BLAHA: Yes.
MR. DODD: This affidavit, if it please the Tribunal, bears the Document Number 3249-PS, and I wish to offer it at this time. It is Exhibit USA-663. I feel that we can reduce the extent of this interrogation by approximately three-fourths through the submission of this affidavit and I should like to read it. It will take much less time to read this affidavit than it would to go through it in question and answer form and it covers a large part of what we expect to elicit from this witness.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
MR. DODD: I wouldn’t have read it if we had had time to have a Russian and French translation, but unfortunately that wasn’t possible in the few days we had.
“I, Franz Blaha, being duly sworn, depose and state as follows:
“1. I studied medicine in Prague, Vienna, Strasbourg, and Paris and received my diploma in 1920. From 1920 to 1926 I was a clinical assistant. In 1926 I became chief physician of the Iglau Hospital in Moravia, Czechoslovakia. I held this position until 1939 when the Germans entered Czechoslovakia and I was seized as a hostage and held a prisoner for co-operating with the Czech Government. I was sent as a prisoner to the Dachau Concentration Camp in April 1941 and remained there until the liberation of the camp in April 1945. Until July 1941 I worked in a punishment company. After that I was sent to the hospital and subjected to the experiments in typhoid being conducted by Dr. Muermelstadt. After that I was to be made the subject of an experimental operation and succeeded in avoiding this only by admitting that I was a physician. If this had been known before, I would have suffered, because intellectuals were treated very harshly in the punishment company. In October 1941 I was sent to work in the herb plantation and later in the laboratory for processing herbs. In June 1942 I was taken into the hospital as a surgeon. Shortly afterwards I was directed to perform a stomach operation on 20 healthy prisoners. Because I would not do this I was transferred to the autopsy room where I stayed until April 1945. While there I performed approximately 7,000 autopsies. In all, 12,000 autopsies were performed under my direction.
“2. From the middle of 1941 to the end of 1942 some 500 operations on healthy prisoners were performed. These were for the instructions of the SS medical students and doctors and included operations on the stomach, gall bladder, and throat. These were performed by students and doctors of only 2 years’ training, although they were very dangerous and difficult. Ordinarily they would not have been done except by surgeons with at least 4 years’ surgical practice. Many prisoners died on the operating table and many others from later complications. I performed autopsies on all of these bodies. The doctors who supervised these operations were Lang, Muermelstadt, Wolter, Ramsauer, and Kahr. Standartenführer Dr. Lolling frequently witnessed these operations.