legal nature. So we have five different types of experiments.
were they volunteers or not?
not only in the camp of Buchenwald, but outside of the camp. They were not volunteers.
They were ignorant, most of them, of the type of camp it was.
Until they came to Block 46 they did not know that they were to serve as subjects for experiments.
This recruitment a number in this way.
But the recruitment was also carried out the majority.
There were a greater number of Russians, for the physical resistance; their physical resistance was clearly superior to that of the French or the people of Western Europe.
They had for the experiments than other prisoners.
Nevertheless, there were Q Don't give us too detailed answers, because we are not technicians.
We merely want to know that these experiments were carried out without any interest in humanity.
Will you please tell us, in simple language, how these experiments were carried out?
no useful end. Consequently we can hardly call them experiments.
strains. That was not indispensable. In normal researches, in the the letters "BU."
There was a number 1-BU, number 2-BU, and so on, was dying to a healthy patient.
In this artificial way, through
Q They literally murdered them., didn't they, to keep up the strain?
these strains of typhus up. Also there were experiments on the (A document was submitted to the Tribunal.)
Q What is this document? record of the typhus strain.
Q This document was brought by you from the camp? data in Block 46 from the records of Block 46 I got these data.
Q This document is the one you handed to me? is still more complete, which is in the hands of the American Psychological Service. They have all the data. This is only one page of the data.
M. DUBOST: I ask the Tribunal to re cognize that the French Prosecution submits this document under the number 364.
A (continuing) In August 1944, they made an experiment on the therapeutic value of the vaccine. One hundred and fifty men lost their lives in that experiment. in Block 46. We had vaccines which came from Italy, some from Denmark, vaccines from Poland, and the Germans wanted to find the respective value of these different vaccines. Consequently they made experiments on the 150 men in the month of August, 1944, who were in Block 46.
I should like to say how Block 46 functioned. Block 46 was a block which was entirely closed and surrounded by barbed wire. Those in Block 46 had to present themselves at no roll call; they never went out of the block. All the windows were closed, and all the windows were covered with some type of paint.
A German prisoner was in charge of the block. This German political prisoner was Kapo Dietsch, the leader of the block. Kapo was a social outcast who had been imprisons and in camps for 20 years. He carried out the material work of the SS. He injected or inoculated, and he was the one who killed, on order, the prisoners.
There was an extraordinary thing in this block. There were automatic pistols, and hand grenades, so they could handle any revolt which might come from outside, or which might come from within the block.
sent to Block 50, in the month of January, 1945, we found that there were three episodes of force used to master those who did not want to be injected. these experiments were carried out. The 150 prisoners were split into two groups; 75 were controls and the others were to be experimented on. Only those who were subject to experiments received the vaccine. That is, only 75 received this vaccine; the controls received no vaccine whatsoever, they were not vaccinated. they inoculated, in an intravenous fashion, all the men who were connected with this experiment, subjects and controls. Fifteen days after this inoculation the controls died, at the approximate time for one inoculated with typhus to see his final hour arrive. As for the others, who received different kinds of vaccines, they died at varying lengths of time, proportionate to the value of the vaccine which they had received. Some kinds of vaccines gave an excellent result and there was a very slight mortality, particularly the Polish vaccine. Other vaccines resulted in a much higher mortality. and tradition in Block 46, the survivors of the experiments did not survive. Those survivors of the experiments were liquidated, they were murdered in Block 46, by the customary method which my comrades have told you of, by intracardiac injections of phenol, pure phenol of assafetic. That was the customary method of extermination in Buchenwald.
THE PRESIDENT: The Russian translation is not coming through. Can you repeat that about the survivors being killed by intracardiac injections? to the tradition and the habit which reigned in that Block 46, did not survive. Once the experiment could be considered concluded, the survivors of the experiment were murdered. They were liquidated by the customary methods which were used in Buchenwald. I think certain of my comrades have already spoken of this.
BY M. DUBOST:
Q Will you go more slowly , please? I think the interpreters are having difficulty. cardiac injections of pure phenol of assafetic, a proportion of five or ten cubic centimeters.
