And, let us assume, for the sake of the question, that many hundreds of such subjects were killed as a result of such experiments. Would it have been physically possible for such a program to have been carried on and yet the knowledge of that fact be known only t the man at the top who gave the order and the man at the bottom who executed the order? Would not necessary agencies and officials in between the man at the top who gave the order and the man at the bottom who executed the order have known about these things?
A. Your Honor, you said that all kinds of organizational measures were necessary. For example, bringing up instruments and apparatus. Then a subordinate agency must have received orders to have delivered these things, to have delivered them to a certain place, or to deliver then somewhere. I can sider it quite possible that such intermediate agencies received such detailed assignments without knowing, or without having to know, for what purposes it was needed. There may be intermediate agencies which carried out particular assignment but where it was not possible to see from the assignment what it was about.
Q. You do not exclude the possibility, however, that those intermediate agencies under certain conditions may have known the reasons for the experiments or why they were being called upon to produce certain equipment and material, do you, Doctor?
A. That they did learn something, I mean that according to this presentation it is quite possible that they did not know anything because in view of the strict secrecy that existed - one must assume that a war was going on - and in view of punishment for breaking secrecy, and in view of repeated orders and Fuehrer orders which were posted in every barracks ana in every office, and there were all kinds of placards in trains, etc. In view of these circumstances everyone was allowed to learn absolutely what had to know.
I am of the opinion that an order may very well have been give for a particular action and that the organization, even if a comparatively high agency, would not know the purpose. May I give an example that has just occurred to me? I believe in connection with the chamber it Was learned her that the chamber was not delivered to Dachau at all but it was intentional delivered somewhere else to prevent it being made clear that it was to be taken to Dachau because the name Dachau had a certain special notoriety. That would fit into this question.
Q. What do you mean by notoriety?
A. I mean the normal German knew only one concentration camp by name, whether because it was the biggest or oldest, I don't know. But, with the name concentration camp, the normal German of any class associated the name Dachau.
Q. How long had that been going on in the German nation, doctor?
A. We were all surprised and I have already said that after the capitulation until the 23rd of June I was perhaps under observation but still at liberty, and that I was able to read newspapers and that l was able to carry on conversations and I was able to learn that, for example, names like Ravensbruck, Belsen, Buckenwald, and others were unknown to all of the people to whom I talked, even the highest leaders, and I was able to note about the following situation. On the whole, that is, people coming from various districts, the name Dachau was known, and the name Oranienburg. I should like to say that the name Oranienburg must be identical with Saxenhausen - that was the camp north of Berlins That was the knowledge of concentration camp in the broad mass of the German population. I assume that persons who live at Weimar knew the concentration camp at Buchenwald, similarly in other places. No doubt if Germans had seen the experiences as I have seen mapsand the same for Allies - there were dozens of concentration camps that everyone will be just as astonished as I.
Q. How long do you think that the German people knew of Dachau as being a notorious place? When do you think they first began to learn of that fact.
A. Perhaps I Aid not express myself right. Perhaps I should have said.
that Dachau was better known. I did not mean that there was anything wrong exactly. I merely meant to say that among the population if anyone said anything against a political person there was said, "Be careful, you will be send to Dachau." That did not mean anything especially was wrong about it, especially since assurance was repeatedly given that the people were treated not severely and they were kept in our field and hygienic field and there were exemplary conditions there. Later I heard something like that about Buchenwald, that accordingly everything was done, and whether it was in the hospital or in the whole camp or whatever it was that poor conditions began only as a direct affect of the air way, when, for example, instead of 10,000 there were suddenly 20 to 40,000 crowded there.
Q. At what time did that begin, Dr. Handloser, when the crowded condition began at Dachau, according to your knowledge?
A. I cannot give any exact indication about that. It is, no doubt, connected with the weakening of our front. I had the exact data on that but it was all taken away from me. Otherwise, every 50 kilometers the enemy advanced conditions became worse. Our hospitals were in the sane situation. They were overcrowded three, four, ten times because so much area was lost and we were forced to overcrowd the remaining hospitals. I cannot give any exact figures. That depended on the progress of the war.
Q. You think the knowledge of the condition of Dachau, that is, the overcrowded condition, may have become known to you in 1942-43, along in that period?
