Q. No. That does not correspond with the impression I got from the numbers in the diary, but I did not calculate it so precisely as all that. I looked at the individual experiments and it is true that, for instance, in these therapeutic experiments, Ding’s work mentions a mortality of something like fifty to fifty-five percent, and then there is one series that deals with blood infection where of twenty people, I believe nineteen died.
Q. Let me put it to you, Professor, is it not a fact that they were not dealing with epidemic typhus in Buchenwald, but with a super-typhus, developed from man to man passage, which was much more virulent and much more deadly than any typhus you could expect in an epidemic?
A. That I cannot judge because I have no knowledge of the work done in Buchenwald and can only refer to what Ding’s diary says, which I regard as unreliable.
Q. Well, if you regard it as reliable, Doctor, and if you figure out the deaths among the untreated control persons and find a mortality which averaged eighty-one percent, will you not, as a scientist and an expert on tropical diseases, concede that they had developed a highly virulent, something we might call a super-typhus, in Buchenwald? Isn’t that right, Professor?
A. As a scientist, I am accustomed to state my opinion on the basis of reliable documentation and not on the basis of such falsifications which are produced for a special purpose.
Q. I can appreciate that you do not regard the document as reliable, Professor, but we will investigate that a little later.
[1] Closing statement is recorded in mimeographed transcript, 14 July 1947, pp. 10718-10796.
[2] Final plea is recorded in mimeographed transcript, 15 July 1947, pp. 10874-10911.