Q. Suppose I put document No. 1753 to you. This will be marked as Prosecution Exhibit 482 for identification. This is another letter from Schilling. This one is dated a year later - 5 July 1943, acknowledging "with appreciation the receipt of you letter of 30 June and the consignment of antroparvus eggs."
I would also like to direct your attention, Professor, to the last paragraph of the letter where it says:
"Please tell Frl. Lange, who apparently takes care of her breed with greater skill and bettor success than the prisoner August, my best thanks for her troubles."
Do you remember the Christian name of the witness Vieweg?
A. No, I'am sorry I don't remember the name of this man.
Q. If you search the record I think you will find his forename was August.
Now, Doctor, apparently they completely ignored your orders of the year previous not to send any more material to Schilling. Apparently you had a change of heart yourself. Isn't that right?
A. I have already stated expressly that my orders not to send any more material to Schilling meant that we did not have too much material ourselves. It did not mean that I had any misgivings about the way in which Schilling was carrying out his work. It is quite possible that when we again had plenty of mosquito eggs we gave some to Schilling again. I am in a very difficult position. It is difficult for me to testify anything from my memory. You see here again that this matter was apparently dealt with by Fraulein Lange and Schilling himself wrote to me again.
Q. Well, I didn't read it that way, Professor. The first line acknowledges of your letter of June 30th.
A. Well, then it's possible that I wrote to Schilling.
Q. Frau Block suffered a bad memory about your correspondence with Schilling in 1943 as well as 1942, didn't she?
A. Yes, I am rather astonished because one would assume that a secretary remembers such things better, but it of course, possible to make mistakes if one doesn't access to the files. I have told you that I cannot testify with any certainty to the details of suck correspondence because I had too much correspondence.
Q. Well, isn't it possible you supplied material to him in 1944?
A. I consider that quite impossible. We have the testimony of Fraulein von Falkenhayn that the Department for Fever Therapy never gave them any material and, at that time, I did not have any office in Berlin any longer, but again I must rely on Fraulein von Falkenhayn's testimony. I myself was at pfaffenrode once a month at the most, and I called up once or twice a long distance.
Q. I put in Document NO. 1755. This will be marked Prosecution Exhibit 489 for identification. This is a reply by you to Schilling, dated 27 July 1943. This letter specks about shipping eggs to Schilling, doesn't it?
A. Yes, apparently. There must have been plenty of mosquito eggs so that we could give up some of them.
Q. There wasn't as big a shortage as you thought, is that right?
DR. FRITZ: Mr. President, I ask that the photostat be shown to the defendant Rose. It is not impossible that that was written by an assistance and initialed "R". Since I know the signature of Professor Rose; I think the "R" looks a little different.
Perhaps he might be shown the photostat.
THE PRESIDENT: Let the photostat be shown to the witness.
WITNESS: I must say I do not understand this signature at all. When I signed a letter I signed my name, but I don't think it's very important.
BY MR. McHANEY:
Q. When you were shipping these eggs to Schilling in Dachau it was after the time you had heard the lecture by Rascher and Holzloehner in October, 1942, in Nurnberg on freezing, wasn't it?
A. The dates of those letters were after Holzloehner's lecture, yes. Holzloehner's lecture was in October, 1942, to my knowledge. But perhaps you might say what conclusions you draw from that. Do you mean that Holzloehner and Schilling worked together? That one could have concluded anything from Holzloehner's work that would affect Schilling? Is that you conclusion? That, of course, would be quite unjustified I would be glad if you would explain your question.
Q. Doctor, I don't think it is too strange to say that a man who had, at least, received from information about how they carried out experiments in Dachau, even though on a different subject, might raise some suspicion in an average person's mind about just who the experimental subjects were down there and how they were treated?
A. I knew Mr. Schilling so many years. I met him for the first time in 1922, and I knew his reputation in international medicine and there was not tho slightest occasion for to draw any conclusions affecting Professor Schilling's work from the activity of Mr. Holzloehner who never told me that he had any connection with professor Schilling's work.