THE PRESIDENT: We are not really concerned here with the proportion of the particular injections.
THE WITNESS: Will you repeat that please?
THE PRESIDENT: As I have said, I am not concerned with the proportions in which these injections were given, and will you kindly not deal with these details?
M. Dubost, you might try and confine the witness.
A (continuing) Then I will speak of other details which I think may interest you. type, chemical products which were to cure typhus, under the same conditions in Block 46.
The German industries collaborated with these experiments. Notably, among those which collaborated with these experiments was I.G. Farben. I.G. Farben furnished a certain number of medicines which might be used for experiments in Block 46, Among to professors of I.G. Farben -- which furnished the medical materials for Block 46 for experimental purposes -- we find Professor Lauschleger. experiments, where prisoners of Russian origin were particularly utilized for phosphorus burns. These bums from phosphorus in Block 46 were practiced upon the Russian prisoners for the following reason: bombs which were thrown in Germany through the Allied aviators produced phosphorus burns upon the civilian population, and those were burns which were hard to heal. Consequently, the Germans sought some sort of medical treatment which might ameliorate and improve the conditions of the wounds which were caused by these burns. Thus, experiments were carried out in Block 46 on Russian prisoners.
who were artificially burned by products of a phosphorus base, and they were then treated with different medicants furnished by the German industry. BY M. DUBOST:
Q What were the results of these experiments?
Q Who was responsible, the SS? these experiments. Section 5 of the SS at Leipzig and, consequently, from the Supreme Command of the Waffen SS.
Q What were the results of the experiments made on sexual hormones?
A They were less serious. These were ridiculous experiments from a scientific point of view. who had been condemned by German tribunals for their crimes. These homosexuals were sent to the concentration camps, notably Buchenwald, and put with the other prisoners.
Q What kind of prisoners? With political prisoners, who were patriots?
Q Yes?
A They were with all kinds of prisoners. They were distinguished by a triangle of pink color. custom, or was there a great confusion in the classification?
there was some order in these various triangles which were used for classification. When I arrived at Buchenwald, in January of 1944, there was a great confusion in the classifications, or in the triangles which were used to classify the prisoners. another color than their own?
Q French? the red triangle, which was that of political prisoners.
Q What triangle did the German criminals have?
Q Did they sometimes wear a red triangle? and they usually wore the green triangle.
Q And the work commandos?
THE PRESIDENT: We have heard that they were all mixed up,
M. DUBOST: The Tribunal must be aware that I speak of this because of certain questions "which were put by the defense attorneys this morning, and I wish to answer them now in this interrogation,
THE WITNESS: I can repeat to you that we had a complete mixture of nationalities and a complete mingling of the different categories of prisoners.
THE PRESIDENT: That is exactly what he said, that these triangles were completely nixed up.
M. DUBOST: I think, as to the statement of the second witness, that despite the efforts of the defense this testimony should be observed by the Tribunal.
BY M. DUBOST:
Q Do you know of any human skin being tattooed?
Q Will you please tell us what you know about it? Pathological Block at Buchenwald.
Q Were there many human skins tattooed in Block 2?
A There was always human skin which was tattooed in Block 2. I don't know whether there were a great many, but there was some human skin that was merely tanned instead of tattooed.
Q Did they skin humans alive?
Q Will you continue your testimony on that point? A My testimony on this point: I saw SS who came out of Block 2, which was the Pathological Block, with tanned skin which they carried under their arms. I know, through my comrades who worked in Block 2, the Pathological Block, that there were orders for skins. These tanned skins were given as gifts to some guard, or to some SS visitor, who used them to bind books. happened before I came to the camp.
Q After he left there were still tanned skins and tattooed skins? there. They were there when the camp was liberated by the Americans. They still found in the camp, in Block 2, human skins which were tattooed and tanned. That was the 11th of April, 1945.
Q Where were these skins tanned?
THE PRESIDENT: I am afraid you are still going too fast.
BY M. DUBOST:
Q Where were these skins tanned? buildings of the crematorium, which were not far from Block 2. which continued after the Koch technicians left the camp?