A. No.
Q. Later than that?
A. Yes.
Q. Can you say that it was in 1944?
A. Aside from the influence of the withdrawal of the front, the point the evacuation depended on the effects of the air war and I cannot say from my own experiences that that began in 1943 and that we Germans knew, and from American official reports know that November 1943; aside from the Rhineland, from the west which suffered from attacks much earlier, that this began and became more so in the section and in 1943.
Q. I have no further questions at this time, Dr. Nelte BY DR. NELTE:
Q. The questions which the Judge asked you were hypothetical, that is, assuming that what the Prosecution has presented is true, and that the experiments were criminal, now I ask for the approval of the Tribunal to ask a general question once more, because I must ask the defendant concretely about the fields of research with which he was concerned as Army Medical Inspector, so that you may see that the subject of the indictment was that experiments were conducted under his control too, but that he had nothing to do with those experiments which are the subject of the indictment. May I ask this question.
THE PRESIDENT: What is the question?
BY DR. NELTE:
Q. Will you please speak concretely and as briefly as possible and indicate the fields of research with which you were concerned as Army Medical Inspector?
A. I cannot give them briefly. There were quite a number of them but I can mention those which have any significance here. First the question of sulfonamides, I can only say that that was important with us since 1937, that we later had a central agency from 1941 on, which was especially interested in it, that was the special hospital of the OKH at Brussels, but I might almost say that all research workers, the specialists at the front, not only surgeons, but also bacteriologists and those especially interested in chemistry devoted special attention to this field, and that there was an unbroken chain of research workers beginning at the front and going deep into Germany, and that if one looks at the reports of our meetings, then one repeatedly finds the subject of sulfonamides, and finally one finds the fact that the question was not settled; that that is a subject, that was a field of research which was continued until the end of the war and beyond, and I personally after the invasion used special research troops in the West, only one of which actually came into action, and what we intended was no longer possible.
Q. What do you mean by "research troops"?
A. They were consulting physicians or specialists who had the assignment to establish special bandaging places at the front and treated the wounded in danger of gangrene with sulfanilamide and from the parts which had to be removed they took samples with them to the test tubes and tested them bacteriologically, and they carried out other experiments in test tubes, and they were not to let these wounded out of their hands, to pass them or to a different doctor every two or three days, but to follow them to a hospital in the west where these people are all collected and where in a large laboratory there is a possibility to complete this primitive research.
Q. Very well, that was the method of the research of the Army in the field of sulfonamides?
A. Yes, it was not completed with that, but I am supposed to be brief here.
Q. Now something else, which was mentioned here, hepatitis?
A. We have heard a great deal about hepatitis already, a field which was especially emphasized because it was new and it lasted until the last day of the war and was not completely settled, and as we heard -
Q. Just a minute. Where and how did you carry on research about hepatitis?
A. Now I must say something about research. One must distinguish between clinical research and laboratory or experimental research.
Q. Professor Gutzeit, I believe, has already told us that.
A. Therefore, I must tell you at the very front, operational areas, there cannot be any experimental research, but there can be clinical research, even in hospitals, which can be continued at home and that was what was done, and research on animals for experiments, that, of course, can only be done at home. Our workers, the consulting physicians did that, whether in the military sector or the civilian sector makes no difference, and other workers did the same.
Q. And concretely you were at the meeting in Breslau as Professor Gutzeit said?
A. Yes.
Q. What was the situation as far as you knew at the time as Army Medical Inspector, and what do you know about experiments which had been conducted up to that time and was anything said about whether others were to be done?
A. My knowledge is limited to the big meeting on internal medicine on the 13th and 14th of October, 1943, in Vienna, where only animal experiments were reported on, and at the Breslau meeting where only animal experiments were mentioned. I went to Breslau from headquarters, especially for that one there and listened to the meeting at which Schreiber presided, and I was glad that Schreiber had succeeded in getting all of these scientists together who were partly in the army and who were partly civilian, and that they had agreed to the work which Schreiber had suggested and the exchange of results from one group to another. Nothing was said about experiments on human beings in concentration camps at this meeting. The meeting was in June, 1944.
