DR. BERGOLD: Yes.
BY THE PRESIDENT: That's what we are understandinq to mean "sensation stimuli".
DR. BERGOLD: Thank you, your Honor.
BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q. Witness, do you know, from International literature, that certain writers have the opinion that so-called foreign experiment should also be carried out on people condemned to death, under the terms and under the condition that they volunteer for this kind of experiment, and furthermore, that they be pardoned if they survive this experiment?
A. It is a popular assumption.
MR. DENNY: If your Honor please, I do not think that has any relevancy here as to what some writers think about whether or not experiments should be carried out on human beings, and whether or not they should be pardoned. That is in line with what I said this morning. I can not see how any trend expressed by text writers, whether they be people who are experimenters or not, have anything to do with the experiments with which we are here concerned.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, Mr. Denny, we are not applying statutory law here.
MR. DENNY: I realize that, Sir.
THE PRESIDENT: Would it not be true that the known acceptance of a legal principle, for example, the known definition of humanity, would be a pertinent field of inquiry?
MR. DENNY: Yes, it would.
THE PRESIDENT: In the absence of a statutory definition, and if is nationally accepted by civilized nations that a certain type of experiment is not inhumane, it seems to me the defense ought to be permitted to allege that.
MR. DENNY: Very well, if your Honor pleases.
BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q. Witness, I suppose you can still remember my question, May I ask you to answer it?
A. It is a popular conception that such could or should be possible among laymen. I also have read in the papers that once in a while a condemned man will ask, instead of being executed, to be made the subject of a dangerous experiment. However, I know of no single case in the United States where such an offer was actually accepted and whore that was done. The reason for that may be that it invalidates the idea of the death penalty because if a man could evade the death penalty by submission to a dangerous experiment, he would then also have the opportunity to get off the death penalty by other public services, possibly even by payments. And while in China that is permitted, I think it would definitely put the whole idea of the death penalty open to serious objection because the death penalty should only be pronounced if a man is so dangerous to society that he will have to be annihilated. And if this idea as I said, could be validated by heroic services or other possible conceivable actions for the common good, then it could be argued that in this case the death penalty would have been unjustly pronounced in the first place. I have heard legal men argue about that end, as I said, I myself know of no single case personally in which, in the United States, the offer of a criminal to be made subject of a dangerous experiment, was accepted.
Q. Doctor, your statements are very interesting. However, these statements are your opinion and not an answer to my question. I asked you if, in the International medical literature the people are of the opinion that if a criminal who is condemned to death comes as a volunteer, that is on being asked, not by asking himself, that experiments should be done on him. That is my exact question. Your opinion is very interesting to me, Doctor. However, that is not the answer to my question.
A. I know of prisoners, criminals, having been used in experiments but I do not know that any man condemned to death was among them. And knowing the circumstances surrounding death row in American prisons (I have examined a good many men in death rows). I would regard this doubtful that it could be arranged because the thing is -even seeing such men -- so much hedged with formalities that I cannot see how it could be done practically.
It is something that is being said once in a while but I would regard it as strictly impossible that it could have been done in the United States. Certainly not in Massachusetts, the penal system of which I know very well. I cannot conceive of any of the Commissioners of Correction whom I have known, permitting it. And also North Carolina, where I served for a time, I would regard it at impossible too. I do not know anything about any other -- the intimate working of prisons in any other states.
THE PRESIDENT: The question, Doctor, is this: What is the consensus of opinion generally among writers on international penology or medical matters as to the propriety of such experiments?
A. Of course my knowledge of the literature may be limited. I have read a bit about it but I think that the main objection among scientists against it would be that they would inadvertently become executioners, which I think nobody would cherish.
BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q. Doctor, I think you are evading me a little bit. I did not ask you how it is in America. I asked you, according to the International literature whether such experiments have been carried out, yes or no, and from discussions you had with my colleagues. Dr. Sauter, for instance -- I know that the defense during the first trial introduced literature and I take it that you have studied that literature in the meantime -- if one says I become a henchman through that, I want that as a clear and simple question. In International literature were cases known where experiments were carried out on criminals condemned to death with their consent and with the consent of the government? Were they carried out -- yes, or no -- . that is my question?
A. No.
Q. You don't know of any?
A. The literature which I have been given, -- I mean which I know anyway-- I know the papers to which Dr. Sauter and Dr. Rose at times and Dr. Brandt were referring to -- they did not refer to men condemned to death.
Q. What kind of men did they refer to?
A. Ordinary prisoners.
Q. Oh, I see. In other words, experiments with normal prisoners were carried out, is that it?
A. Yes.
Q. Also experiments which were dangerous in part?
A. With very limited danger.
Q. You know of a book of Paul DeKruif, don't you?
A. I know not only Paul DeKruit but also his reputation for veracity and I would not believe a word Paul DeKruit says. You can quote me to him himself. Paul DeKruif's books are full of inaccuracies. He cannot be quoted as an authority. Most of it is imagination.
Q. Doctor, what do you think of these malaria experiments, then which were carried out in penal institutions and penitentiaries -3 penitentiaries as a matter of fact -- in the United States?
A. I know them very well, and I have, if you want me to, I have the application blanks which the prisoners had to sign and the reasons they gave for volunteering. If you want to, I have especially studied before coming, the special conditions in all these experiments.
Q. It is correct, however, that they did volunteer?
A. Yes. They were contacted by the prison radio. The prison broadcasting system asked for volunteers and when nobody was canvassed personally. That is the information which I have. Then application blanks were distributed so that the requests would come from the prison. If you want to offer them in evidence I have the application blanks here. Duplicates were placed at my disposal by the University of Chicago which sponsored the program. On this blank the prisoner was explained -- it was explained to the prisoner what the experiment was all about and what the dangers were and he was told that if he wanted to try it and if he was considered eligible he could volunteer.
Then, out of the large number of volunteers, only a limited number were selected. Then all that was done publicly and a radio program was arranged and over the Chicago network the volunteers were asked to state their reasons for volunteering; and on this radio program the prisoners stated their reasons. And the men gave reasons such as "my brother is in the army. He is in the South Pacific." "I cannot join the army because I am in prison so I want to help that way." Another says "My nephew is a malaria patient in an army hospital and that is the only way I can help win the war" and similar reasons. And on the whole...then also the morale was kept high by speeches from army officers who commanded the men and told them they were proud to fight the same war with them. On the whole a spirit of high morale and sort of enjoyment of the adventure was maintained.
Q. Witness, that is enough.
A. I understand from the University of Chicago that no one died in that service.
Q. Well, that is possible. That can happen once in a while. Were there experiments carried out in other states? Unfortunately I do not have all the material from my colleagues upstairs. However, I would gladly present that to you. I am sure we will have a fight upstairs when all these papers will be shown. In any case, experiments carried out on volunteers under the volunteer system were permitted from the point of view of morale?
A. Yes.
Q. And it is also correct, theoretically at least, in those malaria cases, that people could have died, because malaria also kills?
A. It is theoretically possible.
Q. Thank you.
DR. BERGOLD: I do not have any further questions to the witness.
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY DR. BERGOLD:
DR. BERGOLD: In your Exhibit Book No. 2 you have some extracts of an official copy of the Freezing Conference on 26 and 27 October 1942, held in Nurnberg, and I wonder if you would please tell me what exhibit number you gave that?
MR. DENNY: It appears on page 29.
DR. BERGOLD: If your Honor please, this is a complete copy of the report in English. The copy that your Honor has only contains excerpts from a few pages in it.
Q. Doctor, where did you study medicine?
A. In Vienna, Austria.
Q. And, one of the members of our staff gave you a copy of this report at some prior time? You have seen it before?
A. Yes, I have.
Q. And, would you tell the court whether or not some one who reads this report, as a medical man would be able to determine whether or not death had occurred during the experimental period or the experimentations that went on, which are here described?
A. When I looked over this report, I looked it over. I did not look it over for certain things which are mentioned quite clearly in the report. It is obvious from the report that deaths occurred, but when I looked it over as an expert I was asked as to whether or not the report made it obvious that deaths and symptoms observed, were due to experimentations, and not due to observations incidental to partly observations.
Q. And, what is your conclusion about that?
A. My conclusion is that it is obvious from reading this report that it deals with experimentations.
Q. And these are not observations which are incidental to mercy sea rescue missions?
A. Exactly.
Q. On page 11 Doctor, that is page 43 of the original, there is a large paragraph in the middle of the page. The second to the last sentence of this states the rigor is a condition reflex and not, as many persons apparently think, a contraction of the corresponding muscles due to cold. It ceases spontaneously at death. Could you say that that was in line with your conclusions?
A. Yes, I think probably that observation could only have been made if persons watched them and not actually observed them in mercy sea rescue work. And that is what is at least clear in the prior sentences. In the copy which I was given to make this check I underlined all the sentences that gave the thing away, and there are some which are stronger than others.
Q. Perhaps you would be good enough to point these out to the court?
A. Particularly the sentences on page 11, the middle paragraph which reads which is very unlikely. "The rapidity with which numbness occurs is remarkable. It was determined that already 5 to 10 minutes after falling in, an advancing rigor of the skeletal muscles sets in, which renders the movement of the arms especially increasingly difficult." That would imply if it had been an accidental observation that the person would have had to watch the man in the water from a beat in degrees which would have been very unlikely in war times, because the thing to do is to pull them out as fast as you can. And, I continue: "With a drop of the rectal temperature to 31 degrees, a clouding of the consciousness occurs, which passes to a deep cold-induced anesthesia if the decline reaches below 30 degrees or more" which might be duplication.
