well as deformed children, it was hoped to make more medical personnel and hospital facilities available for war casualties. It is equally clear that this program implimented the basic Nazi doctrines of race, blood , and State; only those persons who could strengthen the Nordic race and the Third Reich were considered worthy of life. Hence, those who were weak in mind or body, who were unable to work, who were "useless eaters" were systematically and ruthlessly killed.
As a result of the Fuehrer order, a large and somewhat complicated organization was established to carry out the euthanasia program. Since we are here concerned with euthanasia only insofar as it touches the concentration camps and the jurisdiction of the WVHA, the overall operation of the program can be sketched in broad strokes. Questionnaires were sent to the Ministry of Interior purporting to report the condition of each patient in the various mental institutions. These questionnaires were submitted to so-called exports in the euthanasia organization who (without so much as having seen the patient) passed sentence of life of death.
Then a list was made up of the patients who were judged as "positive" cases and these patients were removed from the asymlum to collecting centers and from there were transferred to euthanasia stations and killed. The executions were carried out without the consent of the relatives and, of course, without the consent of the victim. Falsified death notices with stereotype wording were sent to the relatives.
The entire procedure was carried out under elaborate code names in an effort to insure secrecy. However, this proved to be quite impossible and the program was common knowledge throughout Germany. Indeed, public opinion and particularly that of the church - was effective enough to bring about a temporary stop in the general program in the autumn of 1941, The heartful protest by thousands of decent Germans against this wholesale murder is exemplified in a letter written by the Bishop of Limburg to the Ministry of Justice in 1941, when he said:
"About 8 kilometers from Limburg, in the little town of Hadamar, on a hill overlooking the town, there is an institution which had formerly served various purposes and of late had been used as a nursing home; this institution was renovated and furnished as a place in which, by consensus of opinion, the above mentioned Euthanasia has been systematically practiced for months - approximately since February 1941. The fact has become known beyond the administrative district of Wiesbaden, because death certificates from a Registry Hadamar-Moenchberg are sent to the home communities. (Moenchberg is the name of this institution because it was a Franciscan monastery prior to its secularization in 1803.)
"Several times a week busses arrive in Hadamar with a considerable number of such victims. School children of the vicinity know this vehicle and say: