The Theory and Practice of Hell (39 page)

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF HELL 161

author of this book who had been an Austrian publicist, and seven Jewish comrades. Appropriate petitions to the Reich Main Security Office, always suggested, written and presented for signature by myself, enabled this crew to enjoy protection from threatening death shipments and other forms of im minent action.

The detail numbered sixty-five men, including twelve Russians. The valuable equipment, laboratory apparatus, microscopes, etc., came mostly from France, either as “ booty,” or “ bought” from French firms, without payment.

The typhus strains
(Rickettsia Prowazeki)
were cultured by injecting guinea pigs with two cc. of blood from typhus

patients in Ward 46. Officially two kinds of serum were produced: a standard serum for the combat troops; and a second quality, somewhat turgid in appearance, for use by the prisoners. Actually, and without knowledge of Dr. Ding-Schuler, the top-quality product, relatively limited in quan tity, was reserved for prisoners in exposed positions. Con siderable quantities of the second-quality product—which did no harm, nor any particular good—were made available to the SS.

In January 1942, at the behest of Professor Klaus Schilling. SS Captain Prachtl, later replaced by SS Captain Plottner, began to select for malaria experiments Dachau prisoners in good health between the ages of twenty and forty-five. The first five men had to report to the hospital by March 1942. Subsequently there were twenty additional men each week.

The experiments were conducted in the following way: Anopheles mosquitoes, infected with malaria germs, were procured from the tropics, the Crimea and the Pontine swamps and used to infect the human subjects. One of the questions to be investigated was the relationship between human blood groups and malaria. The initial attack usually occurred three weeks after exposure. At this point the patient was again admitted to the hospital—he had had to continue working in the meantime. Fever chills occurred every two or three days—when the disease had reached a more advanced stage two or three times a day. The course of the disease was observed with all the familiar complications—heart trouble, jaundice, severe diarrhea and pneumonia. I have no in formation in this instance as to what drugs were tested, what

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German firms furnished them, and whether any therapeutic success was achieved with them. At any rate, of two hundred human experimental subjects, seventeen died during the early test series. Later, when the initial health examinations and age limitations were dropped, mortality rose considerably. Serious losses were sustained by the Polish clerics at Dachau, who were used for these experiments.

In 1942 Dr. Grawitz, so-called Reich Physician of the SS and a man whose name bobs up in connection with virtually every experiment on human beings conducted by the SS, arranged to have women inmates of the Ravensbnick con centration camp infected with staphylococci, gas bacilli, tetanus bacilli and certain mixed germ cultures, in order to ascertain the healing effect of the sulfa drugs. Supervision over the experiments was assumed by Dr. Karl Gebhardt,1 Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at the University of Berlin, Chief Surgeon of the Hohenlychen Medical Institution, President of the German Red Cross, and Himmler’s friend and personal physician. He had most of the operations per formed on Polish women by the SS physicians Dr. Schiedlausky, Dr. Rosenthal, Dr. Ernst Fischer, and Dr. Herta Oberheuser.2 Actually there was no responsible super vision. The infections were always set in the lower leg, and the women subjects never learned their purpose. As scars on a very few survivors have shown, and as witnesses have con firmed, the incisions frequently went as deep as the bone. On several occasions, particles of wood and glass were introduced into the wounds, in addition to the germ cultures. Sup puration of the leg quickly ensued. Those victims who went untreated, merely for the purpose of observing the course of the infection, died in fearful agony. Even of the others only a small number survived. Each of the series of experiments in cluded six to ten girls, usually the prettiest, selected from a large number ordered to report at the hospital. There were at least six series.

Dr. Gebhardt reported on the outcome to the “ Third Eastern Working Conference of Consulting Specialists of the Academy of Military Surgery, Berlin,” May 24-26, 1943,

1Sentenced to death in the Nazi Medical Trial; 1947.— 7r. 2Fischer got life, Oberheuser twenty years.—
Tr.