Q. Are you familiar with the employment of Pathologists in Germany? Why do they employ Pathologists? What is the Pathologists' function?
A To do autopsies.
DR. BERGOLD: I have no further questions.
CROSS EXAMINATION BY MR. DENNEY:
Q. Witness, the defense just asked you if a medically-trained man could recognize, without further difficulty, those experiments, As a layman, however, what do you think his impression would be?
Can you tell the difference?
A. I think it is probably easier for you or the Court to judge, in reading it whether they would recognize it.
1091-A
Q. Will you please repeat? I have everything in English here and I did not quite follow.
A. Actually you yourself or the Court are more competent to decide this. I don't know whether you would recognize it or not. I mean that depends on the person who reads it. I think any one familiar with air sea rescue work or the difficulties of pulling in bodies from the sea? I am familiar with this because of my service with the Eighth Air Force, as well as a medical man would probably assume that such measures could not be done on such occasions. But what a complete layman would think I don't know, because I have both medical experience and practical experience as a member of an Army at war and therefore there is the double familiarity, which of course makes it impossible for me to say what a completely uninitiated person would think.
THE PRESIDENT: Would you class a member of the Tribunal as a complete layman?
DR. ALEXANDER: Unless no had military service and would know the difficulties under which the air-sea rescue works, I would say that probably the members of the Tribunal could probably be regarded as unprejudiced medical or military men; these who had been serving in the military forces.
THE PRESIDENT: What you mean is that even the members of the Tribunal could not recognize this report unless they had actual experience? and not actual incidents?
DR. ALEXANDER: I do not know. I mean the Tribunal could probably form an opinion.
THE PRESIDENT: Probably.
DR. ALEXANDER: I did not mean to be disrespectful, your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
DIRECT EXAMINATION:
BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q. Doctor, take it a little bit slower because this has to go into the record. Thus, the members of this Tribunal, insofar as they are not medical men or former members of a military establishment, could--it would be probably representative of the opinion which other known doctors and now Army officers could form about this statement?
Q. Doctor, you are a psychologist, aren't you; a psychiatrist we call then in German.
A. Yes.
Q. Doctor, don't you think that we all who are here and who have something to do with these trials are no longer in a position to describe unhampered the thinking of all these laymen because we studied these documents thinking that all these experiments, that these things are experiments; and that for that reason nobody of us is unprejudiced? Is that correct or not?
A. That is true. Then I think you should probably put this report to a layman of the degree of initiation which you want to prove.
Q. Doctor, I will put to you a precise question now. In this report there is a sentence -- it was possible now to carry out on people who had been exposed to cold water and rescued to carry out a series of experiments on these people. Isn't it correct, from your knowledge of the German language -- you are a Vienna man, aren't you?
A. Yes.
Q. That the sentence "after long exposure in the cold water saved"-that means rescued or saved people; because "save" and "rescue" is about the same in our German language.--That sentence was probably puzzling for a layman? That sentence was probably put in to cover the origin of the observation; is that right?
A. That is quite correct.
Q. In other words, we are speaking about the layman who believes those things.
DR. BERGOLD: That is all I wanted to know; thank you.
MR. DENNEY: I have no further questions.
THE PRESIDENT: The witness may be excused.
DR. BERGOLD: Does the Tribunal desire a recess, or do you want me to continue?
THE PRESIDENT: We will continue.
DR. BERGOLD: I ask permission to call the witness Ruff.
THE PRESIDENT: The Marshal will bring in the witness Ruff.
(Witness SEGFRIED RUFF brought into the Courtroom)
Please raise your right hand and repeat after me:
I swear by God, the Almighty and Omniscient, that I will speak the pure 1093-A truth and will withhold and add nothing.
(The witness repeated the oath).
You may be seated.
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q Witness, I ask you to speak slowly; I ask you further to pause briefly after every question of mine before you answer so that the translation can be concluded. Please give the Tribunal your first and last name?
A My name is Siegfried Ruff.
Q When were you born witness?
A I was born on the 19th of February, 1907.
Q What was your last position in the German government?
A Until September, 1946, I was active in the Aeromedical of the American Air Force.
Q I mean when you were in the German Reich; I meant, of course, under the German government.
A I was director in the Aeromedical Institute in Berlin, Adlershof.
Q Was this a part of the DVL?
A It was an institute in the DVL among many others.
Q Thank you. Witness, do you know Milch personally?
A Yes.
Q Where did you meet him; do you recognize him here in the room?
(Witness pointed out defendant Erhard Milch)
DR. BERGOLD: I ask that the record show that the witness has identified the defendant.
THE PRESIDENT: The record will so show.