A Yes, this kept on; I do not know in what proportion, but it kept on after his departure.
important German personages, and if so, who were those high-placed persons? concerned? concerned. Do you know anything about Koch's condemnation?
A Yes. I know that Koch was condemned, through rumours and through testimony which I heard from old prisoners who were my comrades, who had been there before me. But personally, I knew nothing about that affair.
Q I would like to know tether, after Koch's condemnation, skins were still tanned.
AAfter he was condemned? Yes,
Q You are sure that skins were tanned after he was condemned? German personages, and who they were? military and the interior of these concentration camps was carried out some time through people who left on leave. Certain political prisoners were permitted to leave who could get the authorization from the SS to go and spend a certain length of time with their families. Also, there were visits from those in the Wehrmacht who came into the carp. These Officer Kommandants of the Luftwaffe, of the regular German Army, came through the camp and were able to take account of almost everything that was taking place.
Q What did they do in Block 50?
A They just came to make a visit, to see the equipment. They were invited by the Sturmbannfuehrer Schuler, and he received several visits.
Q What was the equipment?
A There were other visits also. There were also nurses who came to this same Block 50. In the month of October 1944 hospital attendants and nurses visited this block.
A Yes, personages, if you wish. Erbprinz Juwaldick, who was an Obergruppenfuehrer of the Waffen SS and a Polizeeifuehrer for Hessen and Thuringia, who visited the camp on several occasions, also Block 46 as well as Block 50.
He was greatly interested in the experiments. the liberation from the camp? come soon. They expected it in April even. There was perfect order in the camp, exemplary discipline. They hid, with extreme difficulties and in the greatest secrecy, arms, cases of hand grenades, and about 250 guns were distributed into lots, one lot for the hospital, about 100 guns, and another lot in Block 50, about 150 guns, and cases of hand grenades. about 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon the 11th of April, the political prisoners, who were in formation, took their arms and shot all those who resisted, most of the SS guards of the camp. These guards were greatly wounded. They tried to flee, but they had rucksacks which were filled with booty, thefts which they had made at the expense of the prisoners during the time they had been guards there. They tried to make away with these rucksacks of booty.
M. DUBOST: I have no further questions to submit to this witness.
THE PRESIDENT: We will adjourn now for ten minutes.
(Whereupon at 1535 hours a recess was taken).
M. DUBOST: I have no further questions to ask the witness, Your Honors.
THE PRESIDENT: Do any of the defendant's counsel want to ask any questions of this witness?
BY DR. KAUFFMANN (Counsel for Kaltenbrunner):
Q Are you a specialist in research?
A. Yes, I am a specialist in research questions. ment which was accorded these people?
A They had no scientific meaning. They only had a practical meaning.
They made it possible to verify the value of certain manufactures.
Q But do you have a judgment of your own? Did you in reality as a person see these people? charge of a part of this manufacture of vaccine. Consequently, I was quite well aware of the kind of experiment that was being made in Block 46 and the reasons for these experiments. SS doctors and the ease with which we were able to sabotage the sabotage of the German Army. before they died. certain experiments, notably Q (Interposing) Can you certify that through your own experience, or is that just hearsay?
burns, and it is not necessary to be a specialist nor a doctor to realize what patients whose flesh was burned to the bones have suffered, what they must have suffered.
Q Now, I'd like to ask you, what did you do with the order that went to your conscience, namely, the conscience to help the people? as a deportee, I did not decline my qualities. I simply specified that I was a laborant. Laborant means a man who is accustomed to the technique of a laboratory, having no defined speciality. I was sent to Dora. The SS regime made me lose 30 Kilos in two months. I became anemic.
Q Witness, I am just concerned with Buchenwald. I don't wish to know anything about Dora. to the camp itself who made me come back to Buchenwald. It was M. Julian Cint, the Frenchman, Director of the French National Library, who called attention to my presence to a German political prisoner, Walter Hummelschein, who was secretary in Block 50.
And this secretary of Block 50 called attention to my existence without my knowledge and without my having had anything to do with it, that there was a French specialist in Dora. That is why the SS called me back from Dora to work in Block 50.
