Another of the rather common defenses urged by the defendants is that the experimental subjects were criminals condemned to death who, provided they survived the experiment, were rewarded by commutation of their sentence to life imprisonment in a concentration camp. For one who has even the slightest knowledge of the conditions in concentration camps and the life expectancy of an average inmate, this alleged defense assumes the aspect of a ghastly joke. We need only recall the remark made by one of the women used by Rascher to reward his frozen victims in Dachau, who when asked by him why she had volunteered for the camp brothel, replied: “rather half a year in a brothel than half a year in a concentration camp.” But the defects in this spurious defense run much deeper. Concentration camps were not ordinary penal institutions, such as are known in other countries, for the commitment of persons convicted of crimes by courts. The very purpose of concentration camps was the oppression and persecution of persons who were considered undesirable by the Nazi regime on racial, political, and religious grounds. Hundreds of thousands of victims were confined to concentration camps because they were simply Jews, Slavs, or gypsies, Free Masons, Social Democrats, or Communists. They were not tried for any offense and sentenced by a court, not even a Nazi court. They were imprisoned on the basis of “protective custody orders” issued by the RSHA. Tens of thousands were condemned to death on the single order of Himmler, who, as Gebhardt put it so well, “had the power to execute thousands of people by a stroke of his pen.” (Tr. p. 4025.) There were, indeed, a relatively small group of inmates who might be classed as ordinary criminals. These were men who had served out their sentences in an ordinary prison and then were committed to concentration camps for still further detention. A memorandum of 18 September 1942 by Thierack, the Minister of Justice, concerning a conversation with Himmler, tells us the fate of those unfortunates:
“The delivery of anti-social elements from the execution of their sentence to the Reich Leader SS to be worked to death. Persons under protective arrest, Jews, gypsies, Russians and Ukrainians, Poles with more than 3-year sentences, Czechs and Germans with more than 8-year sentences, according to the decision of the Reich Minister for Justice.” (654-PS, Pros. Ex. 562.)
The proof in this case has demonstrated beyond all doubt that so-called criminals sentenced to death were very rarely used in any of the experiments. True it is that Himmler said prisoners condemned to death should be used in those high-altitude experiments where the long-continued activity of the heart after death was observed by the experimenters. He was generous enough to say that if such persons could be brought back to life, then they were to be “pardoned” to concentration camp for life. But even this unique amnesty had no application to Russians and Poles, who were used exclusively in those experiments.
But, assuming for the moment, that this alleged defense might have a mitigating effect under some circumstances, it certainly has no application to this case. Be it noted that this is an affirmative defense by way of avoidance or mitigation. There has been no proof whatever that criminals sentenced to death by an ordinary court could possibly be executed in a concentration camp. Such matters were within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice, not Himmler and the SS. The experimental subjects we are dealing with are those that Himmler could condemn by a “stroke of his pen.” If the inmate used in the experiments was condemned for merely being a Jew, Pole, or Russian, or, for example, having had sexual intercourse with a Jew, it does not answer the criminal charge to say that the victim was doomed to die. Experimentation on such a person is to compound the crime of his initial unlawful detention as well as to commit the additional crime of murder or torture. As has been said by another tribunal, “Exculpation from the charge of criminal homicide can possibly be based only upon bona fide proof that the subject had committed murder or any other legally recognized capital offense; and, not even then, unless the sentencing tribunal with authority granted by the state in the constitution of the court declared that the execution would be accomplished by means of a low-pressure chamber.”[[10]]
In this connection, it might be noted that German law recognized only three methods of execution, namely, by decapitation, hanging, and shooting. (German Penal Code, Part I, Section 13; Reichsgesetzblatt [Reich Law Gazette], 1933, Part I, p. 151; Reichsgesetzblatt 1939, Part I, p. 1457.) Moreover, there is no proof that any of the experimental subjects had their death sentence commuted to any lesser degree of punishment. Indeed, in the sulfanilamide crimes it was the experiment plus later execution for at least six of the subjects.
Since the defendants Gebhardt, Fischer, and Oberheuser have put particular stress on this alleged defense, I should like to make a few remarks in that connection, but it should be remembered that they apply with equal force to most of the other defendants. Gebhardt, speaking for his co-defendants Fischer and Oberheuser, took the position that the Polish women who had been used in the sulfanilamide experiments had been condemned to death for participation in a resistance movement and that by undergoing the experiments voluntarily or otherwise, they were to have their death sentences commuted to some lesser degree of punishment, provided they survived the experiments. This was no bargain reached with the experimental subjects; their wishes were not consulted in the matter. It was, according to Gebhardt, left to the good faith of someone unnamed to see to it that the death sentences were not carried out on the survivors of the experiments. Certainly Gebhardt, Fischer, and Oberheuser assumed no responsibility or even interest in that regard.
It should be pointed out that the proof shows that the experimental subjects who testified before this Tribunal were never so much as afforded trial; they had no opportunity to defend themselves against whatever crimes they were said to have committed. They were simply arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo in Poland and sent to the concentration camp. They had never so much as been informed that they had been marked for, not sentenced to, death. Article 30 of the Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, annexed to the Hague Convention, specifically provides that even a spy “shall not be punished without previous trial”.
Gebhardt would have the Tribunal believe that but for the experiments all these Polish girls would be dead; that he preserved the evidence which was used against him. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no proof in the record that these women would have been executed if they had not undergone the experiments. The witness Maczka is living proof of the contrary. She was arrested for resistance activities on 11 September 1941 and shipped to Ravensbrueck on 13 September. She was not an experimental subject yet she lives today. Substantially all of the Polish experimental subjects arrived in Ravensbrueck in September 1941. These girls had not been executed by August 1942 when the experiments began. There were some 700 Polish girls in that transport. There is no evidence that a substantial number were ever executed even though most of them were not experimented on.
The proof submitted by the prosecution has shown beyond controversy that these Polish women could not have been legally executed. The right to grant pardons in cases of death sentences was exclusively vested in Hitler by a decree of 1 February 1935. On 2 May 1935, Hitler delegated the right to make negative decisions on pardon applications to the Reich Minister of Justice. On 30 January 1940, Hitler delegated to the Governor General for the occupied Polish territories the authority to grant and deny pardons for the occupied Polish territories. By edict dated 8 March 1940, the Governor General of occupied Poland ordered that—