After the Nuremberg Military Tribunal ended in October 1946, the Doctors’ Trial began on December 9, 1946, against twenty-three German physicians and administrators who were accused of participating in war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Chief Counsel, Brigadier General Telford Taylor’s impassioned opening statement could only adumbrate the level of depravity of the crimes committed by these defendants: “…the murders, tortures and other atrocities committed in the name of medical science”…”For the most part they are nameless dead. To their murderers these wretched people were not individuals at all. They came in wholesale lots and were treated worse than animals.”
Fully half of German physicians were Nazi Party members even before Hitler’s ascent to power. While some were perhaps enamored of Hitler’s promise of a new direction for the economy after the Weimar Republic, a number saw the availability of subjects as research opportunities to exploit, and many saw themselves as integral to sustaining a racial distinction in which Germans considered themselves as the true master race and thereby entitled to take all necessary measures to ensure dominion over the “Untermenschen.”
From the beginning of Hitler’s reign programs of biological control were endorsed: compulsory sterilization and the T4 “euthanasia” program in which granting a “mercy death” was a euphemism for systematically murdering the physically handicapped, the aged, and the emotionally or mentally challenged who were seen as “useless eaters” unable to work for the Reich: an economic liability for the state and potential hazard for the German gene pool. During WW2 sterilization and euthanasia continued under the fog of war, but Nazi Party physicians found a readily available population of subjects not only in hospitals for handicapped children, but as well in the vast empire of concentration camps: men, women, and children who were considered by the Nazi elite as racially inferior and thus not requiring such niceties as informed consent or even anesthesia for the pseudoscientific medical “research” conducted upon them. Concentration camp prisoners - typically Jews, Poles, and Russians - were treated with an appalling, sadistic inhumanity worthy of a Torquemada, where the only goal seemed to be inflicting pain and suffering. Most victims of these “experiments” perished but, of those who survived, many were permanently impaired or disfigured.
Of the 23 defendants in the Doctors’ Trial, 20 were trained medical doctors who understood the meaning of the ethical standard “do no harm” even if they did not take the Hippocratic Oath. All defendants were indicted on four charges.
All defendants pleaded “not guilty” to the charges leveled against them. Sixteen were found guilty, seven were executed and nine received substantial prison terms, although most of these were commuted. Seven were acquitted. The charges were:
1. Conspiracy to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity.
2. War crimes, namely being knowingly connected to and/or performing medical experiments without the subject’s consent in the course of which experiments the defendants committed murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities and other inhuman acts.
3. Crimes against humanity: committing crimes described under count 2 also on German nationals.
4. Membership in a criminal organization (the SS of the Nazi Party).
Experiments on Human Subjects
The pages found in 2012.1.530a-c (Proceedings for Cross-Examination Regarding Concentration Camp Experiments) were used during the Doctors’ Trial, clearly worse for the wear, yet all touch directly or indirectly on the aforementioned charges and stem from interviews with the principal defendants. The first page (p. 2) appears to go to the heart of the conspiracy to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity. Prosecuting attorney and chief interrogator A. Horlick-Hochwald attempts to establish when experiments on human subjects were in fact decided. Hochwald interviews a defendant on the latter’s claim that no decision was reached to experiment on humans at a specific conference mentioned by Hochwald. However, Hochwald cites information which supports another interpretation; namely, that such experiments on human subjects were in fact decided at this very conference, thus supporting the notion of a conspiracy.In a second inquiry (p. 3), Hochwald pursues the use of Cyclon B (Zyklon B) in the gas chambers of concentration camps. He asks if the defendant knew that it was outlawed in Germany and that, when under certain circumstances it would be permitted, it came with an irritant as a warning to potential users. He hands him a document, an affidavit from Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz, stating that 2.5 million victims were executed and exterminated in gas chambers and crematoria. Moreover, Dr. Mrugowski ordered gas for all SS organizations and installations and was responsible for supplying the quotas needed “by extermination camp Birkenau.”