Q On what occasion did you make his acquaintance?
A I think I made Milch's acquaintance in 1933 or 1934 when he gave me an air medal decoration.
Q When did you meet him personally?
A Subsequently in the course of the years between 1934 and 1945, I met him perhaps three or four times personally on the occasion of his visits in the DVL.
Q. Did you speak with him on these occasions?
A. Briefly.
Q. During the time of the Dachau high altitude and freezing experiments did you negotiate with him personally regarding these experiments?
A. No.
Q. Witness, you have signed an affidavit. Your Honors, this is Exhibit No. 108, NOKW 140, of the 25th of October, 1946, in Document Book 5B of the Prosecution, page 139. Witness, you said the following in a sentence: As chief of the medical inspectorate, General Hippke was the immediate subordinate of Field Marshal Hilch. Do you know that for certain, or is that only an assumption on your part?
A. This subordination relationship so far as I can remember is known to me; to be sure after I signed this affidavit I found out that this subordination relationship had lasted only for a certain length of time in this form.
Q. How long?
A. Until the end of 1941, I was informed.
Q. You have been misinformed again, witness; I asked you where did you acquire the knowledge which you here sat down and swore an affidavit.
A. From conversations with Hippke in the medical inspectorate; from these conferences I understood this subordination relationship to be thus.
Q. But you have no positive proofs?
A. No. I never saw an organization plan or such.
Q. You further stated, regarding the high altitude experiments, Field Marshal Milch was in my opinion informed of the experiments either by Dr. Hippke or by the SS. Is that again certain knowledge or an assumption on your part?
A. An assumption, based on the fact that I knew that the SS, for example, made efforts to show the film on high altitude experiments to Milch; and that also Rascher and Romberg were present at the show in the Air Ministry, at which, to be sure, Milch was not personally present.
On the basis of these facts I base this assumption.
1095a
Q. You then stated the freezing experiments performed in 1942 were carried out in Dachau by Dr. Rascher only without assistance of Dr. Romberg, and there can be no doubt that Dr. Hippke and Field Marshal Milch were informed of the results of the experiments. How do you know that without doubt Milch was informed of the results of the freezing experiments?
A. I assumed this from this collaboration, this is really saying too much, I mean of the contents that existed in the case of high altitude experiments.
Q. So you assume that there was a similar contact in the case of the freezing experiments?
A. Yes.
Q. But a real basis and data, as for instance in the case of Milch, regarding the film on high altitude, that you do not know of?
A. I don't know; moreover, I mentioned it several times when drawing up this affidavit, when this affidavit was drawn up. I could not suspect that it was going to be submitted in this form and alone. This affidavit was drawn up in connection with a long lasting interrogation and I presumed this affidavit to be a short summary of the points which seemed important to the interrogator; and of course assumed that in addition to this affidavit the entire interrogation would be appended, and when I signed this affidavit, which can be seen from the minutes of that -- of that interrogation -- I specifically emphasized that precisely that I had no factual substantiation precisely of this last sentence, but I had to assume it from the knowledge and experience with the high altitude experiments and because of the subordination relationship then between Milch and Hippke.
Q. Witness, I come now to the high altitude experiments. There is a report here which must be known to you of the 28th of July 1942, of the DVL on rescue from a great altitude. In this report, witness, you and your collaborators expressly corroborated the fact that no fatalities occurred and no serious or permanent damage.
A. Yes.
Q. Is that still your opinion now?
A. That is not my opinion but that is a fact.
Q. Witness, in the meantime this trial that is taking place on the next floor has proved, probably to your satisfaction, that Dr. Rascher carried out a number of lethal experiments during the course of these experiments?
A. That I know.
Q. Were they then any part of these experiments that this report is about?
A. No, that was not a part of these experiments described in these reports. The experimental goal of Rascher's experiments is not exactly clear to me today, although Rascher's reports fall within the framework of the documents which are being submitted in the trial upstairs and consequently I have heard them read, but from these reports of Rascher to Himmler one cannot detect the experimental goal of these experiments, although I believe I can assert that in this field I am an expert to a certain degree, namely in the field of aviation medicine.
Q. Witness, you have not yet explained to me why these other experiments fell outside the field of these DVL experiments?
A. What I have said so far is that at least the experimental goals were quite different in the two cases, and as I have already said I am not entirely clear even today as to what the experimental goal of Rascher was in his experiments; but in addition to this, these experiments were carried out on other experimental persons.
Furthermore, in the course of these experiments of Rascher, there was no way in which I could see that the Luftwaffe played a role, that a contribution was trying to be made to save people from high altitude when they bailed out. In all experiments such as are described in this report it was a question 1097a of ascertaining whether up to a specific height, namely, a height of twenty kilometers, a parachute jump was possible, and under what conditions it was possible.