Q. Now, another field, how about malaria?
A. Malaria - a disease in which we were greatly interested, of course, not only because of Africa, but because of the Balkans and other areas. The most terrible nest of malaria which I myself saw was in Salonika where it was even worse than in a field of particular interest, in the Caucasus, where I looked at the malaria prophylaxis of the Russians. My malaria expert was Professor Rodenwald. He has his tropical hygiene institute in Berlin at the military medical academy. He had zoologists and entomologists at his disposal there who advised him and he had special malaria training groups which were to go to the front in Africa, Italy and the Blakans and to look for the cause of malaria and combat malaria and held courses for the doctors. A special laboratory train was created which was taken by rail to the worst places and several especially trained doctors helped the troops in their prophylactic measures.
In regard to malaria research we had a closed subject under Professor Rodenwald, who was a former military doctor. Before the war he was a Professor of Hygiene at Heidelberg, and our malaria question, as for as you would speak of it being completed, we had a very good prophylactic measure in atabrine, and for treatment through the new drug such as placimine. We had made considerable advance but I would not want it to be misunderstood, what I said before. The research was not completed and went on, and there were many problems to be solved, a certain advance had been reached from my point of view because I could issue an order regulating prophylaxis and treatment in order to prevent relapses.
THE PRESIDENT: There will be a recess of a few minutes at this time.
(A short recess was taken)
THE MARSHAL: Persons in the courtroom will please find their seats The Tribunal is again in session.
SIEGFRIED HANDLOSER - Resumed DIRECT EXAMINATION - (continued) BY DR. NELTE:
Q. Witness, we have previously spoken about the malaria experiments and research which the Army and the Medical Inspectorate handled. The Prosecution has not presented any evidence that it was connected in any way with the malaria experiments at Dachau. Since however, the Prosecution has claimed that in this respect, I must ask you the question: Did you or one of your offices have any connection with regard to the malaria experiments or with the experiments at Dachau which were there carried out by Dr. Shilling or by others?
A. No.
Q. Did you ever obtain knowledge of such experiments?
A. No.
Q. Now probably you will know from the field of your research, *** will have regularly received reports. What was the procedure?
A. Do you mean generally about research or about malaria in particular?
Q. Malaria, sulfonamides, and what yon have just stated, and all the other fields which we cannot mention and discuss because this could lead us too far.
A. I have received reports about this research in various ways. On one occasion through the consulting physicians who were personally participating in them or who were personally informed of them. Then, for example, through the Military Medical Academy or through their official reports which were frequently submitted to us. Also by lecture of individuals who visited me at Berlin and who reported about the state of affairs.
Q. Thus you received such reports from your field of competence. Now we have to determine how the field of your competence is correctly understood. We have already dealt with the question of the connection between the Wehrmacht Medical Service to the Waffen SS and we have determined that this concerned the frontal use of the SS. Now what were your connections to the Waffen SS in the Medical Service at home?
A. There were no connections whatsoever.
THE PRESIDENT: Counsel may inquire of the witness as to what reports concerning experiments he did receive, when he received the and from what branches of the service the reports came. I did not mean to restrict counsel's examination so strictly that he could not ask that question.
BY DR. NELTE:
Q. You have heard the question of the President. Will you please answer it?
A. In order to give a concrete example, for example, the Special Surgical Hospital at Brussels submitted the reports about its work directly to the Army Medical Inspectorate; then for the consulting physicians there was a report-collecting agency within the Military Medical Academy. First of all, all of the reports went there which the consulting physicians had to submit. They were there evaluated by the consulting physicians of the Army Medical Services,--evaluations about experiences and results or about questions which still remained open.
Q. Were they from the consulting physicians with the Military academy or from others?
A. Exclusively from the physicians of the Military Medical Academy. And finally, in an abbreviated form, before they were sent again to the front and at home, they also were brought to my attention. Or there were reports directly from the Military Medical Academy which also were sent to the Army Medical Inspector.
Q. Did you get the reports in other ways?
A. May I state with regard to the question of the President there were reports about work which had arisen within my field of competence as Army Medical Inspector.
Q. I then come to your connections to other fields. First of all to the Waffen SS at home. Did you know or did you have any official contact with the Armed Forces Institute for Research in the Ahnenerbe?
