been in charge of Buchenwald up to 1942, and Hoven had been camp doctor at the same time and up to September 1943, at which time the SS judicial authorities caused him to be arrested.
As a prosecution witness, SS Hauptscharfuehrer Koehler was killed. The body was tested after Dr. Hoven, together with SS Scharfuehrer Sommer had seen how. The autopsy of Koehler's body gave indication that he had been poisoned with a poison of the alkaloid type. In order to find out what sort of poison and how much of it had been administered to Koehler, four Russian prisoners of war were taken to Block 46. They were given various doses without their knowledge. It was given to them in a soup. The SS investigators, Dr. Morgen and Dr. Wehner, attended this experiment, together with Dr. Ding and another SS officer, and they were hidden behind a curtain.
When two of the Russian prisoners of war suffered only a collapse and two were not dead, all four of them were taken to the crematorium, and there they were hanged after an hour.
Q Why did they hang them; do you know?
A No, I do not know the reason. I assume, as the whole thing was an SS trial and very strange -- I think they wanted to get rid of the living witnesses.
Q Well, is it not also reasonable to assume that they wanted to perform an autopsy on these Russians?
A That is even probable that the autopsy was done in order to test the poison on those prisoners.
Q Now, witness, also in the Ding diary, which is Prosecution Exhibit 219, document NO 265, I find an entry dated 26 October 1944 which reads:
"Special experiment on six persons according to instructions of SS Oberfuehrer, Dr. Mrugowsky, and RKPA. Report on this orally."
Do you know what this entry means?
A I know that Dr. Ding-Schuler told me one day that he had to make an extremely secret experiment. He had a formula in his hand, put it in Court No. II, Case No. IV.
to an envelope, sealed it down, and told me that I should put it into the secret files and keep it there. He thereupon rang up Schoberg, the camp leader, and made him and two other SS officers, whose names escape me -- he asked them to come to the crematorium. He came back from there roughly two hours later, looking very pale and very excited, and he told me that he was glad that he had got that thing over with, that it had been a cruel business with six Russian prisoners of war who were now dead. Through our connections with the people working in the crematorium, we found out that these six prisoners of war were dead.
A little time later, Dr. Ding made me give him this sealed envelope. He opened it for a brief moment. I could see the heading of this document, which was in his handwriting. It had a code word there and a chemical formula. I could not remember one or the other, but he looked at it and read it again, and he burned it over a candle in front of my eyes.
Court No. II, Case No. IV.
Q And did Ding tell you later about the poison-bullet experiment?
AAs I remember it, he told me even before. He said that he and Mrugowsky had visited Sachsenhause. Mrugowsky had shot the people with poison bullets on both sides in order to find out their effect. An incident had occurred because one of the Russians, as he was led into the room, used a knife which he had procured somehow, and he tried to attack Mrugowsky. The Russian had been beaten down. Whether that experiment in the crematorium of Buchenwald was the same poison or not I am unable to say with certainty, but I am inclined to assume it because Ding was mentioned. On the eastern front it had been found that the Russians were using a very mysterious poison, and now it had to be found out what sort of poison it was, and therefore these experiments were carried out.
THE PRESIDENT: We will conclude at this point. The record will show that the Defendant Fanslau has been absent from court during the entire session today. The Tribunal will recess until tomorrow morning at nine-thirty.
THE MARSHAL: This Tribunal is in recess until 0930 tomorrow morning.
(The Tribunal adjourned until 22 April 1947, at 0930 hours.)
Official transcript of the American Military Tribunal in the matter of the United States of America against Oswald Pohl, et al, defendants, sitting at Nuernberg, Germany, on 22 April 1947, 0930, Justice Toms presiding.
THE MARSHAL: Persons in the courtroom will please find their seats. The Honorable, the Judges of Military Tribunal II. Military Tribunal II is again in session. God save the United States of America and this honorable Tribunal. There will be order in the courtroom.
MR. MC HANEY: May it please the Tribunal.
EUGEN KOGON - Resumed DIRECT EXAMINATION (Continued) BY MR. MC HANEY:
Q. Herr Kogon, I remind you that you are still under oath. Do you have a small correction to make in your testimony concerning the typhus experiments and the methods of artificial infection?
A. I said yesterday that in the typhus experiments the infection was made with fresh blood, that is to say, ten cubic centimeters of fresh blood. I remembered meanwhile that was the case in a few instances at the very beginning. Then the infection far a long was made with two cubic centimeters of fresh blood and later on with considerably less quantities, that is to say, one-tenth of a cubic centimeter. The infection in all cases was equally effective.
