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.)
Official Transcript of the American Military Tribunal in the matter of the United States of America, against Karl Brandt, et al, defendants, sitting at Nurnberg, Germany, on 25 April 1947, 0930, Justice Beals presiding.
THE MARSHAL: Persons in tho court room will please find their seats.
Tho Honorable, the Judges of Military Tribunal 1. Military Tribunal 1 is nor in session. God save the United States of America and this honorable Tribunal.
There rill be order in tho courtroom.
TEE PRESIDENT: Hr. Marshal, you ascertain if the defendants are all present in the court.
THE MARSHAL: May it please your Honor, all the defendants arc present in tho court.
THE PRESIDENT: The Secretary-General rill note for the record the presence of all the defendants in court.
Counsel may proceed.
PR. FROWSCHMANN: (Counsel for the Defendant Brack): With tho agreement of the prosecution, Mr. President, I ask the permission that Viktor Brack be freed from attending this afternoons session because ho must conduct preparations with me for tho case which is coming up.
THE PRESIDENT: Do I understand that counsel asks the Defendant Brack be excused from this afternoon session after tho recess?
DR. FROESCHMANN: Yes, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: Upon request of counsel for the Defendant Viktor Brack that he be excused from attendance before the Tribunal this afternoon there will be no recess this afternoon. Do you mean the recess this morning.
or excused from attendance during the afternoon's session?
DR. FROESCHMANN: No, I ask that the Defendant Brack be excused from this afternoon's session so that I can prepare his case.
THE PRESIDENT: Upon request of counsel for Defendant Brack that he be excused from attendance before the Tribunal f or this afternoon's session, tho request is granted. Defendant Brack may be excused from attendance before the Tribunal this afternoon.
DR. FROESCHMANN: Then with the permission of the prosecution I should like to make a further question could the President tell mo whether the Tribunal has received my application I put in on the 11th of April, concerning submission of tho record since I have so far received no information upon that?
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal has received the request of counsel for the Defendant Viktor Brack, and the Tribunal adheres to its farmer ruling, that tho stenographic notes which counsel requests to examine nay not be consulted by tho Defendant Brack or his counsel; but when tho Defendant Brack takes the stand, if in the course of tho examination it should appear necessary or proper that these notes be examined, the Tribunal will then reconsider tho request to determine whether or not the notes than may be produced in court.
GERHARD ROSE - Resumed CROSS EXAMINATION (Continued) BY MR. MCHANEY:
Q May it please the Tribunal.-Herr Professor, going back to your interpretation of tho word infection in Haagen's letters, I would like to ask you if you didn't testify before this Tribunal, with respect to the testimony of the witness Eyer, that hr.
Hardy had indeed done a ridiculous thing when ho put the question to her whether she had not meant avirulent typhus virus, rather than avirulent typhus vaccine? And then didn't you go on to say, after she had answered, that she meant avirulent typhus virus? You stated what before had referred to vaccinations had now suddenly become infections. Isn't that exactly what you are trying to do now with the word infection used by Haagen? Instead of moaning what it says, you want to tell the Tribunal it moans vaccinations?
A No, Hr. prosecutor, I believe there is a rather substantial difference. The witness during her examination by the prosecution spoke of a living vaccine and always used the expression "vaccine". Then at the end she was asked whether instead of vaccine she didn't moan a virulent virus. And since she affirmed this question this changed the contents of all her testimony. The injection of a living avirulent virus is just as much an infection as the injection of alliving virulent virus. The difference resides in the fact that one of them is an infection that can be controlled, namely, the infection with avirulent virus that is used as a vaccine. Whereas, when virulent virus is injected, the subsequent developments cannot be controlled but arc up to date. Of course, excepting the ease that the persons concerned was vaccinated in some way before being injected with the virulent virus. For instance, this happened in the experiments of Blanc and Balthasar where they first infected the subjects with a living avirulent virus which could be designated as a vaccination, and then subsequently they infected with a virulent strain the previously vaccinated persons which did not fall ill because they believed the effects of their vaccines were certain enough that they could undertake this infection with virulent virus.
You will find the same procedure described by Vantemilas in American literature, who tested Zinzer's typhus vaccine. He also first injected the vaccine and afterwards infected with virulent virus in order to test the degree of immunity. You cannot compare a vaccine with a virulent virus, but biologically speaking the injection of a living avirulent vaccine is an infection, that can be seen from the fact that when you vaccinate against small-pox, that, too, is infection with cowpox vaccine, and for ten days after the small-pox vaccination,you can still extract that virus and breed it again from the blood of the person vaccinated, and indeed the virus has actually increased in intensity in the subject's blood. This can be seen only in Strong's experiments who after the inoculation again extracted from the tissue of the experimental animals. These experiments were tried out on animals and not on human beings, - as I say, extracted the virus from their blood and bread them again. In other words, there was an infection, although it was not a typical illness. The plague in the normal form did not develop.
