[Emphasis supplied.]
On 27 February 1942, Brandt informed Sievers that Himmler would support Hirt’s work and would place everything necessary at his disposal. Brandt requested Sievers to inform Hirt accordingly and to report again on Hirt’s work. (NO-090, Pros. Ex. 176.)
Hirt’s murderous and inhuman plan was carried out in a way which differed but slightly from the suggestion made in his preliminary report. (NO-085, Pros. Ex. 175.) The proof has shown that it was decided to preserve the whole skeletons of the victims rather than merely the skulls. On 2 November 1942 Sievers requested Brandt to make the necessary arrangements with the Reich Security Main Office for providing 150 Jewish inmates from Auschwitz to carry out this plan. (NO-086, Pros. Ex. 177.) On 6 November Brandt informed Adolf Eichmann, the Chief of Office IV-B-4 (Jewish affairs) of the Reich Security Main Office to put everything at Hirt’s disposal which was necessary for the completion of the skeleton collection. (NO-089, Pros. Ex. 179.)
From Sievers’ letter to Eichmann of 21 June 1943, it is apparent that SS Hauptsturmfuehrer Beger, a collaborator of the Ahnenerbe Society, carried out the preliminary work for the assembling of the skeleton collection in the Auschwitz concentration camp on 79 Jews, 30 Jewesses, 2 Poles, and 4 Asiatics. In this letter, Sievers stated that Beger had to interrupt his work because of the danger of infectious diseases in the camp. Sievers requested that the inmates on whom Beger had carried out this work be transferred to the Natzweiler concentration camp because further activities in Auschwitz were impossible due to the danger of infection. Special accommodation for the thirty women was to be provided in the Natzweiler concentration camp “for a short period”. [Emphasis added.] (NO-087, Pros. Ex. 181.)
The statement of the camp commandant of the Natzweiler concentration camp, SS Hauptsturmfuehrer Josef Kramer, reveals that approximately 80 inmates of the Auschwitz concentration camp, among them females, were transferred to the Natzweiler concentration camp and killed there by gas at the request of Hirt in the beginning of August 1943. A special gas chamber had been built for this purpose. The corpses of the victims were sent in three shipments to the Anatomical Institute of Hirt in Strasbourg University. (NO-807, Pros. Ex. 185.) This evidence is corroborated by the testimony of the witness Henripierre. He testified that in the beginning of August 1943, the principal autopsy technician of the Anatomical Institute, Bong, received the order from Hirt to prepare the tanks in the cellar of the Institute for approximately 120 corpses. At intervals of a few days, three shipments of corpses, 30 female, 30 male, and 26 male, arrived by truck from an unknown place. All of these victims were Jewish. These corpses were preserved in the cellar of the Anatomical Institute in the tanks prepared by Bong. (Tr. pp. 712-4.) See also the affidavit of Wagner. (NO-881, Pros. Ex. 280.) As proved by the Sievers’ diary, Beger was ordered to prepare plaster casts of the victims. (3546-PS, Pros. Ex. 123.)
Early in September 1944, when the Allied armies were threatening Strasbourg, Sievers approached the defendant Brandt with the request for instructions as to what should be done with the Jewish bodies which were still stored in the tanks in the cellar of the Anatomical Institute. He informed Brandt that Hirt would be able to “de-flesh” the corpses and thus render them unrecognizable, but in this case part of the work would have been done in vain “and it would be a great scientific loss for this unique collection because casts could not be made afterwards. The skeleton collection is not conspicuous. Viscera could be declared as remnants of corpses, apparently left in the Anatomical Institute by the French and ordered to be cremated.” Sievers requested a directive from Brandt whether the collection should be preserved, partly dissolved, or completely dissolved. (NO-088, Pros. Ex. 182.)
From the memorandum of SS Hauptsturmfuehrer Berg, and his telephone conversation with Sievers on 15 October 1944, it is apparent that it was first decided to destroy the evidence of these brutal crimes, but with a temporary improvement in the military situation, this decision was rescinded. Sievers informed Berg on 21 October 1944 that, in compliance with the orders he had received previously, the dissolution of the collection had been completed. (NO-091, Pros. Ex. 183.) But such was not the case. Hirt had ordered Bong and his assistant, Meyer, to cut up the 86 corpses and have them cremated in the Strasbourg crematorium, but these two men alone were unable to carry out this enormous task. A number of corpses remained un-dissected and were left in the tanks, together with partially dissected corpses, in order to create the impression that they were used for normal anatomical research. (Tr. p. 715; NO-881, Pros. Ex. 280.)
The pictures of these corpses and of the gas chambers in the Natzweiler concentration camp, where the victims of the Jewish skeleton collection were murdered, taken by the French authorities after the liberation of Strasbourg, tell the grim story of this mass murder more vividly than witnesses and documents ever could. (NO-483, Pros. Ex. 184; NO-807, Pros. Ex. 185.)