A. Three.
Q. But Neff spoke of five deaths at which you were present.
A. There could only have been three.
Q. Why could there only have been three?
A. Because I remember. After all they were deaths and they made a definite impression on me; I know it.
Q. Why did death in the low-pressure chamber make such an impression on you?
A. In the innumerable low-pressure-chamber experiments not only performed by us, but everywhere in Germany in other institutes, we never had any deaths at all, and the opinion at that time was that any necessary problem of aviation medicine could be solved without deaths.
Q. Now, how did it happen that you were present at these deaths, since you say these experiments did not belong to your series of experiments?
A. At the beginning of April or in the middle of April, Rascher told me for the first time that he was performing experiments with slow ascension and that he had attempted to work with Fahrenkamp but the work had been interrupted when the latter was sent away. I said that had nothing to do with our experiments and was quite unimportant and uninteresting from our point of view. He admitted that, but said it was a specific question which especially interested him personally and which he had to work on. I did not see these experiments, which according to records here lasted 8 to 10 hours. He probably always performed them on the days I was absent because these 8 to 10 hours would have interfered considerably with our experiments. He expanded these experiments and performed time-reserve experiments at certain altitudes to test the adaptation which he had been testing before in the slow-ascension experiments. This was an experiment in which the subject remains at the same altitude, in contrast to the falling or sinking experiments where the pressure is constantly increased, that is, when the altitude is decreased. As his interim reports show, he extended these experiments to high altitudes and the time reserve was studied either with or without oxygen. The suggestion for this in part came obviously from other work, such as that of Dr. Kliches.
I sometimes observed these experiments. He performed them correctly; he watched the subjects so that there was, in itself, no objection to these experiments. The only thing was that they interfered with our experiments from the point of view of time, and Rascher’s lack of punctuality was a much greater annoyance in this respect. According to the documents, as well as the witness Neff, Rascher apparently had deaths in these experiments. The first deaths were evidently unexpected. In these unexpected deaths the electrocardiogram and the autopsy findings, together with his reports, apparently gave Himmler the idea that these experiments should be carried on further, and in addition that Fahrenkamp should be called in to extend them as far as possible scientifically. The fact that Himmler was covering them apparently induced him in my presence to perform experiments which were dangerous, and in which deaths occurred. The fact that I had been present several times at previous experiments brought about my presence at that fatal experiment, too.