Hochwald concludes that “…these facts prove that you made the allowances for the gas used in the gas chambers.”
The Dr. Mrugowski referred to by Hoess was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.
Testimony About Experiments in Concentration Camps
The pages found in 2012.1.526a-g (Testimony About Experiments in Concentration Camps) cover most of the approximately 16 types of experiments employed on helpless concentration camp victims. Among the war crimes addressed in these pages are the following:a) High altitude experiments carried out by Dr. Sigmund Rascher in Dachau from March to August 1942. Inmates were placed in a closed vacuum chamber. Air pressure could be increased or decreased; they were often kept there until their lungs ruptured. “High pressure caused such extreme pain that victims tore their heads and faces with their fingers and nails, beat the walls with their hands and screamed in an effort to relieve pressure on their eardrums.” “Frequently used as a method of execution.”
b) Freezing experiments, again carried out by Rascher. Prisoners were often left outdoors naked…hands and feet were frozen white. Rascher requested to perform similar experiments in Auschwitz because it was colder there … “the screaming of the victims would cause less excitement.” Himmler granted this request.
c) Operations performed on healthy prisoners. Amputations performed without anesthesia. Patients with hernia and appendicitis were castrated.
d) Sea water experiments.
e) Bone, muscle and nerve regeneration and bone transplantation experiments. Led to permanent crippling.
f) Typhus serum injections.
g) Castration, artificial fertilization, vivisection performed in Auschwitz on boys 18-21.
h) Sterilization experiments utilizing x-rays.
i) Cancer implanted in uterus, and artificial fertilizations performed.
j) Amputation of arms, legs, taking out bones.
k) Experiments on human skin.
l) Shooting prisoners with poisoned bullets.
The Skeleton Collection
The reports found in 2015.2.190abc (Nuremberg Trials Evidence Analysis) were submitted by Nuremberg investigator Henry Sachs on behalf of the U.S. Counsel, Nuremberg, Aug. 8, 1945. These are essentially summaries of evidentiary documents. 1) A letter by Wolfram Sievers of the Ahnenerbe Society, addressed to Dr. Rudolf Brandt, on methods of securing skulls of Jews for "scientific" research at the Reich University of Strassburg. In another attachment by Dr. August Hirt, it is proposed that after preliminary work is done, photographs and measurements taken, personal information on the prisoners gathered, the heads should be kept undamaged and sent in sealed tins with preserving fluid for future research. 2) A letter from Wolfram Sievers to Rudolf Brandt reminding the latter that - on Himmler's orders - Prof. Hirt should get what he needs for his anthropological research, citing 150 Jewish skeletons needed for Hirt's "experiments" to be arranged at Auschwitz. 3) Reference to a letter from Sievers to Brandt marked "Top Secret" in which Sievers asks for direction as to disposition of the collection assembled by Dr. Hirt and the fact that "defleshing of the corpses has not been completed" due to the "vast amount of work" associated with the "research" that Hirt was performing.The background of these documents is as follows:
Dr. August Hirt, a physician, captain in the SS, and chairman of the Reich University at Strasbourg; along with Wolfram Sievers, director of Ahnenherbe, the Reich ethnological foundation; and Rudolph Brandt, Himmler’s personal administrative officer, had been approved by Himmler to create an impressive display of human skulls and skeletons of Jews - an anatomical specimen collection to identify physiological differences between “races.” This collection was to be housed at the Anatomy Institute of the Reich University of Strasbourg; it would in fact be a macabre Nazi trophy room demonstrating conclusively that Jews were indeed sub-human, simultaneously making a convincing case for Nazi racial superiority. The fact of confirmation bias entering the selection process itself apparently did not occur to them.
The 86 individuals ultimately chosen for this collection were obtained at Auschwitz based on stereotypical racial characteristics. The “specimens” were quarantined in hospital buildings out of concern that their “anatomical value” would be compromised if exposed to the typhus epidemic raging at Auschwitz at this time. By August 1943 the Jews were gassed at the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp, where they remained in vats of alcohol for more than one year.
