A. As director of the Hygiene Institute I had a rather large sphere of activity in Alsace, and, of course, it was known in the concentration camps, too, that my offices were in Strasbourg. For this reason the camp turned to me for help in many matters, including the obtaining of vaccines and help in the disinfection of the camp, and so forth, matters which perhaps we shall deal with later.
Q. You say then that the camp turned to you because you were the hygienist in the Alsatian district around Strasbourg?
A. That is correct.
Q. You said also that the camp commandant or doctor asked for your assistance?
A. Yes, that was an obvious thing for him to do, because I was right there in Strasbourg.
Q. You said further that it was roughly in the spring of 1943 that these requests for assistance were made to you; was there an epidemic in the camp already at that time, or why did they think they needed your help?
A. At that time there was no epidemic in the camp, but the general epidemiological situation was such that an outbreak of typhus was expected at any moment, especially since transports were continually coming from the East. These transports were infected with lice and contained people who were already infected with typhus, and other camps in the neighborhood had already had their first cases of typhus.
Q. Professor, what means did you have available to help these camp physicians? Please limit yourself, first of all your vaccines?
A. I have already said that there are various vaccines available made from dead virus, and also those made from live and attenuated virus. It was very difficult to procure virus at that time. The superior officers simply could not make the effective vaccines available, and in order to carry out any plans, all sorts of decrees and orders existed in Germany for the planning of systematic vaccination should the danger of typhus arise.
Q. Now, Witness, you have described your work in the field of vaccine production, namely, that of producing a live pathogenic virus; did you begin this developing and working on your own initiative, or did some other agency refer the problem to you?