I can add that I am grateful to Professor Rose because he probably helped to prevent our Institute’s being compelled to take over the production of typhus vaccine. It is entirely unpredictable what calamities might have arisen if we had been forced to take up the production of this vaccine.
[Signed] J. Oerskov
Director of the State Serum Institute
Not. K. J. No. 1974/47
EXTRACTS FROM THE TESTIMONY OF PROSECUTION WITNESS EUGEN KOGON[[63]]
DIRECT EXAMINATION
Mr. McHaney: Now, will you please explain to the Tribunal in your own words exactly how these typhus experiments were carried out.
Witness Kogon: After 40 to 60 people, sometimes up to 120, had been detailed for a series of experiments, one-third of them were separated, and the other two-thirds were either vaccinated with a protective treatment, or it was otherwise administered to them, if it was a chemical therapeutical treatment. Those people who were protected against typhus remained in Block 46 for several weeks until their infection with Rickettsias Prowazeki, the typhus agent. The first selection, that is to say, the first third, was also infected together with them. They served as so-called control persons, with the help of whom it was possible to ascertain whether the infection took and what course the disease took in their cases, so that this course could be compared with that of those who had been vaccinated and then infected. The infection was performed in various ways. Either typhus was transferred through fresh blood injected intravenously or intramuscularly. At the beginning, too, by scratching the skin, or by making a small incision in the arm. In the initial stages, two cubic centimeters of fresh blood infected with typhus were used for the infection, unless the infection concerned was one with an infectious solution. Two cubic centimeters of fresh blood containing typhus were then usually injected into the veins. Later on that dosage was reduced to 1/20 of 1 cubic centimeter because the large quantity of 2 cubic centimeters would penetrate any security achieved by the vaccination. Even 1/20 of a cubic centimeter of fresh blood containing typhus was usually enough to produce a very high degree of typhus if injected into the veins. In the course of years the typhus cultures used at Buchenwald had been cultivated from man to man and had increased their strength, their virulence to a considerable degree, so that the very smallest quantity was sufficient. I suggested to Sturmbannfuehrer Dr. Ding in 1944 that in order to increase the scientific value he should reduce the quantity of these injections to the extreme minimum so that the so-called threshold value could be ascertained—in other words, so that the artificial infection should be as similar to normal infection by lice as possible. He turned this suggestion down because he believed that then no convincing proof could be achieved of the real strength of the protective treatment used. A third category of the experimental persons was used to maintain the typhus cultures. Those were the so-called passage persons, amounting to three to five persons per month. They were merely infected for the purpose of ensuring a constant supply of fresh blood containing typhus. Very nearly all those persons died. I do not think I am exaggerating if I say that 95 percent of these cases were fatal.
Q. Witness, do you mean to say that they deliberately infected three to five persons a month with typhus just to have the viruses alive and available in blood?