The project was not able to be completed as Hirt was still hard at work on his “scientific” research. Consequently, making anatomical casts of the bodies prior to reducing them to skeletons did not occur.
By the end of September 1944, the Allies were fast advancing on Germany when Sievers telegrammed Brandt expressing concern over the possibility that the corpses might be discovered, thus creating a dilemma for the intrepid “scientists.” "The collection can be ‘defleshed’ and rendered unrecognizable. This, however, would mean that the whole work had been done for nothing…and that this singular collection would be lost to science, since it would be impossible to make plaster casts afterwards.”
When the Allies arrived, they found the corpses, some complete and some beheaded, preserved by formalin solution.
Brandt and Sievers were indicted, tried, and convicted in the Doctors' Trial in Nuremberg, and both were hanged in Landsberg Prison on June 2, 1948.
Hirt had already shot himself in the head on June 2, 1945, while hiding in the Black Forest.
See also the following:
2015.2.26
Copy of Letter from Adolf Hitler to Reichsleiter Bouhler and Dr. Med. Brandt (copy from USHMM)
2021.1.10
Official Document to Philip Bouhler from Dr. Viktor Brack on the Aktion T4 Euthanasia Program
2019.2.194
Third Reich Racial Purity Real Photo Postcard of Women with Disabilities
2015.2.170
Letter to Karl Wolff Signed by Viktor Brack
2012.1.529a-c
Rudolf Emil Herman Brandt Testimony
2015.2.146
Sterilization Procedure Leaflet
2015.2.145
Niederschrift [Oath of Office] Signed by Marianne Tuerk
--Michael D. Bulmash, K1966
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Third Reich Racial Purity Real Photo Postcard of Women with Disabilities
2019.2.194
Photo of three women standing outside in dresses, back marked with “Schwachsinn Rasse Krankes Volk 14” and 2 Nazi party stamps in blue ink.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
These cards were sent from the German Leadership Office for Officials (police, etc.) perhaps for educational purposes. Handstamps of the organization - Hauptamt fuer Beamte, Reichsleitung - are verso, along with a title “Race-Sick People.” Schwachsinn refers to their mental disability. In the Third Reich, these women would be considered Lebensunwertes Leben (“life unworthy of life”), a blight on the Reich notion of racial purity and an economic burden on the state. Consequently, they would be subject to “mercy killing.” Patients selected for death would be transported to euthanasia centers - six in all - in Germany or Austria.
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Letter to Karl Wolff Signed by Viktor Brack
2015.2.170
White Reich chancellery letterhead with typewritten message. Includes some writing in green, and a signature from Viktor Brack in black, as well as green and purple hand stamps.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Document on Reich chancellery letterhead, 1937 to Karl Wolff, signed by Viktor Brack, concerning assisting one Oberleutenant Behrens. Brack was a Nazi SS officer, a war criminal who organized the T4 Euthanasia program and developed mass sterilization techniques. He was a chief planner of the organization and implementation of mass gassings. Initially the doctors in the T4 program sterilized those deemed "Life Unworthy of Life"; later at least 15,000 were murdered at facilities such as Hadamar Hospital. He was convicted in the Doctors’ Trial in Nuremberg in 1947 and subsequently executed at Landsberg Prison. He proposed to Himmler that three million Jews be selected for castration by high-dose x-ray to work as slaves for the Reich. Himmler approved the idea and ordered testing to commence at Auschwitz. The T4 program evolved into Aktion T14f13, or Sonderbehandlung ("special treatment"), the murder of concentration camp inmates deemed unfit to work.
