Mr. Hardy: Now, what did Sievers ever tell you about the Sievers-Hirt skeleton collection? Did he ever tell you about that?
Witness Hielscher: Yes. He told me that Himmler had ordered—as far as I know, it was in connection with Jewish commissars who were under this terrible execution order which was valid in the East—that some of them were to be selected and used for the skeleton collection. The order was from Himmler, as Sievers reported to me.
Q. And did you know what they were going to do with these people?
A. Yes. It was the same as in the experiments. There a danger of death was a possibility; here it was certain.
Q. You knew, of course, that they were going to stand these people up, pick them out, select them according to size, take their anatomical measurements, then ship them to Natzweiler and at Natzweiler kill them, then deflesh them, then send the skeletons to the Strasbourg University for collection? And you knew that?
A. Yes.
Q. A fine thing for a resistance man to be involved in, isn’t it?
A. The situation, as I have said repeatedly, was as follows: We made no distinction in the real evaluation of the skeleton collection and other experiments in which there was this so-called “volunteering” and in which the result was the same—in our eyes, they were the same thing. I should like to emphasize one more thing. Does one have the moral right to tolerate a lesser evil in order to prevent a greater evil?
Q. Just a moment. Now in connection with the skeleton collection, do you further know that they dispensed with the idea of taking Jewish commissars but selected Jewish inmates of concentration camps?
A. Yes. What particular persons were selected I do not know, of course, but I knew that a number of Jews were to be gassed and were selected for this anthropological collection. That was the same case as in the Ghetto of Lodz. The Jewish commander of the Ghetto—that was Lieutenant Rosenblatt—after he had gained confidence in me because I had gone in with a false pass, said personally to me: “I was picked out by the SS. When a new group of Jews comes into this Ghetto of Lodz and crowds the Ghetto, I have to select exactly the same number of Jews and I know that they will be gassed. That is, I was selected by the SS to determine who is to be gassed. Now, I ask you in the name of God, Mr. Hielscher, you are a Christian, what am I to do? I had nothing to do with that. I have asked the Rabbis. I have asked the old people themselves, and we have come to the conclusion that I must stay in this office. At least I can determine the persons—I can at least select the oldest people who can’t stand life in a ghetto and perhaps, in this way, perhaps I will be able to save the life of one person. These two old people that I am telling you about were about seventy years old. There were five Christians among the Jews. At least I was able to see that these two old people were gassed together. They asked me to tell their daughter that we were able to achieve at least that. Tell me, did I do right or not?” That is still more horrible because the man could not even reduce the number. I was ashamed that the people who were in charge of this camp were called Germans. But I said: “You have acted right and you are justified in the eyes of God.”