A. No, I did not even know that institute.
Q. Did you know the Hygienic Institute of the Waffen SS under Professor Mrugowsky?
A. I only knew that institute by name because before we were transferred from Berlin, I passed by the institute at Zohlendorf. I have never been inside. I did not have any contacts with it.
Q. Did you know the department for Typhus and Research in the Concentration Camp Buchenwald?
A. No.
Q. Were you yourself ever in the Concentration Camp Buchenwald?
A. No.
Q. Did you visit any other of these camps?
A. No.
Q. Now we come to one of the most important questions for you in this trial. On the basis of an entry in the Ding Diary it has been stated that Professor Eior, the Director of the Krakow Institute in Typhus and Dr. Bernhard Schmidt, of the Army Medical Inspectorate had visited the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Did you order such a visit?
A. No.
Q. Was this visit reported to you?
A. No. Only from the documents about the Ding Diary I have found out about it here in Nurnberg.
Q. Will you please explain that to us -- how this can be possible that this was not brought to your knowledge?
A. I cannot explain that because I don't know the reasons for the visit. Only the people concerned, Schmidt and Eior, can give you an information about that, or perhaps my Chief of Staff.
Q. Well, we shall question them as witnesses. According to this Ding Diary which I have already mentioned, by order of the Supreme Command of the Army, the Behring Works, the Robert Koch Institute, and the Typhus and Virus Research Institute at Krakow, are alleged to have been ordered to produce yellow fever vaccine. Now according to the entries in the Ding Diary, a re-examination of the yellow fever vaccine took place at Buchenwald. It is stated also from Krakow. What do you know about it?
A. With regard to the question for the order of producing such a vaccine, I assume that may have been the case because under conditions in Africa such a vaccine was necessary for us.
Q. Were you trying to find a yellow fever vaccine?
A. No, it was only a question of producing it. It was the procedure to produce such a vaccine which was simplified; it was only a technical production in the laboratory of the institute; the well known Peltier vaccine.
Q. The Ding Diary also mentioned the fact that shipments of lice, which had been infected with typhus, were sent to Buchenwald in order to infect people at Buchenwald, do you know anything about that procedure?
A. No.
Q. Mr. President, in this connection and in order to clarify the state of affairs, I shall submit Document HA-13 in Document Book Handloser 11 on page 23 and I want to present it as Exhibit 9. It is an affidavit by the defendant Dr. Hoven. At the time Dr. Hoven was in the concentration camp Buchenwald, as you may know and he has personal knowledge of the shipments of lice and to this question he states, and I read:
"The shipment of lice, mentioned on the Ding Diary and in the testimony of the witnesses Dr. Kogon and Kirchheimer, came from Dr. Haas, Lwow. I know this for certain because I informed Dr. Haas that the lice had been destroyed.
"I can therefore affirm, from my own knowledge, that the statements of the witnesses Dr. Kogon and Kirchheimer - Dr. Kogon was not yet with Dr. Ding at that time - that the lice shipments came from the OKH Institute at Cracow are based on a misconception."
I request that this affidavit be accepted as evidence, as Exhibit 9.
In the Ding Diary, the Weigel vaccine is frequently mentioned, because also the other vaccines which are mentioned in the diary frequently were used for re-examination; I want to ask you if this was also the case with regard to the Weigel vaccine?
A. Already in 1939, during the campaign in Poland, the army had its own typhus research institute at Cracow and it produced the typhus vaccine, which was taken from lice according to the Weigel method. This vaccine had already for many years before been tested in other countries and it had proved itself.
It had not only been tested in the laboratories and in experiments on animals, but generally it had been used as a preventative precautionary scheme. The army was producing this vaccine itself and there was no reason for so-called re-examination as it has been called here. This vaccine had been recognized in many fields.
Q. Where did Buchenwald obtain this vaccine?
A. I cannot say that but there was only one very simple way. If the Waffen SS wanted to obtain this vaccine for its units at the front, then it was delivered to the main medical camp of the Waffen SS, it was also delivered in the same way to other agencies and if the office of the Waffen SS Wanted to have some of this vaccine, they probably may have turned to the main medical depot at Berlin.
Q. I am now coming to the main question, to the question of the typhus discussion. For this purpose I now hand to you Document Book No. 12.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Nelte, before we pass on the next exhibit, will you have the witness state who Dr. Haas - H-a-a-s- was and with what official agency he was connected at the time, which according to Dr. Hoven these lice shipments came to the camp.