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Copy of Letter from Adolf Hitler to Reichsleiter Bouhler and Dr. Med. Brandt (copy from USHMM)
2015.2.26
Front: Copy on printed paper of letter. Nazi insignia in upper left corner of the letter with Hitler's name printed. Date in upper righthand corner. Message typewritten with Hitler's signature beneath it. Writing below in black ink. The letter states that "Reichsleiter Bougler [sic] and Dr. med. Brandt are charged with the responsibility to broaden the authority of certain doctors to the extend that (persons) suffering from illnesses judged to be incurable may, after a humane, most careful assessment of their condition to be granted a mercy death. Adolf Hitler."
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
The letter states that “Reichsleiter Bouhler and Dr. med. Brandt are charged with the responsibility to broaden the authority of certain doctors to the extent that (persons) suffering from illnesses judged to be incurable may, after a humane, most careful assessment of their condition, be granted a mercy death. Adolf Hitler.”
Philipp Bouhler (1899-1945) was an SS-Obergruppenfuehrer who served as chief of Hitler's chancellery and head of the T4 “euthanasia” program. Bouhler, along with Karl Brandt, was tasked by Hitler to develop the T4 program. Karl Brandt (1904-1948) was an SS-Gruppenfuehrer, personal physician of Adolf Hitler, co-director of the T4 program and Reich Commissioner for Health and Sanitation. After the war, Brandt was placed on trial as one of the main defendants at the Doctors' Trial in Nuremberg. In addition to his membership in the SS, he was charged with special responsibility for the numerous medical experiments to which thousands of concentration camp inmates were subjected, as well as with the planning and execution of the euthanasia program. Brandt was sentenced to death and hanged in 1948.
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Official Document to Philip Bouhler from Dr. Viktor Brack on the Aktion T4 Euthanasia Program
2021.1.10
Hole punched half page official document from Berlin.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
This document is addressed to Philipp Bouhler from Victor Brack and is marked Secret (Geheim) as it pertains to the Aktion T4 Nazi “euthanasia” program. Brack states: “Due to multiple inquiries from relatives of the deceased, it is urgently necessary to take credible measures to calm the relatives.”
The context of this document is the growing concern over the rising tide of citizens, physicians, and churchmen over what was happening to family members who fell into the clutches of the T4 euthanasia apparatus. While every effort was made to conceal the program from the public (for example, the nondescript name of the central administrative apparatus of Hitler’s euthanasia program on Brack’s letterhead was Gemeinnützige Stiftung für Anstaltspflege, “Charitable Foundation for Institutional Care,” clearly camouflaging its true purpose), Hitler felt obligated to suspend the euthanasia program in late August 1941. However, Hitler never fully intended to stop the program; it would continue under the fog of war.
Hitler’s belief in a racially pure aryan nation required purging the threat of “worthless” individuals, the so-called “life unworthy of life” (“lebensunwertes Leben”), whose mental, emotional, or physical limitations could jeopardize Germany’s much vaunted racial superiority or create a financial burden for the state. Politicizing and implementing “racial hygiene” began early in Hitler’s administration with the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases, which led to the sterilization of the disabled. The category of disability and hence the potential targets for sterilization would soon prove to be quite elastic and ensnare manic-depressives and schizophrenics, epileptics, the blind, those with physical deformities, the developmentally disabled, and alcoholics. Hitler’s success in calibrating his policies around public reception and a lack of resistance on the part of the medical community led to further policy drift and Nazis soon began embracing the murder of the disabled. Hitler had appointed Reich Leader Philipp Bouhler as well as his personal physician Karl Brandt to oversee the T4 program, to ensure that it ran smoothly and in accordance with a plan to “enlarge the authority” of selected physicians to declare patients incurable based on certain criteria and thus grant them what he referred to as a “mercy death.” The daily implementation of this program would fall to Viktor Brack and his deputy Walter Blankenberg. Medical personnel would “certify” whether a child was incapable of working due to mental, emotional, or physical illness. If so, the child would be marked for death. These criteria would be in time extended to both Jewish children in mental hospitals and to adults. The outcome of this certification process was never in doubt: the patients selected to die were transported to one of six euthanasia centers in Germany and Austria: the doctors, nurses, and other specialists who worked at these centers employed different methods of murder. Starvation and lethal injection were used at first, but eventually the method of choice became gassing with carbon monoxide in chambers simulating showers.