Q. Have you told the Tribunal yet about your visit to the Natzweiler concentration camp?
A. No, that was not possible. I never visited the Natzweiler camp.
Q. Well, as I recall, you told me on the 31st of October that you visited Natzweiler in connection with Haagen's work in producing typhus vaccines. Is that correct?
A. That is absolutely incorrect. I never told you that I visited Professor Haagen's hygiene institute in Strasbourg twice, but I never visited the Natzweiler camp.
Q. When did you visit Strasbourg?
A. In Strasbourg as far as I remember I was in the middle of 1943, I can't give the date of the second visit so exactly. It was probably in 1944.
Q. What about the first visit?
A. Since I don't have the material on it I can't state the date exactly. Fraulein Schmidt said it was in June or July, but that is the only indication that I have. It is very difficult for me to set the time. In the files which are available to me here there is nothing from which I could conclude the date of this visit. I merely know that there were two visits to Strasbourg.
Q. One was in the year 1943 and the other in the year 1944? Is that right?
A. As far as I can remember, yes.
Q. What was the occasion of the first visit?
A. That was the discussion of whether Professor Haagen was to resume the function of a consulting hygienist because after he had become a professor at Strasbourg he had stopped all activity for the Luftwaffe.
He had a shortage of hygienists and when I mad an official trip to France I was given the assignment to stop on the way in Strasbourg and balk to professor Haagen about it - about whether he wanted to resume working as a consulting hygienists in addition to his other work. I have already told about that in my direct examination.
Q. And he decided to resume his work with the Luftwaffe and you got an assignment of funds for him from the Luftwaffe, didn't you?
A. He declared himself willing to become a consulting physician in addition to his other work and he also spoke of his wish to obtain a research assignment. So far as I know, he did not have any research assignment about typhus yet he wanted to have a new research assignment which means that he wanted to have more money. This research assignment is mentioned in one letter.
Q. Well, that is quite all right. I can remember that. You got an assignment of unds, didn't you?
A. No, I did not have any influence on the issuance of research assignments but, as the letter shows, Mr. Haagen inquired of me how the negotiations about his research assignment were going on and I inquired of the inspectorate and I told him how the negotiations were.
Q. I don't suppose that Haagen explained to you just exactly how he was going to conduct his research and what he was going to do during the course of it?
A. No, we discussed his position in general on the problem of typhus research, and as I have already testified in direct examination, he explained to me that he did not consider the killed vaccines effective enough and that he wanted to work more far Berlin along the lines of Sparrow-Blanc-Legres, that is with living avirulent vaccines, and he worked on this line. I have already testified yesterday as to what I know about this work.
Q. Did he tell you that he was going to carry out infection experiments to test these vaccines?
A. That he intended to carry out infection experiments I did not know, but it was a matter of course that if he wanted to work with living avirulent vaccines he would have to perform tolerance experiments, because that is the decisive experiment, if such a thing even developed far enough by means of animal experiments.
Q. lie understand he would have to vaccinate somebody, but I am putting the question to you, if he did not explain to you that after he vaccinated the person with either a dead vaccine or avirulent, that he was going to try to bring about a typhus infection in the vaccinated person to test the efficacy of the vaccine itself?
A. I did not know that. I do know as I explained yesterday, that he was dealing with research questions. The reaction to the living avirulent vaccines he wanted to weaken by vaccination first with dead vaccines and then performing a second vaccination with living avirulent vaccine. The reason was to reduce the vaccine reaction.
Q. Doctor, is it not true that to produce or experiment with this avirulent vaccine that Haagen needed some new laboratory equipment? I think you have already mentioned refrigeration.
A. For these experiments he did not need any new equipment, there were such small quantities. He was quite capable of managing that with the available equipment, but he did need more laboratory equipment for the production of vaccine.
The Medical Inspectorate of the Luftwaffe repeatedly asked him for and they hoped that they would get their own production place in that way. That meant installations for rabbit cages, a temperature regulation, installations to maintain regular temperatures, and humidity in the stalls, -- air conditioning. That was a very expensive thing. It cost several thousand marks, and the purpose was the following: Haagen wanted to produce vaccine from rabbit lungs, because he considered this the most economical procedure. For producing this vaccine one has to cause inflammation of the lungs in the rabbits with typhus. These inflammations of the lungs can be caused only if the rabbits are kept at a certain temperature, I believe that is 8 degrees Celsius, and since this temperature is not normally available, this air conditioning equipment was needed for the rabbit cages. That had nothing to do with the experiments.