Q Please pardon the interruption. We do not wish to amplify too much on these matters. I believe everything that you have just said, that that is the reason why you were sent to Dora and your return My purpose is a completely different one. I would like to ask you once more: You knew that these people, humanely speaking, were martyrs. Is that really the case? Please answer yes or no.
Q (Interposing) Please answer yes or no.
A I answer the question as I must answer it. I answer that when I arrived at Block 50 I knew nothing, either of the block or of the experiments. It was only later when I was in Block 50, with time, with the relations that I was able to make in the block, that I found out the details of the experiments.
Q Very well. And after you were sure about the particulars of the experiments, the way in which they were carried out, did not your conscience dictate sympathy for these poor creatures? sibility of having pity or not. One had to carry out to the letter the orders that were given or disappear.
Q Very well. Then you are stating that if in any way you had not followed the orders that you had received you might have been killed? Is that right?
A There is no doubt of this. On the ether hand, my work consisted wholly in manufacturing vaccine, and neither I nor any other prisoners in Block 46 were able to make or to witness experiments directly. We knew what was going on only through cards that passed through Block 46. These were officially registered in Block 50.
Q Very well, but I believe there is no difference in consciennce whether you see suffering before your eyes or whether you have knowledge that in the same camp people are being murdered in such a way.
Now, I come to another question,
THE PRESIDENT: Did he answer the question you were putting? Will you confine yourself to the question.
DR. KAUFFMANN: That was not a question, Mr. Witness. I will put another question new.
THE WITNESS: I should like to answer this remark then.
DR. KAUFFMANN: I am not interested in your answer.
THE WITNESS: I am anxious to give it.
THE PRESIDENT: Answer the question, please.
THE WITNESS: These sufferings in the camp were everywhere. It was not only in the experimental blocks. It was in the quarantine blocks. It was in the hospitals. It was among all the men who every day died by the hundreds. Suffering reigned everywhere in the concentration camps. BY DR. KAUFFMANN: conversation about these experiments? cretion in regard to the experiments might bring penalty of death at any moment. I should add that there were very few of us who knew the details of these experiments.
German Red Cross members, or nurses, and members of the Wehrmacht visited the camp, and that vacations were granted political prisoners to leave the camp. Were you at any one time present at the visits? given, or did the visitors see that human skin was tanned? Were those visitors present while mistreatments were being given? behind closed doors. I can only speak of the visitors who came to my block. One had to pass all the way through the camp to pass my block. I don't know where the visitors might go either before or after the exit from my block, personally saw these excesses? Yes or no.
A I don't understand the question. Would you mind repeating it? camp were present at these excesses? kind or at excesses of this kind. The only thing I can say as to the condemned is what I saw with my own eyes, The SS, the non-commissioned or possibly the commissioned officers - I can't quite remember - I saw them come from the block too. These were SS men; these were not visitors to the camp. those experiments were medically completely worthless, or did they just visit the laboratories and the installations and just wish to look at them and inspect them? saw what was being done there, that is, the filling of the vials. I cannot say what they saw after or before. I only know that these visitors of whom I am speaking, Luftwaffe people or Red Cross people, visited the whole set-up of the blocks. They certainly knew, however, what the origin of this manufacture of vaccine was and that men might he used as subjects of experiments, since there were tables, graphs, which indicated the progress of the manufacture there for men; but one had to use blood as a basis coming from patients suffering from typhus and not obligatorily from patients artificially innoculated with typhus.
I think sincerely these visitors did not know the whole of the atrocities in the form of experiments that were being performed in Block 46, but it is impossible for visitors who went into the camp not to see the horrible conditions in which the population as a whole of the camp, of the prisoners, were held under, inmates who temporarily were permitted to leave the camp, were permitted to speak about their experiences within the camp and relate these experiences to the outside world? The population in them was renewed constantly. They passed from one camp to another, came and went. Consequently there were always new faces. But most of the time the prisoners who could pass, aside from their imprisonment we didn't know how many went into the camps and how many came out.
