d. Evidence

Testimony
Page
Extracts from the testimony of prosecution witness Eugen Kogon[993]
Extracts from the testimony of prosecution expert witness Dr. Andrew C. Ivy[994]

EXTRACTS FROM THE TESTIMONY OF PROSECUTION WITNESS
EUGEN KOGON[[165]]

DIRECT EXAMINATION

Mr. McHaney: Before we go into the details of the typhus experiments, I would like to ask you if you know anything about the manner in which subjects were selected for the experiments which you have mentioned and which took place in Buchenwald?

Witness Kogon: The selection of experimental subjects was not the same at different times. In the very first period the inmates of the camp were called upon to volunteer. They were told that it was a harmless affair; that the people would get additional food. After one or two experiments it became impossible to get any volunteers whatever. From then on, Doctor Ding asked the camp physician or the SS camp commandant to select the suitable persons for the experiments. He had no special directives for this. The camp administration chose people arbitrarily from among the prisoners, whether they were criminals, or political prisoners, or homosexuals. Intrigue among the prisoners themselves also played a role in the selection, and occasionally people came for whom there was no special reason, but they came into the experiments. From the fall of 1943, approximately, the camp leaders did not want to keep the responsibility for the selection of experimental subjects. Doctor Ding himself no longer wished to have verbal instructions from Mrugowsky to carry out the experiments, but he demanded written orders. For this purpose he approached Mrugowsky with the request that the Reich Leader SS should appoint his own people for the experiments. SS Gruppenfuehrer Nebe of the Reich Criminal Police Office in Berlin then, according to a directive from Himmler which I saw, ordered that only those people were to be used who had at least a ten-year sentence to work out. Then, the officials of the Reich Criminal Police Office in Berlin twice selected 110 and 99 people in Buchenwald, who were made available for the experiments. They were exclusively criminals with a previous record. In the last period, people were selected from various concentration camps and prisons in Germany. Transports came to Buchenwald with these people. In addition to this, political prisoners from the camp itself were almost always included in these series of experiments, either because they were inconvenient to the SS in some way or because they were victims of camp intrigues.

Q. Were all of these experimental subjects condemned to death, who were experimented on in Block 46?

A. I do not know of a single case in which anyone came to the experimental station in Block 46 because he had been condemned to death. Once in the case of four Russian prisoners of war, it was claimed that they were to be shot, but there was no judgment, no sentence. They belonged to the category of Russian prisoners of war, of whom about 9,500 were shot, hanged, or strangled in Buchenwald.

Q. Were any special considerations or favors granted to the experimental subjects who survived these experiments?