Hitler’s Aktion T4 euthanasia program would be a proving ground as the Nazis lurched toward genocide and the Final Solution. Indeed, Nazi racial ideology - undergirded by a popular if controversial eugenics movement - created theoretical justification for purging the nation of elements that could threaten it. But for theory to be converted into practice two essential ingredients were necessary. The first was the enhanced authority granted to physicians and their active participation - along with other medical personnel - in the administrative apparatus of state-sponsored murder in direct contravention to their oath to save lives and do no purposeful harm.
The second related to control of information and its sources. Aktion T4 was immersed in an Orwellian totalitarian universe of deceit and obfuscation, dissembling and euphemism, in which euthanasia no longer referred to end-of-life decisions made to relieve unendurable suffering, decisions made either voluntarily or with family assistance; rather, it was reshaped - in Hitler’s parlance - as “granting a mercy death.” This would presumably give some measure of credibility to the “data collection” and certification protocols of the medical personnel. The ensuing harvesting of body parts (e.g., gold teeth), and the use of crematoria for disposing of bodies - also an integral part of the program - would eventually be institutionalized in the genocide against the Jews.
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Testimony About Experiments in Concentration Camps
2012.1.526a-g
Torn typewritten pages in English, each with an identifying number on bottom right. About experiments performed at Dachau, Mauthausen, Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Natzweiler and Ravensbruck.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Torn typewritten pages in English, each with an identifying number, relating to experiments performed at a number of concentration camps including Dachau, Mauthausen, Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Natzweiler and Ravensbruck, in all probability for the Doctors’ Trial in Nuremberg. The documents themselves state that they are predicated on witness reports, interrogations, and documentary evidence. They establish the kinds of inhumane and illegal - by any standard except those of a criminal organization like the Nazis - “experiments” performed on involuntary prisoner subjects. Such research was approved by Heinrich Himmler. The report states that many suggest “sadistic and obscene motives.” Emphasis is placed in these documents on the types of “experiments” conducted by Sigmund Rascher, an ambitious SS doctor with the Luftwaffe who performed with his unwitting and involuntary inmate subjects high altitude, freezing, and coagulation experiments with attendant prolonged agony and eventual death of the subjects. Other inhumane procedures performed by Nazi doctors included liver punctures and inoculation of malaria in which healthy patients were injected with the blood of malaria-afflicted patients. As well, castration experiments were performed with 18-21-year-old boys at Auschwitz. Several of the doctors mentioned in these pages were also involved in the T4 program.
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Proceedings for Cross-Examination Regarding Concentration Camp Experiments
2012.1.530a-c
Thin paper with typewritten cross-examination questions regarding concentration camp experiments. Each page has an identifying number on the bottom right.
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Nuremberg Trials Evidence Analysis
2015.2.190abc
Description: Filmsy, tan papers with two hole punches on the left side. Upper right of each page has damage from exposure to paperclip, as well as blackness. Each is typewritten in English.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Three contemporary copies of reports by Nuremberg investigator Henry Sachs on behalf of the U.S. Counsel, Nuremberg, Aug. 8, 1945. These are essentially summaries of evidentiary documents. 1) A letter by Wolfram Sievers of the Ahnenerbe Society, addressed to Dr. Rudolf Brandt, on methods of securing skulls of Jews for "scientific" research at the Reich University of Strassburg. In another attachment by Dr. August Hirt, it is proposed that after preliminary work is done, photographs and measurements taken, and personal information on the prisoners gathered, the heads should be kept undamaged and sent in sealed tins with preserving fluid for future research. 2) A letter from Wolfram Sievers to Rudolf Brandt reminding the latter that - on Himmler's orders - Prof. Hirt should get what he needs for his anthropological research, citing 150 Jewish skeletons needed for Hirt's "experiments" to be arranged at Auschwitz. 3) Reference to a letter from Sievers to Brandt marked "Top Secret" in which Sievers asks for direction as to disposition of the collection assembled by Dr. Hirt and the fact that "defleshing of the corpses has not been completed" due to the "vast amount of work" associated with the "research" that Hirt was performing.