Q Professor, we, I think, all understand, although we don't have the status of an expert as you, that a vaccination with an avirulent vaccine brings about a minor infection; but I just wanted to observe that you berated Mr. Hardy rather severely for having confused "infection" with "vaccination." That is the word you used, and I submit to you that that is exactly what you are now doing with r aspect to the word "infection" used by Haagen; and I further put to you that the talk of infecting with the faccine is a bit of nonsense.
A I said before that first of all I did not make Hardy appear ridiculous, but that I pointed out that he had confused the concepts "virulent virus" and "avirulent living vaccine," and had used the one for the other. These are two concepts that cannot be interchanged; whereas, the expressions "vaccinate" and "infect" can be exchanged with the avirulent virus; and you, yourself, said that you knew that the use of avirulent living vaccine is a form of infection.
Q Well, I think we have perused this point far enough, Herr Professor. Let's go back to your visit to Buchenwald in March 1942. Did you talk to any of the inmates who were the subjects of these experiments which you saw there?
A I cannot recall having talked with tho experimental subjects. Most of them were seriously ill. Two experimental subjects were brought to me, one after the other, who were not sick, which I already mentioned. They had gone through their typhus sickness before being sentenced in the pre-trial prison, but again I cannot recall that I actually spoke with these two persons. So far as I recall, I spoke with the doctor in charge and didn't speak very much with him either. I spoke, for the most part, with the prisoners who were working on this whole material in the laboratory. That is the way I remember that visit today.
Q So we can assume that you didn't ask any of the subjects if they had volunteered or if they had been condemned to death; or if they had been condemned to death, for what crime? Is that right?
A I certainly did not conduct any such conversation, or at any rate, I cannot recall any.
Q When did you first meet Ding?
A I cannot remember any personal conversation with Dr. Ding where we talked together. I certainly must have seen Ding when he read his paper at the consulting conference, and then it can be seen from the documents that Ding was present at tho dedication of the Typhus Institute at Lemberg. There is mention of an official trip for that purpose, and on this occasion, I read a paper on delousing. This paper is mentioned in my list of publications and was published in the Reich Health Paper. Since the number of those who participated in this typhus conference at the occasion of the dedication of the institute was not very large, perhaps 100 or 150, I must really have seen Ding on this occasion, that is, if the entry in the diary is correct; but I cannot remember it and I certainly didn't speak with him then.
Q And those are the only two personal contacts which you had with Ding?
A Those are the only two times in which I can remember having had personal contact with Ding.
Q Did you ever correspond with him?
A I can recall no direct correspondence nor any indirect correspondence through official channels with Ding.
Q Now, Professor, I am having some difficulty with these entries in the Ding Diary. On Page 39 of Document Book No. 12, with which I am sure you are familiar, we find the experimental series. That is, in the entry for 9 August '42, we have a description of the research series No. II, in the course of which 20 persons were vaccinated with the vaccine cantzcuzino, which was made available by Professor Rose, who received it from Navy Dr. Professor Ruge from Bucharest. And on the next page, you will see that subsequently, all the experimental persons were infected with typhus, and that as a result of the experiment, four persons died. Now isn't it a fact that you made this vaccine available to Ding for that series of experiments?
A I have already discussed this question in my direct examination. I pointed out that those with whom Ding was corresponding on typhus questions have been listed by two witnesses; namely by Dr. Kogon and by Dr. Balachowski, whose testimony is to be found in an affidavit. Neither witness mentioned my name among those with whom Ding was corresponding, but both witnesses do mention Dr. Ruge as one of the persons with whom Ding was in correspondence. I also discussed this Roumanian vaccine in my direct examination. I can say nothing precise either nor positive about this vaccine; namely, whether this vaccine passed through my office during the war. It is quite possible because many such typhus vaccines went via my desk and I described in my direct examination just what I did with these vaccines.
