NMT01-T606
Volume I · Page 606
make tests on a typhus inflicted person using this method, and the worst that could happen would be that it would not help; but it certainly would not be necessary to make a certain series of experiments, and I certainly never gave any such order.
Q. Did you write to Ding in that sense?
A. At that time I informed my assistants about this therapy in the case of contagious diseases, and I am sure that it was a matter of course that, as epidemic specialists, we had to be informed about such a possibility, and in this manner we also received knowledge of it.
Q. You were saying that there would not have been justification for the experimental theory?
A. No.
Q. Well, did you or did you not order such a series of experiments from Dr. Ding?
A. Never, at no time.
Q. Are you of the opinion that Ding started these experiments on his own initiative?
A. That is possible. At any rate he did not receive orders from me, and I don't know where else he could have received an order.
DIRECT EXAMINATION
Dr. Tipp: Now, Professor, we are coming to the last and perhaps the most decisive count of the indictment — namely, the typhus experiments, as the prosecution calls them. Professor Schroeder and Professor Becker–Freyseng are charged with responsibility for such typhus experiments. There are two groups of them, according to the prosecution. On the one hand, those performed in Buchenwald concentration camp by Dr. Ding-Schuler and to a lesser extent by the defendant Dr. Hoven. The second group is alleged typhus experiments that you carried out in the Natzweiler concentration camp. Before we turn to the individual experiments, Professor, please tell the Tribunal what the hazards of typhus were during the war, especially in the years 1943, 1944, and 1945 when this problem became acute? Describe it only to the extent necessary in order to make your work understandable.
Witness Haagen: I shall try to be, brief, but in order to understand this whole problem, one must be given some general information. Typhus is a very serious infectious disease which, in international
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*Complete testimony is recorded in mimeographed transcript, 17, 18, 19, 20 June 1947, pp. 9409-9713.