Q. Now, Herr Kogon, are you familiar with certain phosphorus or incendiary bomb experiments in Buchenwald?
A. Yes, in 1944 Madaus and Company in Dresden and Rapebaul made the application that a method against phosphorus bombs and the testing of bombs should be carried out in Buchenwald. Sturmbannfuehrer Dr. DingSchuler took the contents of phosphorus bombs, the contents having been supplied to him by the police chief of Rapebaul, and he put these contents on the skin of the left lower arm of prisoners. The contents were then put on fire. In the case of two prisoners they were put out by water. In another two cases this fire was put out by the drug R-17. In the case of a third group a piece of wet rag was used in order to get rid of the contents after the accident.
Three or four such experiments were carried out. The three methods which I described just now were used immediately after the skin caught fire; in the second series, after about ten minutes; and in the third series, after half an hour, after the contents of the bomb had been burned out and wounds had been produced on the arm.
Q. In other words, the purpose of this experiment was to test the effectiveness of this drug R-17, made by the Madaus and Company, on wounds caused by incendiary bombs, is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. And how many inmates were used in these experiments?
A. As I remember it, four or six.
Q Four or six inmates were used. Do you know whether they were volunteers?
A No, they were not volunteers. They were sent to Block 50 from Block 46 by Dr. Ding-Schuler, and they did not know what was going on. The experiments were carried out in the confines of block 50.
Q Did you see any of the experimental subjects during the course of the experiments, or after they had been burned?
A I saw the prisoners before the experiments were carried out and afterwards.
Q Were the burns on their arms very severe?
A The wounds in some cases were very deep. The experiments were carried out first on the left lower arm, and later on on the right lower arm, and they during various methods of experiments had the wounds, which were at the site in the experiments, photographed. I saw the developed films later, and I reported it in the Ding report which was then sent to Berlin.
Q Do you know whether these inmates suffered much pain as the result of these experiments?
A Yes, in fact, cases were very much so where wounds went as deep as one and one-quarter to one and a half centimeters.
Q Do you know whether they used any anesthesia, or not?
A I know that in the first experiment four of the prisoners -- or three of the prisoners at the beginning were given an anesthesia, but they recovered very quickly from the anesthesia during the experiment. I assume that at the end the purpose of the anesthesia was given in order to prevent the prisoner from knowing what was done to them.
Q Now the defendant Mrugowsky in the medical case, or perhaps it was one of his witnesses, testified they saw one of these experimental subjects immediately after the experiment, and he came out with a burn on his arm, and that he had a big smile on his face, with the idea it did not seem to bother him at all. Can you confirm that testimony?
A None of the prisoners whom I saw smiled. What I saw in some cases was I saw their faces distorted with pain; but I can understand how that testimony came about. In the very first experiment one of the prisoners had an incendiary bomb used on him, and immediately after it was put on fire, it had been removed in order to see if any trace would remain if you took quick action, and the prisoner, of course, did not suffer any pain.
Q Now, Doctor, will you tell us about the Hormon experiments. When they occurred, the number of inmates used, the purpose of the experiments, and the other facts surrounding that experiment?
A Then a Danish Obersturmfuehrer, Dr. Wernet, in 1944 was sent to Buchenwald in order to -- he was sent by Department-V in Leipzig. Later on I heard that this was done by arrangement of Oberfuehrer Poppendick in order to make tests of recovery which he believed was to be made on the prisoners, and he contacted Dr. Ding-Schuler who had been informed of the experiments by Berlin. The method was a so-called diversion in part of homosexuals, mainly by artificial plans. The experiments lasted for many months, and they were carried out in the hospital of the camp. Some reports went through Dr. Ding-Schuler to Berlin, and on the whole if I remember fourteen persons were used for these experiments. Two persons of the fourteen died.
Q You say the purposes of the experiments were an attempt to bring homosexuals back to normal sexual life?
A That was the alleged purposes, yes.
Q Now, witness, so long as we are on medical matters, I will ask you if the name "14-F-13" is familiar to you?
A The name "14-F-13", I can say I run across that expression first in 1942, I think in July or August. At that time an order came from the Department-D-III in Berlin, and the order reads for the hospital in Buchenwald, the camp doctor there. An orderly carried back and forth mail and correspondence between the camp doctor and a certain Doctor Eberl, who was in the hospital at the Asylum of Bernburg, which also carried that name.