Q. What did you do with this vaccine that you got from Ruge? That is the important point right now.
A. I have already said that I do not know for certain whether I ever received this vaccine from Ruge at all. I can only emphasize the fact that Ding reported on the testing of this vaccine at the Third Consulting Conference. Consequently, I had my showdown with him. At that time he said nothing to the effect that this vaccine, on the testing which he had reported, had originated with me. He then published a paper in the periodical for hygiene and infectious diseases, and in this paper, too, there is a report on the testing of the Rumanian vaccine. In this paper a footnote states, expressly, that he had received a particular virus from Prof. Gildemeister. In other words, he is telling his sources here. In the case of the Rumanian vaccine he says nothing to that effect, and Dr. Kogon, too, testified here that Ding concerned himself with our showdown in Berlin when he had returned to Buchenwald; but here, again, he did not say that one of the tested vaccines had gone through my hands.
Q. Now, Professor, you are talking all around the point. I am not interested in what Kogon said, or what he said at this meeting. I am asking you the question. Did you send this vaccine to Ding, directly or indirectly?
A. I have already answered that question. I said that I cannot remember at all, ever having had such a Rumanian vaccine in my hands, but that there is a. possibility that I did.
Q. And if there is a possibility that you had the vaccine in your hands, is it not also possible, as it says in the Ding diary, that you sent the vaccine to Ding to be tested in Buchenwald?
A. I think that is altogether improbable, since I had no direct contacts with Ding at all.
Q. Did you have any indirect contacts with him? After all, Professor, we are talking about one of the most fundamental issues in the case. If you sent this vaccine to Mrugowsky, or directly to Ding, or through anybody else, after you had been in Buchenwald, in March 1924, I submit to you that you became a party to the crime.
A. First of all, I told you that I do not know whether or not I ever had this Rumanian vaccine. Now, taking the hypothetical case that I did have this vaccine, and handled this vaccine as I handled all other vaccines that I had during the course of the war -- namely, passed it on to other typhus researchers: now, I never sent any vaccines to Ding; and, assuming that one of these typhus research men had connections with Ding, and passes on such a vaccine that he receives from me, that docs not mean that I provided the incentive for that. All the vaccines tested in Buchenwald are, with very few exceptions -- were produced, with few exceptions, by other people -
Q. That is all very true.
A -- and you cannot make the manufacturers responsible for what is subsequently done with these vaccines. Nor can you make people responsible what happened to have the vaccine in their hands, but who had neither the intention, nor the opportunity, to issue any assignments to Dr. Ding.
Q. Now, Professor, it depends on what the people knew, who supplied these vaccines, as to whether or not they are responsible. Now, there is no question about your knowledge. You were in Buchenwald. You saw what was being done. So it therefore becomes quite important to know what you did with this vaccine from Ruge. Now, is it possible you sent it to Mrugowsky, who you knew to be the superior of Ding?
A. I think that is highly improbable. As I have said, I cannot remember this whole affair, and, consequently, can only speak of possibilities; but I put it one document here on the Ipsen vaccine, and it can be seen from the list of -- from the distribution list -what sort of institutes I sent it on to, and neither Mr. Mrugowsky nor Dr. Ding are mentioned here.
Q. As I understand it, you don't exclude the possibility that you sent this vaccine to Mrugowsky, and Mrugowsky sent it to Ding?
A. No, I just said that I consider that highly improbable.
Q. Well, if you sent vaccine to Mrugowsky, and asked him to test it, just what did you think he would do with the vaccine, unless he sent it to Buchenwald?
A. I reiterate, that I consider it highly improbable that I sent it to Mrugowsky; moreover, Mrugowsky was a hygienist, like the rest of us.
Q. Well, the witness Frau Block said you didn't sent anything to Mrugowsky. How credible is her testimony? Do you think she is just on probabilities too, or do you think she knows what she is talking about?
A. Frau Block certainly testified to the best of hew knowledge as to what she knew about my correspondence; and, of course, it is very valuable to me, what she said, because you are asking me -- after my files have been taken away from cm after years and years -- that I should give information about every letter that I received or wrote in the last six years; that that is not possible, perhaps even you will grant. Particularly, in the case of a, man who had to write very many letters. And, of course, my secretary's corroborating evidence was very valuable to me, who also remembered what she had done during the four years that she was employed by myself, so far as correspondence was concerned. There was correspondence, of course, now and then with Mrugowsky: for example, Mrugowsky concerned himself with publishing epidemiological predictions, and I corresponded with Mrugowsky on the development of a hot air delousing maching, and the detailing of an engineer who belonged to the Luftwaffe, so that he could work on this for the Waffen-SS.
Q. Now, Professor, we are not dealing with any miscellaneous correspondence now: we are dealing with a very fundamental matter, -and with a man who had been in Buchenwald in March 1942, and had seen what had. gone on, and with a man who objected to Ding's experiments in May 1943; and I should think that such a man would be pretty clean in his own mind about whether he had ever supplied any vaccines to the murder camp of Buchenwald.