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Rudolf Emil Herman Brandt Testimony
2012.1.529a-c
Torn, thin paper with typewritten information
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Torn, thin paper with typewritten information regarding Rudolf Emil Herman Brandt's testimony at the Doctors’ Trial in Nuremberg against physicians and/or administrators accused of “crimes against humanity” for organizing and/or participating in medical procedures and experiments on prisoners and civilians. Brandt would be executed in 1948.
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![Niederschrift [Oath of Office] Signed by Marianne Tuerk](https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/1234/thumbnail.jpg "Niederschrift [Oath of Office] Signed by Marianne Tuerk")
Niederschrift [Oath of Office] Signed by Marianne Tuerk
2015.2.145
Tan paper with two hole punches on the left side and printed text in German. Includes printed Nazi seal on top, as well as several pencil signatures and purple hand stamps.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Marianne Tuerk was a medical doctor who had been imprisoned for murdering children at Kinderspital Am Spiegelgrund, the children's clinic in Vienna, as part of the Nazi “euthanasia” program known as Action T4, headed by Philipp Bouhler. Along with neurologist Margarethe Heubsche and Ernst Illing, the head of the "clinic," she claimed that the murders were ordered from Berlin to "purify and improve the physical standards of the German race." These children were designated as Lebensunwertes Leben (Life Unworthy of Life) and were thus targeted for so-called euthanasia. Overdoses of Luminol, Veronal and Morphine were administered to children with mental and physical diseases and disabilities and considered "inferior" according to Nazi racial policy. Over seven hundred children perished at Spiegelgrund, one of six Nazi institutes where physically and mentally handicapped people were killed as part of the T4 program. In most cases the cause of death was cited as pneumonia or muscle problems. Brains and other body parts were collected and placed in jars of formaldehyde.
Dr. Tuerk was imprisoned for ten years after the war. Illing was hanged. This document is An Oath of Office (Niederschrift) signed by Tuerk, in which she pledges her fidelity and obedience to Hitler and the German empire, and to fulfill her duties conscientiously.
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Sterilization Procedure Leaflet
2015.2.146
Front: White paper with a graphic black, white, and red illustration of the body being opened with medical instruments performing a sterilization procedure. Includes dotted lines pointing to certain parts of the body with descriptions at the end of them. Includes red and purple hand stamps, black printed text, and Tuerk's signature in black at the bottom.Back: Another graphic black, white, and red illustration of the body being opened with medical instruments performing a sterilization procedure. Includes dotted lines pointing to certain parts of the body with descriptions at the end of them. Includes printed text at the bottom.
Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:
Marianne Tuerk was a medical doctor who had been imprisoned for murdering children at Kinderspital Am Spiegelgrund, the children's clinic in Vienna, as part of the Nazi “euthanasia” program known as Action T4, headed by Philipp Bouhler. Along with neurologist Margarethe Heubsche and Ernst Illing, the medical director of Spiegelgrund, Tuerk claimed that the murders were ordered from Berlin to "purify and improve the physical standards of the German race." These children had been designated as Lebensunwertes Leben (Life Unworthy of Life) and were thus targeted for so-called euthanasia. Overdoses of Luminol, Veronal and Morphine were administered to children deemed disabled and considered "inferior" according to Nazi racial policy. Over seven hundred children perished at Spiegelgrund, one of six Nazi institutes where physically and mentally handicapped people were killed as part of the T4 program. In most cases the cause of death was cited as pneumonia or muscle problems. Brains and other body parts were collected and placed in jars of formaldehyde.
Dr. Tuerk was imprisoned for ten years after the war. Illing was hanged. This document is a sterilization procedure leaflet explaining the procedure to potential victims or family members.