DR. NELTE, You have heard the question, witness; do you know Dr. Haas?
THE WITNESS: I do not know him personally, I only know that Dr. Haas was the director or a collaborator at a typhus research institute by the name of Behring. which toward the end of 1942 had been established at Lwow. The institution had nothing to do with the Wehrmacht and as far as I know Dr. Haas was not a member at the Wehrmacht and what civilian agency was his superior agency at this Behring Typhus Institute at Lwow, I cannot say. I always considered it to be an industrial and *******.
BY DR. NELTE:
Q Mr. President, there will be witnesses heard with regard to this question.
As I stated, this alleged typhus conference which you will find in Document Book 12 requires detailed explanation. Mr. President, it is Document Book 12, Page 36. Furthermore, the Prosecution in connection with this question has submitted an affidavit from the well-known Kapo Dietsch. This Document No. 1413 was subsequently submitted and I do not know its exhibit number by the Prosecution.
I therefore request that you read in Paragraph 6 what is stated about a discussion of Kapo Dietsch. There are two documents about this alleged discussion, page one of the Ding Diary and the affidavit by Dietsch. The Prosecution has not stated on what two Documents or which one of the two Documents if supports itself. Apparently, it is supporting itself on both. One mentions a discussion in November and the other one mentions a discussion of December 29th; now a preliminary question; do you know where you were on December 29th, 1941?
A. No, I cannot state that exactly. In connection with the date of December 29th, I only know that at the end of December, 1941, I certainly was at the headquarters and that for certain on the 31st of December, 1941, I was in the Headquarters - that was New Year's Eve. I cannot state with certainty if I was at the Headquarters on the 29th.
Q. I am asking the question in view of the 2nd entry on Page 1 of the Ding Diary, where it is stated in order to test typhus vaccine, the Concentration Camp Buchenwald has been chosen. It is not stated who selected the Concentration Camp Buchenwald, but with consideration to the fact that you are alleged to have been present at a discussion of December 29th, I would like to determine if it is at least clear that on the second of January you could not possibly have been at Berlin and it was impossible for you to take part in any conference.
A. On January 2nd I was certainly not in Berlin.
Q. I now ask you to state your opinion if such a conference which is mentioned in the Ding Diary under the dateline of the 29th of December 1941 actually did take place with the same circle of persons and with the same contents?
A. I heard the first time of this matter after I had been arrested and I heard of it in the interrogation center at Oberursul towards the end of September 1945. There the interrogator read to me excerpts from a document which, as far as I know now, contained several things which are also mentioned in the Ding Diary. In general it dealt with experiments in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp.
I had stated that I only got to know the name of Buchenwald after the capitulation, and at the same time that I had never visited Buchenwald, and that the things which had taken place there were unknown to me. Then the interrogator said that it was superfluous for me to deny that because they had a photograph from Buchenwald where I was shown together with the Reichsfuehrer and Conti; further more, they had a record from Buchenwald which I was alleged to have signed.
I then replied to the interrogator that this was not correct, and then he said that these documents were already on the way, and that they would be presented to me at the very latest on the following day. However, this never happened and ever since these difficult days in solitary confinement,-
MR. McHANEY: If the Tribunal please, first he asked him whether or not the meeting took place on the 29th of December 1941 and now we have listened for five minutes to the first time he heard about the meeting and what happened to him and who was going to present him with documents and so forth. I think it is all quite immaterial and I think if he would confine himself to directly answering the questions we would get along much faster.
DR. NELTE: May it please the Tribunal, I believe that the prosecution has not only devoted several hours to this fact, but several days, by reading all possible accusations.
THE PRESIDENT: Counsel may proceed with the examination.
Q. (By Dr. Nelte) Please continue.
A. Ever since I have naturally constantly occupied myself with this question. I can only state one thing in connection with it. That a conference in which that which has been presented here is alleged to have been planned, namely, to carry out illegal experiments on human beings, I have never participated in any such conference, and in connection with this I must state that I have naturally had discussions in the winter of '41 and '42 also with people from the civil medical service. That may have been Conti, and I probably also had discussions with Gildemeister. However, there the state of affairs was as follows: Toward the end of the year 1941 at the various places in the East, typhus began to appear to an increasing extent. There was no doubt that the number of cases was increasing.