Some transports were put together, and the first one, as I remember it, consisted of about ninety men, and the second one one-hundred and six, and then a few smaller transports. As to the prisoners in these transports, they were not aware at the time in the first case. Then afterwards the chauffeur would return with empty transports after half a day, and he brought with him all the clothes, and all the property belonging of the prisoners they had carried in their pockets, even the smallest objects, and on the very next day through the chauffeur a certain amount of information got around that the participants on the transports had been gassed. They knew the method -- they did not know the method which had been used on this occasion, but later on we heard about the next transport from the same source that these were gassing experiments, at least they were told so. On the whole Jews were used for these gassing experiments. They were taken through this Scharfuehrer to Bernburg, and also in the transports were invalids and old people.
Q What was the basis for selection of inmates to be included in Action 14-F-13?
AAt that time I could not really see this, and other people in the camp who were usually well informed did not really see through the whole matter. All sorts of people, all types of category of inmates, they were selected for these purposes by the camp leader by reason of the camp doctor. They were ordered to report to the hospital. There they were examined by the camp doctor, and, we were struck by the fact that elderly people, old people, and weak people were selected.
Q Were non-German Nationals included in these transports?
A I would have to think about this for sometime, but not very hard for me to remember one or two concrete cases. At the time my attention was directed essentially to those concerned in my surroundings, and I say these were not foreigners; I am inclined to believe that there were no foreigners that were included, but I am not certain.
Q What about Jews, were they included in these transports?
A Yes, I must admit that there were Polish Jews that were included.
Q Do you also know something about the treatment of inmates who had severe cases of "TB" in the concentration camp of Buchenwald?
A What I know is that in Buchenwald one of the conditions, in Buchenwald, was contradictory to that which applied to other camps, inasmuch as "TB" patients were well looked after, they had wonderful hospitalization, with special food. There was an attempt to make them well again, but at the same time in the middle of all of this, the experimentations were carried out on "TB" patients. People who had open "TB" were frequently in immediate danger of being killed, and where liquidation was done repeatedly in Buchenwald.
Q How did they kill them?
A By injections -- killed by injections.
Q Where did they kill them?
A In the hospital.
Q Were there a substantial number of such tuberculosis patients who were killed?
A I can not give you the exact figure because the periods of time were so separated from each other that these injections were carried out. With a Dr. Eisele, the camp doctor, the practice was for him to select people whom he called "TB" patients and killed them off by injection. In some cases there would be five, and in some cases on the whole I would estimate that the victims of that practice in Buchenwald were a few hundred.
Q Do you know whether any of these victims were German Nationals?
A No, any type of inmates at Buchenwald would be included in these actions. No difference would be made as to the nationality.
Q Now, witness, let's turn to matters of a more general nature. I would like for you to assume that none of the people in this courtroom are familiar with concentration camps, and I would now like to ask you some questions which will tend to give us a picture of what was a con centration camp, its purposes, how it was organized, how it was operated, the categories of prisoners, and other such matters.
Will you begin by telling us what was the purposes of the concentration camp?
A During my time in the concentration camp and by the experience of my comrades in other camps, which I have heard and which I tested as to their correctness I was in a position to do so - I discovered four basic tendencies in concentration camps. Later on, but while I was still in the camp, I saw a number of documents which went through my hands, and I saw those tendencies fully confirmed.
The main purpose of the concentration camp in the first period was - and I would like to say here up to roughly 1941, perhaps 1942 - the main purpose was a double one: to separate all those who were politically suspect or politically dangerous, political enemies, particularly dangerous enemies of National Socialism, to separate them from the rest of the world and to put them into the concentration camp, to put them in contempt and, if necessary , to kill them, and thereby weaken the German population by the anonymous terror which came from these camps, although the German people did not know the details. On the one hand, a direct action against political enemies, and on the other hand, the indirect purpose of frightening the population; also be eliminate all those who were regarded as racially inferior, for instance, the Jews from the beginning, or Gypsies, and a few other groups.
Then, at a later date - that is to say, mainly from 1942 onwards - to exploit the inmates as workers in a very systematic manner that was finally connected with the German war economy and parts of German industry.
Thirdly, to exploit this human material, which had lost all its will-power and to use them for so-called scientific experiments, that is, human material which had no opportunity of hitting back and which was quite out of reach of genuine science.
They could do with us as they wished.
Fourthly, a sort of psychological training to become harsh. That applied to certain parts of the SS Death Head companies.
All these tendencies were in the course of time in certain documentary evidence, which not always from the beginning but in some cases in the course of time made it quite clear. However, the intention was there from the beginning, not perhaps for all four tendencies but for some of them, but that intention at least developed in the course of time, and that development was used and exploited.