Q. Did the name Schuhmach??? mean anything to you?
A. Yes, I have heard that name.
Q. You heard it before you were a defendant in this case?
A. I cannot definitely remember it, but it is possible.
Q. You knew it to be a concentration camp?
A. As I said I cannot remember it definitely whether I heard it at all, and of course I do not know whether the name was mentioned in connection with concentration camps.
Q. When did you first learn that Haagen was conducting experiments on concentration camp inmates?
A. That Haagen was performing experiments on concentration camp inmates? I don't believe that even today, but that he carried out vaccinations in concentration camps, I knew that. When I first learned it I can't say today, probably in 1943.
Q. Well, you remember the letter in December 1943?
A. I certainly must have known it by then, because there I refer to it.
Q. Well, did you know about this sordid occasion when Haagen had lg men who had been assigned to him die on transport?
A. I never learned anything about that. I learned of that from t he files, and I never knew that prisoners were especially taken to these concentration camps in order to be vaccinated.
Q. What would you have done if you had of known about it; Wouldn't that have given you an indication that maybe things were not so nice in the concentration camp, or maybe proper care wasn't being taken of the inmates in these experiments?
A. If I had learned anything about it I probably would have reacted exactly as Haagen did, as can be proved by the documents he wrote to the SS office, that one cannot conduct any experiments of any consequences on such unfortunate people. The record is in the records here. If I had learned about it I would probably have reacted in exactly the same way, perhaps more violently.
Q. Well, I should have hoped so.
A. I beg your pardon. I didn't understand you.
Q. I should have hoped you would have reacted somewhat more violently than Haagen apparently did.
A. That is possible. Our temperaments are different.
Q. You recall Miss Eyer testified Haagen sent reports every three months to the Medical Inspector of the Luftwaffe, do you agree to that testimony?
A. I heard the testimony. Yesterday in my direct examination I commented on it. If Haagen had reported every three months I certainly wouldn't have forgotten it. I had many things on my mind during the war, but such an exemplary condition of reporting would certainly have impressed itself on my memory. It is quite out of the question that the Medical Inspectorate received a report from Haagen every 3 months. I said yesterday that I consider Fraulein Eyer's testimony quite credible because in view of the number of offices with which Haagen was in connection, and from which he received reports there were so many reports and accounts necessary that it is a marvel that Fraulein Eyer didn't say she had to write a report every month.
I explained with the aid of the documents what obligation to report resulted from the documents alone. You probably haven't had an opportunity to read the record yet, but as soon as the record is ready you will be able to see that. I don't think there is any purpose in holding up the proceedings with that any further.
Q. And you are quite clear that Haagen never suggested to you that he was going to carry out infection experiments with typhus after vaccination?
A. That is not known to me.
MR. McHANEY: Let's have a look at Document NO 1059. This will be marked as Prosecution Exhibit 490 for identification.
Q. Now, will you please read this letter aloud in a loud and resonant voice?
A. Perhaps I may see the photostat.
Court I Case 1 (The Medical)
Q. Will you read the letter aloud, please?
A. (Reading) "29 November 1943 -- Registered "To Oberstarzt Professor Dr. Rose.
"Inspectorate of the Medical Service of the Luftwaffe "Saalow (Post Office Zossen-Land) "Dear Mr. Rose:
"Enclosed I am sending you the report about our experiments with dehydrated typhus vaccine which I had promised you several days ago. As I intend to publish the findings, I have written the report already in manuscript form. I ask that, after having been reviewed, it be submitted to the competent authorities for their approval of its publication in the 'Zentralblatt fuer Bakteriologie" (Central Periodical for Bacteriology).
"One hundred persons from a local concentration camp were put at my disposal for immunization and subsequent infection. Unfortunately these people were in such a poor physical condition that eighteen of them had already died during transport; the remainder were likewise in such bad physical shape that they could not be used for inoculation purposes. In the mantime I have requested 100 additional persons from the SS Main Office (Hauptamt), who, however, should be in normal physical and nutritional condition, so that the experiments can be carried out on material which at least approaches the physical condition of our soldiers.