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under the title: “ Special Experiments on the Effect of Sulfonamides.” Actually he had visited Ravensbnick but oc casionally to inspect the wounds of the patients and hear a report on the results. Each time the women had to wait for several hours, strapped in rows to operating tables, until the Herr Professor put in his appearance. The conference to which he reported was attended, among others, by Professor Siegfried Handloser, chief and inspector of the German Army Medical Service; Dr. Paul Rostock, Brigadier-General in the Medical Corps Reserve, chief of the University Surgical Clinic, Berlin, consultant to the German Army and chief of the Office for Medical Science and Research; Dr. Oskar Schroder, Lieutenant-General in the Medical Corps, chief and medical inspector of the German Air Force Medical Service; Reich Health Leader Dr. Conti; Dr. Karl Genzken, chief of the Medical Service of the
Waffen SS;
SS Colonel Helmut Poppendick, chief of the Personal Staff of the SS Reich Physician; Professor Karl Brandt,1 a Major-General in the
Waffen SS,
Reich Commissioner for Health and Sanitation, and Hitler’s personal physician; as well as a number of very well-known and eminent German professors. In his address Gebhardt made no secret of the fact that the experiments had been conducted on concentration-camp inmates, indeed, he expressly assumed full responsibility for them. Not one of his listeners protested.

Dr. Sigmund Rascher, a captain in the German Air Force Medical Service and subsequently a second lieutenant in the SS, was a special favorite of Himmler. As early as 1941, after Rascher had consulted with an air surgeon from the Air Force Ground-Level Testing Station for Altitude Research at Munich, Himmler authorized him to conduct certain ex periments at the Dachau concentration camp. These ex periments were marked by bitter rivalry and cross-intrigues with Dr. Hans Wolfgang Romberg of the Division for Aviation Medicine of the German Experimental Institute for Aviation, and Dr. Siegfried Ruff,2 chief of the Institute for Aviation Medicine of the same agency. Purpose of the ex—

1 As a result of the Nazi Medical Trial, Karl Brandt was hanged, Schroder and Genzken got life, Poppendick ten years (for SS membership only). Rostock was acquitted.—
Tr.

aRomberg and Ruff were acquitted in the Nazi Medical Trial—
Tr.

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periments was to ascertain human reactions and capacity to sustain life at high altitudes, during rapid ascent to such altitudes (up to twelve miles and higher), as well as in rapid descent. A suitable decompression chamber belonging to the air force was shipped to Dachau. As reports that have been preserved show, the death of the human experimental subjects deliberately entered into the calculations from the very outset. Himmler had originally designated “ arch criminals” under sentence of death (such as Poles and Russians of the resistance movement!) for these experiments—a provision never ob served in practice and dropped altogether after 1942. The sur vivors were supposed to have their sentences commuted to life (except, of course, Russians and Poles).

A mobile unit was set up at Dachau in the camp street, be tween Block 5 and the adjacent barracks. The area was isolated from the other hospital buildings so that outside ob servation was impossible. The unit consisted of a high en closed box on wheels, with built-in instruments for the measurement of pressure, temperature and altitude. The equipment made it possible to simulate conditions during an ascent to high altitudes and during rapid descent. Heart action of the subjects was measured by an electro-cardiograph. Autopsies were conducted immediately upon death (“ the blood does not yet boil at an altitude of 70,000 feet” reads the final report of the three “ experts,” dated July 28, 1942). On one occasion, during an autopsy, Rascher found the heart of the victim still beating. He thereupon instituted a whole series of killings, solely for the purpose of establishing the length of time during which the human heart remained active after death.

Naturally the “ Sky Ride Wagon,” as it came to be known in camp, inspired panic among the prisoners. The first victims had been requisitioned from the Labor Utilization Office as a special detail to be granted supplementary rations. Some in nocents had actually volunteered. But within a few days sinister rumors were heard. There were no more volunteers. Thereafter the victims were simply taken from the barracks on one pretext or another. Newcomers were especially popular as subjects. Frequently “ The Captain,” as he was known in camp, went stalking for suitable victims himself.

In reply to a detailed intermediate report, Himmler wrote