The best remedy against typhus in itself is combatting lice. However, as a result of the surprise which was caused to us by the campaign in the East in June 1941 the medical service had not been able to carry out a delousing process behind the operation area ahead of time and also in the area of operations.
With the extension of the front in the East and in view of the fact that in the general government which formerly was Poland at Warsaw and other places, typhus occurred frequently the danger of a spending of the disease to the homeland became increasingly greater. That the cases of typhus began to increase is shown by the very high numbers which typhus unfortunately reached with us in the years 1942 and '43. That it played a particular part is also shown by the dates which are not known to me anymore about the lectures with the chief of the general staff, where, for example, I think it was in January or March 1942, already 10,000 and several hundred cases of typhus had been registered, and I believe that 1300 of these cases were fatal. And I am unable to state anymore at this time if I reported to Generaloberst Halder the total number of the cases as they had occurred, only about the number which had been reached during the previous few months.
Now, what was the preventive measure? We did have a vaccine which we were producing ourselves. However, we were very limited in its production. I can remember a number of 35,000 portions permonth, and it maybe that it is the number of December 1941. I had given the order that the production of this vaccine be increased at all costs. I can remember for certain that I had discussions about that subject at home and also that I probably have discussed it with Conti, and I am quite certain that I discussed it with Gildemeister.
I did this for a certain purpose and with a certain plan and I have to emphasize in this respect that I, as Army Medical Inspector, or even if I had already been the chief of the Wehrmacht Medical Service, which I was not at that time, I did not have any official influence on the civilian sector, I am of the opinion that at the time the question was first to describe the danger at home of this typhus situation at the front, which typhus might cause; and secondly, to also point out to them that the delousing procedure between the area of operations and the homeland had not been constructed to sufficient extent as yet or that it had only been established to quite an insufficient extent; and that during the winter period the chances were very slight that the construction could be improved.
Secondly, in my opinion, I have pointed out that we had a vaccine but only in such a limited extent that we were unable to give anything to the people at home except for some slight minor exemptions; and thirdly, I believe that I have asked Professor Gildemeister that all previous experiments by me to obtain information as to how actually the other typhus vaccine could be used -which was not one from lice but from chicken eggs -- by Professor Otto at Frankfurt, by the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, and also by the Behring Works at Marburg, that actually Schreiber and I had not succeeded in obtaining any clear information about it, where in general this vaccine was being used and how effective it was.
I can remember that Gildemeister -- I don't know if it was in December or some other time -- told me that the production was facing difficulties because 50% and more of the laid eggs which were needed for it were being lost, and that in any case he could not succeed in gaining a success of 50% with them.
Therefore, the vaccine which was produced by Otto in Germany and which later on was produced by a scientist by the name of Cox in the United States, what could be done with it with regard to its effectiveness, I could not obtain any information on that subject at all.
And I have certainly recommended to the men with whom I discussed this problem under consideration of the situation as it existed with us to do everything in order to now obtain this so far previously-lacking experience and to gain additional information. In my opinion, this could not cause any difficulties at all because in the civilian sector at that time good opportunities existed to carry out this test in areas in the East or in other regions where the danger existed and to test the matter.
Q. Now I want to come back to the question which now has to be put in such a way. Did you participate in any discussion with the circle of persons as it is stated in the Ding Diary?
A. No.
Q. Did you attend a conference which reached a resolution that, as the Prosecution has interpreted it, the typhus research was to be continued by carrying out experiments on human beings by infecting healthy people?
A. No.
Q. Was the vaccination of concentration camp inmates or prisoners from concentration camps discussed at all in the conferences?
A. No.
Q. In the course of such a discussion was your contact to institutes of the Waffen-SS, was it the subject of the discussions?
A. No.
Q. If I understand you correctly, your task was fulfilled when you pointed out the seriousness of the situation in the East to the Homeland and when you pointed out to them that the army by means of its institutes and its vaccines was unable to give any of it to the Homeland?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you know that paragraph 6 of the second document mentions the fact that Dr. Ding is alleged to have attended this circle of persons which is not mentioned in the Ding Diary itself? Have you discussed this question at any time with Dr. Ding?