"For the time being we will concentrate on an epidemic culture in the form of a virus, which we have received from Giroud in the meantime. This seems to be a very good culture.
"With best regards, "Heil Hitler !"Yours -"Enclosure:
one report."
And no signature.
This is the matter which I discussed yesterday. The plan of Mr. Haagen to test the inoculation reactions to his living and avirulent dry vaccine by pre-vaccination with dead Vaccine to weaken the reaction.
That is the same matter.
Q. I thought you said about two minutes ago that you didn't know of the incident where eighteen of the inmates put at Haagen's disposal had died during transport.
A. Yes, that's true. That's what I said, and I had forgotten about it. I thought that I had learned it for the first time from the records. If I had remembered it, I would, of course, not have exposed myself by denying it. But now I sec this letter. It is obviously a carbon copy. I must assume that on the 25th of November 1943 the mail w .s still rather normal. I must assume that I received the letter. Since a report is mentioned, which I was to deal with and was apparently one of Haagen's papers on his dry vaccine, on which my knowledge is based and on account of which I Can give any information here at all as to Haagen's experiments. This knowledge goes back to those papers of his.
Q. It would appear that in spite of your fiery temperament your reaction was even less significant than Haagen's himself doesn't it?
A. Since I was not concerned in the matter, since it was something between Haagen and the concentration Camp, there was no reaction in this case. If somebody else tells mo that he has had direct contact with abuses, then there is no occasion for me to interfere, since that is settled between two persons concerned. I had nothing to do with the concentration camps. I did not have to carry out any inoculations there.
Q. And you insist that the words, "one hundred persons from a local concentration camp were put at my disposal for immunization and subsequent infection" really don't mean subsequent infection at all but a subsequent immunization?
A. With the living and avirulent dry vaccine, yes.
Court I Case 1 (the Medical)
Q. Well, that is certainly an inarticulate way of saying that, isn't it?
A. This is correspondence between exports, and they know what it's about.
Q. You state yourself that you are still not sure exactly what Haagen did, although you were down there in the middle of 1943 and got him back on the payroll of the Luftwaffe and you knew he was staying at the laboratory and you knew no was going to work on typhus vaccines, but you now sit here and say you don't know exactly what he was doing.
A. Yes, that is true. I have given considerable information about Haagen's work here, and I have gone to considerable pains to get that all together; but of course I can't give you complete information, simply because all these experiments were not under our direction and under our supervision.
Q. Herr Professor, the first time tho question of subsequent infection came up was in a letter dated 1944 and you spent tho best part of a day rationalizing "subsequent infection " as meaning something entirely different, that it was simply a subsequent vaccination, after tho man had already been vaccinated by tho load vaccine. Now, if you were told on the 39th of November, 1943, that ho was going to carry cut immunization and subsequent infection experiments, you certainly would have known as a matter of fact what he was doing, and you would not need to speculate on this stand as you did yesterday. These words are entirely susceptible to the moaning that they mean exactly what they say.
A. At this stage of his experiments Haagen did not have a fully-developed vaccine yet. He was working exclusively on the problem of weakening the reaction to this living virulent vaccine. That was the problem that ho was dealing with at the end of 1943 and tho beginning 1944. And ho was looking for various methods of achieving this.
Q. What did ho mean in tho last paragraph when ho says, "For the time being, we will concentrate on an epidemic culture in the form of a virus, which we have received from Giroud in the meantime"?
A. That means that up to that time he had worked with a murine strain and that now for the development of tho dry vaccine he wanted to use a strain of rickettsia prowazeki too.
Q. Well, I now want to point out to you again that I an having considerable difficulty in construing tho word "infection" to mean vaccination.
A. Yes, I admit that many of these documents are written in a confusing way, but I believe that I can remember tho whole matter adequately enough that I know what tho problem is. The vaccine was not developed so far that it could be used in vaccination without reaction , and to determine the effect . There were strong fever reactions and the problem was how to avoid this fever reaction.
