The Tribunal finds that the defendant Schroeder was responsible for, aided and abetted, and took a consenting part in, medical experiments performed on non-German nationals against their consent; in the course of which experiments deaths, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, and other inhuman acts were committed on the experimental subjects. To the extent that these experiments did not constitute war crimes they constitute crimes against humanity.
CONCLUSION
Military Tribunal I finds and adjudges the defendant Oskar Schroeder guilty under counts two and three of the indictment.
GENZKEN
The defendant Genzken is charged under counts two and three of the indictment with special responsibility for, and participation in, Sulfanilamide, Spotted Fever, Poison, and Incendiary Bomb Experiments. The prosecution has abandoned the two latter charges and hence they will not be considered further. The defendant is also charged under count four of the indictment with membership, after 1 September 1939, in an organization declared criminal by the judgment of the International Military Tribunal—namely, the SS.
Genzken was commissioned in the Medical Service of the German Navy in 1912 and served through the First World War in that capacity. From 1919 to 1934, he engaged in the private practice of medicine. He joined the NSDAP in 1926, and in October 1934 he was again commissioned as a reserve officer of the naval medical department. On 1 March 1936 he was transferred to the medical department of the SS, with the rank of major, and assigned to the medical department of a branch of the SS, which in the summer of 1940 became the Waffen SS. He served as chief surgeon of the SS hospital in Berlin, and was director of the department charged with supplying medical equipment and with the supervision of medical personnel in concentration camps. He was also medical supervisor to Eicke, the head of all the concentration camps, which were within Genzken’s jurisdiction insofar as medical matters were concerned. In May 1940, Genzken was appointed Chief of the Medical Office of the Waffen SS with the rank of senior colonel, Grawitz being his medical superior. He retained this position until the close of the war. In 1942 he was designated as Chief of the Medical Service of the Waffen SS, Division D of the SS Operational Headquarters. On 30 January 1943 he was appointed Gruppenfuehrer and Generalleutnant in the Waffen SS.
SULFANILAMIDE EXPERIMENTS
The sulfanilamide experiments referred to in the indictment were conducted by the defendants Gebhardt, Fischer, and Oberheuser at Ravensbrueck concentration camp between 20 July 1942 and August 1943. During this period of time, four of the medical branches of the Waffen SS were under Genzken, including Office XVI, Hygiene, of which the defendant Mrugowsky was chief.
It is submitted by the prosecution that the evidence proves Mrugowsky to have given support and assistance to these experiments, and that, consequently, Genzken becomes criminally liable because of the position of command he held over Mrugowsky. It is also urged that because Genzken attended the meeting in Berlin at which Gebhardt and Fischer gave their lecture on the experiments, this likewise shows criminal connection.
That Mrugowsky rendered assistance to Gebhardt in the sulfanilamide experiments at Ravensbrueck is clearly proved. Mrugowsky put his laboratory and co-workers at Gebhardt’s disposal. He furnished the bacterial cultures for the infections. He conferred with Gebhardt about the medical problems involved. It was on the suggestion of Mrugowsky’s office that wood shavings and ground glass were placed in artificially inflicted wounds made on the subjects so that battlefield wounds would be more closely simulated. It also appears that Blumenreuter, who was the chief of Office XV under Genzken’s direction, may have furthered the experiments by furnishing surgical instruments and medicines to Gebhardt.