BALACHOWSKY: Yes, I was present at the visits inside the camp of which I spoke.
DR. KAUFFMANN: Did the visitors at this camp see that cardiac injections were being given? Or did the visitors see that human skin was tanned? Did those visitors witness any ill-treatment?
BALACHOWSKY: I cannot answer this question in the affirmative, and I can say only that visitors passed through my block. One had to pass almost through the entire camp. I do not know where the visitors went either before or after visiting my block.
DR. KAUFFMANN: Did one of your own comrades tell you perhaps whether the visitors personally saw these excesses? Yes or no.
BALACHOWSKY: I do not understand the question. Would you mind repeating it?
DR. KAUFFMANN: Did perhaps one of your comrades tell you that the visitors at the camp were present at these excesses?
BALACHOWSKY: I never heard that visitors were present at experiments or witnessed excesses of that kind. The only thing I can say, concerning the tanned skins is that I saw, with my own eyes, SS noncommissioned officers or officers—I cannot remember exactly whether they were officers or noncommissioned officers—come out of Block 2, carrying tanned skins under their arms. But these were SS men; they were not visitors to the camp.
DR. KAUFFMANN: Did these visitors, and in particular Red Cross nurses, know that these experiments were medically completely worthless, or did they just wish to inspect the laboratories and the equipment?
BALACHOWSKY: I repeat again that these visitors came to my laboratory section, where they saw what was being done, that is, the sterilized filling of the phials. I cannot say what they saw before or after. I know only that these visitors of whom I am speaking, the Luftwaffe cadets or the Red Cross people, visited the whole installation of the block. They certainly knew, however, what was the source of this culture, and that men might be used for experiments, as there were charts and graphs showing the stages of cultures originating with men; but it could have been from blood initially taken from typhus patients and not necessarily from patients artificially inoculated with typhus.
I really think that these visitors did not generally know about the atrocities in the form of experiments that were being performed in Block 46, but it was impossible for visitors who went into the camp not to see the horrible conditions in which the prisoners were kept.