Q. Well, why call that infection?
A. That is a similar condition biologically. An injection of a living , a virulent vaccine, from the biological point of view, is an infection. This express ion is used often enough, but it is an infection which one can absolutely control.
Q. And after receipt of this letter you then wrote him on tho 3rd of December --- and this is Document NO-122, Exhibit 298, page 79 of Book 12 -- you sent him the Copenhagen vaccine, the, didn't you, and asked him to test it in his experiments on his concentration camp inmates, didn't you, just as they did in Buchenwald , as you put it?
A. I bog your pardon?
Q. You sent him tho Copenhagen vaccine after receiving this letter of 29 November and asked him to test that in his experiments on concentration camp inmates.
A. Then this discussion of tho Copenhagen vaccine took place Haagen was specially interest in it, because it was a murine vaccine; and since he could not control fever reaction with the murine vaccine, yet, ho succeeded in that only at the beginning of 1944 by storing tho vaccine for a considerable time, ho was no longer interested in this Copenhagen vaccine.
But at the and of 1943, when he still had tho same difficulties as Blanc with tho reactions with the living murine vaccine he was considerably interested in tho Copenhagen vaccine. For it was tho only vaccine from murine virus available in Europe at the time.
Q. You sent it to him , told him to test it just like they did in a series of experiments in Buchenwald, didn't you?
A. I don't remember that.
Q. Well, you remember mentioning Buchenwald to Haagen in your letter of 3 December 1943.
A. Oh, that's what you mean. Yes, I pointed it out as a parallel, because several vaccines wore tested in Buchenwald for their effect against infection, and since Haagen in Strassbourg wanted to test various vaccines for their reaction effect.
Q. You sent that Copenhagen vaccine to Buchenwald also to be tested?
A . No.
Q. As I recall, your witness, Frau Block, said this Copenhagen vaccine didn't go to Haagen.
A. Frau Block testified that she sent tho Copenhagen vaccine to various places. She did not mention Professor Haagen. As to Copenhagen vaccine, as far as I remember, I would say say from my own memory that I sent this vaccine only to Professor Schreiber.
Frau Blomk has said that she apparently on my instructions sent this vaccine to various other agencies.
DR. FRITZ: Mr. President, I must go back to document No.-1059 Mr. McHaney just said, After you received this letter and so forth. If the Persecution wants to prove that Professor Rose actually did receive the letter, then I must object to the document, because, I have looked at the photostat. It was obviously a carbon copy and has no signature. There is no certification that it was sent out or received. It could be a draft of a letter which was never sent.
MR. MCHANEY: I understand the witness admitted he received it, or at least influentially..
DR. FRITZ: The defendant said he could not remember this letter.
WITNESS: I merely expressed the assumption that in view of the mail conditions at the time, the letter must have reached me, assuming, of course, that it was mailed. But as I said, even if it was sent. I can see nothing to object to in the contents.
BY MR. MCHANEY:
Q Do you deny having received the letter?
A I can neither admit it or deny it. In the case of all cf these letters which were sent out years age nobody can testily under oath that he received or wrote a certain letter. A man can do that for whom a letter is a big event, but not somebody who has a large correspondence and who has no way today of consulting his own files to see whether these letters are there.
THE PRESIDENT: Sc far the letter has merely been marked, for identification. It has not yet been offered in evidence.
BY McHANEY:
Q At this meeting in May 1943 when you objected to the experements by Ding, can we take it that the persons present at this meeting knew that the experiments had been carried out on concentration camp inmates?
A From Dr. Ding's lecture they certainly could not conclude that.
To what extent during my protest I gave details about the experiments I don't remember. From the testimony of one of the witnesses, I can say that I apparently was not quite clear, because Professor Schnell in his affidavit says when we where wispering to one another that they might be experiments in concentration camps, That is a sign that at least this witness, Professor Schnell, did not conclude that definitely from what I said. What conclusions the other listeners gathered from that discussion I cannot, of course, s y. No doubt all of them were impressed by the assurance that the subjects were criminals who had been condemned to death. This assurance was given to the assembly once more, and criminals who had been condemned to death are net normally inmates of concentration camps. They have to be taken to the concentration camp from the court prison whore they they wait for confirmation of the verdict, so that the experiments can be carried out. Hence I would assume that Mr. Schnell in his assumption was an exception, and that the majority of the listeners did not believe that they were prisoners from concentration camps; but as I soy that is merely an assumption, because no one talked to me on this points, as to details about experiments on persons condemned to death. Some people agreed with my point of view, that one should avoid such experiments, while other people said that from the ethical point of view that there was no objection to such experiments.
