On examining these documents, as well as the originals, the Tribunal will see that German medical literature is very rich in experiments carried out on “adults in good health who died suddenly between 5 and 6 o’clock in the morning.”
No one in Germany could be deceived as to the conditions under which these deaths occurred, since the accounts of the SS doctors’ experiments in the camps were printed and published.
One of the last documents is F-185(b), and (a), relative to an experiment with poisoned bullets carried out on 11 August 1944, in the presence of SS Sturmbannführer Dr. Ding and Dr. Widmann—Page 187 of the second document book concerning concentration camps. These two documents are submitted as Exhibit Numbers RF-386 and RF-387. The Tribunal will find the description of this experiment, in which the victims are described as persons sentenced to death.
THE PRESIDENT: The document has been read already, I think.
M. DUBOST: It is a document from the French archives. However, Mr. President, I doubt whether the Tribunal has heard Document F-185(b), Exhibit RF-386, which is the opinion of the French professor, M. May, Fellow of Surgery, to whom the pseudo-scientific documents to which I alluded just now were submitted—the reports from scientific reviews of experiments. He wrote, Page 222:
“The wickedness and the stupidity of the experimenters amazed us. The symptoms of aconitine nitrate poisoning have been known from time immemorial. This poison is sometimes employed by certain savage tribes to poison their war arrows. But one has never heard of them writing observations in a pretentious style, on the anticipated result of their experiments—observations which are completely inadequate and puerile—nor that they would have them signed by a ‘Doz,’ that is to say, a professor.”
We now submit Document F-278(a) as Exhibit Number RF-388. It involves Keitel. It is a letter signed: “By order of the High Command of the Wehrmacht, Dr. Lehmann.” It is dated 17 February 1942 and is addressed to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and it implicates him. It concerns the regime in the internment camps:
“Delinquents brought to Germany in application of the decree of the Führer are to have no communication of any kind with the outside world. They must, therefore, neither write themselves, nor receive letters, packages, or visits. The letters, packages, and visits are to be refused with the remark that all communication with the outside world is forbidden.”
The High Command gives its point of view in a letter of 31 January 1942, according to which there can be no question of Belgian lawyers being permitted for Belgian prisoners.
We now submit Document 682-PS, which becomes Exhibit Number RF-389, Page 134 of the second document book. This document implicates the German Government and the Reich Cabinet. It is a record of a conversation between Dr. Goebbels and Thierack, Minister of Justice, in Berlin, on 14 September 1942, from 1300 hours to 1415 hours.