Trials of war criminals before the Nuernberg military tribunals under control council law no. 10, volume IVarious
Philosophy
Trials of war criminals before the Nuernberg military tribunals under control council law no. 10, volume I
Various
Nuremberg Trial of Major German War Criminals, Nuremberg, Germany, 1945-1946; War crime trials -- Germany -- Nuremberg
Ruff and Romberg take the position that they would be most unwilling to
kill prisoners in the course of an experiment. They insist that their
experiments with Rascher were concerned with the problem of explosive
decompression and on parachute descent from high altitudes, whereas
Rascher alone worked on sojourn or a more prolonged stay at high
altitudes, and that it was in Rascher’s experiments that prisoners were
killed. This again is the artificial division of the experiments into
the criminal and noncriminal which has already been proved to be
spurious. But here again, the two self-experiments which Ruff, Romberg,
and Rascher included in their joint final report as mentioned above
_were experiments on prolonged stay at high altitude, a subject which
they now claim was exclusively Rascher’s_. The only reason that this
experiment did not end fatally was the fact that it was interrupted in
time because of intense pain. Moreover, on page 11 of the final report
by Ruff, Romberg, and Weltz the following is said: “This is worthy of
special attention because in this case a person has fully recovered
mentally at an altitude of 8.3 km. (27,230 ft.), after 3 minutes of the
most severe lack of oxygen, _while in altitude endurance experiments_ at
this altitude severe altitude sickness sets in after about 3 minutes.”
[Emphasis supplied.] (_NO-402, Pros. Ex. 66._) Here, again, it is proved
from their own report that Ruff and Romberg, as well as Rascher, were
concerned with sojourn at high altitudes.
Experiments, in which prisoners were killed, are reported in Rascher’s
report to Himmler of 11 May 1942. (_NO-220, Pros. Ex. 61._) Some
prisoners were killed by keeping them at 12,000 meters without oxygen
for 30 minutes; one was killed at 20,000 meters when exposed there for
about 6 minutes without oxygen. These prisoners were autopsied to
ascertain if bubbles of gas, called air embolism in Rascher’s report of
11 May 1942, were present in the blood vessels of the brain and other
organs when dissected under water. Some “Jewish professional criminals”
who had committed “Rassenschande” (race pollution)[18] were killed for
another reason:
“To find out whether the severe psychic and physical effects, as
mentioned under No. 3, are due to the formation of embolism, the
following was done: After relative recuperation from such a
parachute descending test had taken place, however before
regaining consciousness, some VP’s were kept under water until
they died. When the skull and the cavities of the breast and of
the abdomen had been opened under water, an enormous amount of
air embolism was found in the vessels of the brain, the coronary
vessels and the vessels of the liver and the intestines, etc.”
(_NO-220, Pros. Ex. 61._)
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