Q You visited Buchenwald on 17 March 1942, with Professor Gildemeister, is that right?
A I cannot confirm the date from my own knowledge. I took this date from the so-called Din Diary. I could decide the time of my presence at Buchenwald only from Ding's work, in as much as I can say in regard to the favor charts that at that time of the first visit I was in Buchenwald, but what day and what month it was I cannot say from my own knowledge.
Q And you were just grin there to satisfy your curiosity about these experiments which Gildemsiter had told you about, is that right?
A. I wouldn't call that curiosity exactly. There were various motives. One was that it was the invitation of my superior who wanted to convince me that my objections were not justified; that the experiments were in a permissible form; and then there was a certain professional interest; since such an experiment Was taking place anynow, I, as a hygienist, was interested in the results. There were various motives.
Q. Did you or Gildemeister assist Ding in any way in carrying out these experiments?
A. Did I understand you correctly, whether I helped Gildemeister or Ding?
Q. No, whether you or Gildemeister helped Ding?
A. Ding was not there at all. He was sick. He had typhus and was in a hospital somewhere. In infecting the prisoners he had infected himself. Whether Gildemeister, as Ding's diary assorts, helped infect the patients I don't Know. I was not there. I did not even Know that Gildemeister had been in Buchenwald before. He didn't tell me that. At least I don't remember it, and during the visit when I was there nobody was infected at all. It was at least two weeks, or three weeks at the most, after the infection. These people were at the height of their fever. There was nothing to be infected. One could only go through the wards and look at the clinical picture of the disease of the persons with severe cases in the control cases, and the lighter cases among those vaccinated. That is something I have already described during the direct examination, and as the basis of my remark, in 1943, and what I said in my lecture in Basle on 17 February, 1944, when I talked about Ding's experiments, and said that the clinical impression is much stronger than the statistics expressed.
Q. Who escorted you around while you were in Buchenwald?
A. That was an SS doctor, who as far as I remember, had the rank of an oberarzt, or a obersturmfuehrer in the SS, that is the one fact which I believe I remember with a certain degree of certainty but that was only one meeting with the man. I was not very strongly impressed by this person because the demonstration of all important data in the experimental building were not performed by doctors but by prisoners working in the laboratory. They had all of the charts and the records of clinical data, and they explained the thing to mo. The doctor himself did not participate and I sat at the table and looked at the various records and then I said that it was very difficult to look at these 140 or 150 fever charts and compare all of them, and over night these gentlemen made up average curves for me, so that on the next morning one could get a clearer impression of the course of the experiment and the prisoners who were working there demonstrated these things to us again the next morning.
Q. Did you see Hoven while you were there?
A. Dr. Hoven has already asked me about that but I cannot give any definite information. In any case when I saw him here for the first tine in prison I did not recognize him. I did not remember his name either. And if one sees Mr. Hoven, the general impression is that he is a dark type and ay recollection is more that this Oberarzt was a nan about my size. Hoven is quite a bit shorter than I and he was not so definitely dark as Hoven but he was rather lighter. But I cannot say for certain whether he had blue or brown eyes; I am quite uncertain. I cannot say anything positively or negatively. I cannot say with certainty that I did not see Mr. Hoven nor can I tell you with certainty that I remember seeing Mr. Hoven. But that would probably be the case with all the people whom I met at that time. I do remember one of the prisoners because he was especially noticeable. He was something of a hunchback. He was a rather intelligent man and I talked with him a long time. I had the most to do with him. He was probably the man who knew the most about all the things. He was a prisoner, not an SS man.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will be in recess until 9:30 tomorrow.
(The Tribunal adjourned until 0930 hours, 25 April 1947.)