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
A. No, of course not. First of all I had never seen a death from high
altitude. That was the first one I ever saw. I couldn’t know that, and,
in the second place, this death certainly resulted from aero-embolism
and, therefore, suddenly. In the third place, the electrocardiogram
change was, shall we say, doubtful. I myself would have stopped the
experiment at this stage but he didn’t. I only spoke up because I would
have stopped the experiment at that moment.
Q. Did you speak to Rascher about this after the experiment?
A. It was not possible for me to object in view of Rascher’s position,
but I told him that such things should not happen.
Q. And what else did you do?
A. After this death I went to Berlin and told Ruff about it. Ruff agreed
with me that death should not be allowed to occur in high-altitude
experiments and it had never occurred before. Since Rascher, however,
performed these experiments for Himmler on men who were condemned to
death, we saw no way of preventing Rascher after we had made an official
report. In general when objections were made Rascher simply referred to
the orders from Himmler and to the fact that he was covered by them. It
was quite impossible to remove the chamber from Dachau against Himmler’s
and Rascher’s will. And to give this death as a reason for removing the
chamber was even more impossible. In the first place, Himmler would not
have reacted. He would certainly not have given up the chamber. He might
have started proceedings for treason or for sabotage of an essential war
experiment. In fact, I had reported this to Ruff against my signature to
the contrary in a concentration camp. Like every other visitor to a
concentration camp I had to sign a statement to the effect that
everything I saw and so forth in the camp would be secret. Besides, at
the beginning of the experiments Rascher had received a special telegram
from Himmler ordering silence about these experiments. A specific
obligation to secrecy was strengthened by this order from Himmler. Since
I had reported the matter to Ruff against the secrecy obligation, I also
had to be covered in this respect, and for this reason again we could
not give the death as the reason for removing the chamber from Dachau,
aside from the fact it would not have met with success.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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