A. Today, of course, it looks different than it did at the time. It was a matter of course for me then. Rascher was a colleague of mine. He had had a fatal accident in his experiments. He asked me to watch the autopsy, and, of course, I went. I also had a quite natural scientific interest in the cause of death, and in the findings, and I admit it frankly, although I am aware of the danger that someone may say I was interested in the death of the person too, but it happens in every hospital; all doctors watch the autopsies. If, for example, in the surgical ward, a patient died after an operation, then the chief physician, or if he had no time, the senior physician, and the other doctors who had nothing specifically to do with the patient, watched the autopsy, and generally even X-ray doctors came over who didn’t know the patient at all. Besides if I had not been present, that would today be considered as an incomprehensible lack of interest in the death—if I had not accepted Rascher’s invitation. If such a death happened during a centrifugal experiment in our institute, if such an accident had happened which was not in my field of work, I certainly would have gone to watch the autopsy. One must learn from the findings; that is one’s duty as a doctor. One has to look at such things so that one can draw one’s own conclusions and be able to avoid subsequent accidents.
Q. Did you see any further autopsies of Rascher?
A. No.
Q. Why not?
A. After this death there was a basic change in my attitude toward Rascher and the plan to break off the experiments, so that in the case of later deaths I was not present because of this attitude. I do not believe he invited me to the autopsies either, and under the conditions in Dachau I could not go there on my own initiative.
Q. Did you ask Rascher how this death came about, or did you warn him before the death?
A. Yes, I have already said I was present at the experiments just as I had sometimes been present at the other series of his experiments, purely out of curiosity, just as in our institute if centrifugal experiments were performed, I sometimes watched them, too. There was no reason for distrust but at that time I just watched the experiments out of curiosity. That was how it happened that I was present by accident at the experiment and looked at the electrocardiogram of this subject. On the screen of the electrocardiograph one can see a little point of light which moves, and that is determined by the heart action. When it seemed to me that it was getting dangerous, that the heart action was lessening, I said to Rascher: “You had better stop now.”
Q. And what did Rascher do?
A. Nothing. He kept that altitude and later death suddenly occurred.
Q. When you observed the electrocardiogram was it quite clear to you that the person would die in the next second?