Q Perhaps I did not express myself clearly, I mean the following: to leave the camp temporarily. Did these inmates know about these medical excesses, and if they did know were they permitted to speak in the rest of Germany about these experiments? nationality. These were the only ones who could have leaves. They were prisoners whom the SS had confided important posts, who had been imprisoned at least ten years. This was the case, for instance, of the block chief of the canteen, the canteen of the Buchenwald Camp, the canteen of the Waffen SS, who had the responsibility for the canteen, and who was given a leave of two weeks to visit his family at home in the town of Zeitz. This chief of the canteen, consequently, was free for two weeks and was able to tell his family everything he had to say, but I don't know, of course, what he did. What I can say is that obviously he would have to be careful.
In any case, the prisoners who were allowed to leave the camp were old prisoners, as I have said, who knew approximately everything that was going on in the camps, including the experiments.
Q Now I come to my last question. If I assume that the people just mentioned told members of their families, even on the pledge of secrecy, and the leadership of the camp would have been informed or would have known about this indiscretion, don't you believe that for this indiscretion the death penalty might have been incurred? part of the family, at least, if these indiscretions had become known by SS men, for indiscretions of this kind could be made known to people - but if they had reached the ears of the Waffen SS, it is obvious that these prisoners risked the penalty of death.
DR. KAUFFMANN: Thank you very much.
THE PRESIDENT: Is there any other defense counsel who wants to ask any questions?
DR. BABEL: Attorney Babel, defending the SS and the SD.
I am protesting. I was told that I will have a poor press. I am not here about the poor or good opinion of the press, but doing my duty as a defense attorney
THE PRESIDENT: You are going too fast.
DR. BABEL: (Continuing) and I am of the opinion that it will not want to be made harder by any one participating in this proceeding, even the press. who was responsible for the unhappy fate of these people, of the whole people
THE PRESIDENT: Will you kindly resume your seat?
DR. BABEL: (Continuing) anyone who is guilty in this respect, and I will not try to keep any one guilty in this regard from his proper punishment. I am only concerned with the most just sentence possible, and that any one guilty will not be sentenced.
THE PRESIDENT: I said kindly resume your seat. It is not fit for you to make a speech, You have been making a speech, as I understood it, this isn't the occasion for it.
DR, BABEL: I find it necessary because I was not protected against the Prosecution.
(Dr. Babel started to resume his seat)
THE PRESIDENT: One moment; come back.
(Dr. Babel came before the microphone again) I don't know what you mean about not being protected.
I don't know what you mean by not being protected against the Prosecution. The Prosecution called this witness, and the defendants counsel had the fullest opportunity to cross-examine, and we understood you went to the Tribunal for the purpose of cross-examining the witness. I don't understand your protest.
DR, BABEL: Mr. President, I am not familiar with legal proceedings in the United States and Great Britain, but according to German criminal law and regulations, it is customary that accusations which are made without reason, and unjustly, be referred back to the President, and I expected that that might take place in this instance, but since it did not take place, I took occasion to call attention to it. If I committed any injustice or any error, I wish to be excused.
THE PRESIDENT: What unjust accusations are you referring to?
BY DR. BABEL: were weapons, fifty guns, if I remember or understood correctly. Who brought these weapons in?
Q For what purpose? is, of defending ourselves to the death rather than to be exterminated like most of our comrades in the camp with the flame throwers or machine guns. In this way we could protect ourselves, defend ourselves in any case.
Q You said "we prisoners"; who were these prisoners?
Q In the main they were supposed to have been German?
A They were all nationalities. There were in the camps, which the SS didn't know, internal secret organizations of defense with shock battalions.
Q There were German inmates who wanted to help you? political prisoners, particularly old German Communists who had been imprisoned for ten years, who were excellent elements in the last moments.
Q Very well, that's what I wanted to know. Then with the exception of the criminals who were with the great triangle, you and the other inmates, who were of German origin, you were on friendly terms and helped each other; is that right?
A The question of Vere didn't present itself because the Germans evacuated the Vere in the last moments. They exterminated almost all of them. They exterminated all of them. They left the camp, and we don't know what became of them. No doubt they're now hiding with the German population, the few who survived.