A. Yes. And even here the reactions were quite the usual ones which occur in other vaccinations, too.
Q. But Hirtz also says that after the temperature—seven to eight days, the persons developed some kind of disturbance and they had some impediment in their speech and in three or four cases they stuttered. Do you know anything about that?
A. When I visited these persons I did not observe any such symptoms. None of them complained, and I am sure that if any one found that he had developed such symptoms he would immediately have gone to the doctor. Everyone was interested in getting rid of these symptoms. I did not observe any disturbances or stuttering. If Hirtz had seen them at the time, I am convinced he would have reported them to me. He was the nurse for these persons and was responsible for them; I cannot imagine that he would have served the interests of these prisoners by keeping these things secret.
Q. You say that you did not observe such symptoms nor did Hirtz report them to you. Now, Witness, Hirtz also said that after two days two of these experimental subjects, as he calls them, or vaccinated persons, as you call them, died. Did you observe this, Witness?
A. I have already said that in the smaller experimental group no one died, because I am sure I would have noticed it when I visited these persons who had been vaccinated. I would certainly have ordered an autopsy in the case of such deaths to determine when the person died. Not only would I have ordered or carried out this autopsy, but the camp administration would have ordered it. People might think that these persons perhaps died of typhus. I must say that after a two-day incubation period—that was the period between inoculation and death—no one ever died of typhus. The shortest time for typhus deaths, that is the incubation period plus length of disease, is ten days to fourteen days. And these early deaths are supposed to be cases with a high pathogenic virus originating directly from human beings. For this reason alone it is quite impossible.
Q. Witness, you said that in such cases you would doubtless have had an autopsy performed. You said you heard nothing about the deaths, and that, therefore, there was no autopsy; is that right?
A. Yes. That is correct.
Q. I should like to remind the Tribunal of the testimony of Hirtz. (Tr. p. 1298.) He said that he immediately wrapped the bodies in paper and had them burned in the crematorium at Natzweiler. Not even the prosecution witness was able to say, or perhaps did not want to say, how Professor Haagen reacted to these deaths. Now one more question about this witness Hirtz. Here on the witness stand Hirtz was asked, “Now Witness, you realized that these experiments performed on the 20 to 25 persons were experiments for the determination of typhus in connection with typhus disease?” A. “Yes, I had not the slightest doubt about it. I have fifteen years of practice behind me.” I do not know, Witness, what this testimony means. Perhaps I am not enough of a specialist to judge, but I may assume that you can explain what the content of these statements is.
A. I can only say that I cannot understand Mr. Hirtz’ statement at all. I have no idea what experiments to determine typhus in connection with this disease are supposed to be. First of all, there were no experiments to determine typhus since there was no typhus. And I don’t know any method for performing experiments on human beings to determine typhus. If by experiments, one means the removal of blood in the Weil-Felix reaction, that is something else, but that is not what he is talking about here. As reason for his expert knowledge the witness states that he has been a pharmacist for 15 years. That he has such a long practice behind him and so considers himself an expert in the field of contagious diseases. I can’t quite understand that either. But I think one can expect that from a pharmacist—after all, pharmacists do sell vaccines for public diseases in pharmacies—one would really expect him to know what vaccine reactions are and what a real disease is. And then in the first group where a reaction did appear, he didn’t know that group at all.
Q. You have already said, Witness, something about Mr. Hirtz’ testimony that the prisoner Atloff told him about what Mr. Hirtz described was the second experiment. It seems to me that supports your statement that Mr. Hirtz knew nothing about the first group, that is the eight persons. Can you tell us anything else, Professor, to explain the contradiction between your testimony and that of Mr. Hirtz?