Q What can you tell us about the types and number of concentration camps in Germany?
A The development of concentration camps in Germany differs according to the period of time involved. Before 30 June 1934 there were in an irregular way about 50 concentration camps. Some of them were very small, with just a few hundred, or a hundred, prisoners. Those camps were administered at that time exclusively by the SS. There was not a real administration. There was no central office. They were completely in the hands of the SS.
After 30 June 1934, in an increasing manner, the SS took over concentration camps, and in particular, the first big, important camp in Dachau, later on Sachsenhausen near Berlin, and they built up these camps in a systematic manner, and they grow into what I have described before. In July 1937 Buchenwald was founded in the same way.
These three main camps at that time were units in themselves.
They were behind barbed wire. Then there was an area where the leaders would live, the SS leaders of the camp, and finally barracks would be added to them which housed the SS troops, and then there would be a SS settlement for those SS leaders who could not live in in the leader houses.
The concentration camps, slowly step by step, formed outside camps, and during the war, particularly after foreign countries had been conquered after 1939, the concentration camps spread in Germany and spread over a large part of Europe.
There were various types of camps within the SS administration. There were camps which were called labor training camps. There people had to serve only for a specified period of time. In some cases they were in the hands of the police, but more and more, especially after 1942, they were taken into the administration of the SS.
Then there were also the actual protective custody camps. These camps were divided into three categories, grades 1, 2 and 3. It depended on the harshness. That description had a very strongly technical, formal character, because the actual development of each camp depended on the character of the SS in charge there, and directives would come from the WVHA. This division into three grades was frequently changed, basically changed, so that it is not particularly interesting or significant. The important thing was to study the real, concrete conditions in a concentration camp.
Into those camps a large number of prisoners and types of prisoners were sent from the very beginning, from June 1934.
Before that time, the camps were almost entirely for political prisoners, mainly communists. From 1934 onwards, under the SS administration, more and more types and categories of human beings were being sent into concentration camps.
The main categories were political opponents of National Socialism who in the camp were given a red sign on their coats on the left side and on the right side of their trousers, and underneath there would be the number of the prisoner. A prisoner would never be called by his name but always had to report his number, and his number was called out when he had to report somewhere.
Then, the second category were so-called or real criminals. Here again within the criminal category there were a number of types. There were those criminals who had served their sentences and who normally would have been released. That type was then taken into protective custody for reasons of either alleged or real security. Those criminals were so-called prisoners in protective custody, and they were called "B.V's". They had a sign "B.V." which is frequently translated as "professional criminal".
The second category which came later on, after 1941 or 1942, were people who were still serving their sentences, who should have been under traditional administration, and if their sentence was at least ten years, then they were protective custody prisoners, "S.V." which was frequently interpreted as "heavy criminals." Among those people there were a number of political prisoners who for political reasons had been given heavy sentences of hard labor.
The third large category were called "anti-socials".
That category carried a black triangle, whereas the criminals had a green triangle. The so-called anti-socials were made up of a large number of varying types. You could become an anti-social very quickly as far as the SS and the Gestapo were concerned. People I saw among that type with with their black triangle had done nothing, except sacked their National Socialist butler or a National Socialist employee or had treated him incorrectly in the opinion of the employee, or people who had overstayed their leave, and the National Socialist manager who didn't like them had denounced them to the Gestapo, people who had changed their regular place of work without obtaining permission from the Labor Exchange. Such types were also tramps, pimps, people who did not want to pay alimony. All these people were sent to concentration camps and were called anti-socials. On the whole, they were people without political convictions or ideas, and they had not been active politically.
Then there was another category - Jehova's Witnesses. The International Association of Jehova's Witnesses opposed conscription and opposed the taking of oaths. For those reasons the National Socialists persecuted them. Families were broken up. Women were sent to women's concentration camps, and men to men's concentration camps. These people were in all the big camps. They consisted of groups up to 450, 500 or 600 men.
They carried a lilac triangle. Then there were homosexuals in the camp, or such people as the Gestapo or SS described as homosexuals. They thought they would use the homosexuals in order to contribute to their own complexes particularly by this manner. I myself recall a number of people in the camp who carried the pink triangle of the homosexuals. They were people not only of high intellectual standard, but morally speaking completely impeccable. They were purely charged with being homosexuals in order to get rid of them as political opponents, which they were at the same time in the eyes of the SS. The homosexuals suffered an awful fate in the camp so that very few of them survived it.
Then from 1939 onwards there were a large number of foreigners. At Buchenwald alone at the end there were members of at least thirty or thirty-one nations, in some cases only two or three members of that nation. Of course, the main percentage after 1942 were Poles, Frenchmen, a large number of Russians, still not prisoners of war, Russians and Ukrainians, some of whom had been taken from the population or used workers in Germany and were therefore sent to concentration camps. They carried all of them, all foreigners, the red triangle, and then they had a special name on their triangle. Spaniards would have an "S"; Italians an "I"; Czechs a "T"; French an "F"; Norwegians an "N", and so on.
From the beginning the SS had the tendency and carried it out to have all categories of prisoners and have these categories fight each other with the result that very strong conflicts would grow among the prisoners themselves, and you have to take into consideration here in most camps prisoners lived to the tune of 10,000 to a square mile, and there they had to live.
Only when they worked they would be separated more. Conflicts in some cases were unbearable almost, and the SS in the end abandoned its aim more and more for reasons of cooperation.
The SS was very clever in using certain categories of prisoners. It would be wrong to assume that all those who carried the red triangle in concentration camps as political prisoners were really political human beings. It would also be wrong that those with the green triangle were always criminals. The reasons why the Gestapo sent somebody to a concentration camp or why the SS kept people in a concentration camp or marked them in a special way were very different.
Q Now, Dr. Kogon, I think in your outline of the categories of the concentration camp prisoners you probably forgot to mention the inferior races, the Jews, the gypsies, to some extent the Poles.
A I mentioned at the beginning that one of the aims was to exterminate races which National Socialism called nationally inferior groups. To those were added those who were called nationally inferior tribes of people, gypsies, according to National Socialist concepts, at least according to a group of National Socialists, and eastern peoples, almost all eastern peoples, particularly the Poles and the Russians.
Q Witness, I don't know that it is terribly important, but the gypsies are a rather curious incident. Is it not true that the Jews - that the gypsies were a numerically rather few, that they could in no way constitute any sort of a political threat to the Nazi State? Can you give us any reason why the gypsies were persecuted by the Nazis?
A They were for the German police a so-called nuisance, and the gypsies could not be coped with otherwise than by sending then to concentration camps. That was the cheapest method in order to solve the Nazi's problem, which could have been solved in a businesslike manner. They preferred the liquidation method. The SS could easily cope with gypsies who had no way of offering resistance. They couldn't stand the labor and the conditions and the climate anyway. Many of the gypsies were used to migrating from country to country and so they were sent somewhere else. Nobody know how to cope with that nuisance, and so therefore they were liquidated in concentration camps.
Q Now, is the term "Rassenschande" familiar to you?
A Yes. Just now I did not describe all categories of inmates of concentration camps, only the main categories. Jews, for instance, carried a yellow triangle, and above the triangle there was another type of triangle which would describe their special category. For instance, a Jewish political prisoner had a red triangle above the yellow triangle. There were also prisoners there who had been convicted or been charged with violating the socalled Nuernberg Laws for the protection of German blood. They were called defilers of the race, and they carried a yellow triangle with another black triangle across it. It was simply a black triangle without any inscription inside.
Q Now, can you think of any specific acts for which a Jew or an Aryan would be incarcerated in a concentration camp for Rassenschande?
A It seems difficult for me to use these ridiculous National Socialist terms such as Aryan or Non-Aryan, etc.
After all Aryans were only a linguistic community, not a national community. Now, when a so-called German-blooded man had sexual relations with a Jewish woman, which became known to the masters of the Third Reich, he could be charged with having violated the Nuernberg Laws, and be sent to a concentration camp by the Gestapo for national solution, and vice versa if a Jew had an affair with a woman of so-called German blood.
Q Now you mentioned very briefly the external organization of a concentration camp a few minutes ago but I wonder if you could describe just once again quite clearly the physical way in which a concentration camp was organized?
AAt the head of each concentration camp there was a camp commandant. The camp commandant had the full authority in all spheres of the camp. He was subordinate to, after 1942, the WVHA or the SS, and before that time, if my information is correct, to the RSHA, the ReichsSecurity Main Office.
Q Wait just a minute. I think the translation was incorrect at that point. Didn't you state that if your information was correct just prior to the WVHA's assuming jurisdiction that the camp commandant was under the SSFuehrungshauptamt?
A Yes, the Reich Haupt and the Reichs-Security Main Office.
Q Now, will you continue with your description?
A Under the commandant there was an adjudant. The adjutant of the concentration camp had a double function. On the one hand, he was also subordinate to the higher police and SS leader in the district in which the concentration camp was located, and he also represented the traditional authority of the higher police officer on behalf of the SS.
