_CROSS-EXAMINATION_
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MR. MCHANEY: I don’t believe you have told the Tribunal yet about the
conversation you had with Holzloehner on his freezing experiments, have
you?
DEFENDANT SCHROEDER: What experiments do you mean? What conversation do
you mean? Do you mean in 1940?
Q. General, you know as a matter of fact there apparently is some
dispute between the prosecution and yourself about the precise date, but
you knew during the course of the war that Holzloehner, Finke, and
Rascher had carried out experiments on concentration camp inmates at
Dachau?
A. Yes, I learned that in my office in 1944, as I said here before.
Q. And, I am suggesting to you that after you learned that Holzloehner
had been implicated in those experiments you called him in and talked to
him?
A. Yes, oh yes. I know when you mean now, yes. There are two things
which play a part here. I said yesterday that in 1940 Holzloehner had
furnished people who were rescued from the sea to the Rescue Station at
Witze, where he first gained experience. Then I lost sight of
Holzloehner, since I left the west in the year 1941, and I saw him again
for the first time in the fall of 1944, when for some reason that I do
not know, he visited one of the men in my office. At that time I spoke
to him briefly, and since I had learned in the meantime that he was
conducting, experiments in Dachau, I asked him whether that was correct
or how he was doing it. I remember at that time he told me that he was
conducting experiments based on the experience which he had gained on
the coast, and he was supplementing these experiments by conducting
experiments on human beings in Dachau. At that time he was speaking
about six or seven criminals who had been condemned to death were put at
his disposal for that purpose. At that time, he said nothing about any
fatalities. I gained the impression then that the entire manner of the
experiments had impressed him mentally. I had the feeling that he did
not want to speak about it; his suicide later confirmed that.
Q. Well, General, I think this is all rather significant. I think you
should have probably made some mention of it before this date. When was
this meeting with Holzloehner?
A. I mentioned it during my interrogation; I think that was in the fall
of 1944. I cannot remember the exact date. It could have been November
1944. I am not quite sure.
Q. Well, this was after you had initiated the sea-water experiments,
then; is that right?
A. Considerably later, yes.
Q. And, as I recall, you also said in this interrogation that you had
seen this report by Holzloehner, which I understand you have denied
heretofore; now, had you seen Holzloehner’s report or not?
A. No, nor did I ever say that I had. He reported to me on this, but he
did not show me a report.
Q. Now, General, I am reading from a summary of an interrogation of you
made on 21 October 1946, and one paragraph reads as follows: “Schroeder
also knows about the ‘See-Not’ and ‘Winter-Not’ reports from which he
could conclude that human beings were used for experiments. This could
also be concluded from Holzloehner’s report on the freezing experiments,
and it could furthermore be seen from the comments which Dr. Rascher
wrote on the above matter. Schroeder learned about these matters in
1944.” Now, is this summary inaccurate?
A. Very inaccurate.
Q. All right, let us get it straight. In the first part of 1943 you
received a report on the Nuernberg meeting, did you not?
A. Yes.
Q. In May 1944, Becker-Freyseng told you that Holzloehner, Finke, and
Rascher, had carried out experiments on concentration camp inmates at
Dachau, did he not?
A. That is not the right way of putting it. He said that Holzloehner had
made the experiments; nothing was said to me about Rascher and Finke. I
did not know them then. I learned their names only since I was
imprisoned.
Q. You mean you had not heard up to then that Rascher had worked with
Holzloehner on these experiments; is that right?
A. No, I did not say that. I heard Rascher’s name for the first time in
this report of 1945 when I was imprisoned.
Q. Well, I do not know, General, but I am going to look in just a
minute—I think Rascher’s and Finke’s names are mentioned in this report
which you got in the first part of 1943 on the Nuernberg meeting. You do
not recall that?
A. No.
Q. And I very well remember that Rascher had made a comment on this
rather long lecture by Holzloehner, from which it could clearly be seen
that Rascher himself was experimenting with Holzloehner; do you not
remember that?
A. I can say that now, because in the meantime I have seen these
reports, “See-Not” and “Winter-Not,” and have read them through
carefully and acquainted myself with the various names, and I know that
in this report there is an extensive report by Holzloehner and after
that a short remark by Rascher. I did not pay any attention to it at
that time because I had no connections with Rascher, nor did I see any
reason why I should; but I did interest myself in Holzloehner’s report
because I knew him from working with him on the French coast.
Q. Well, we will come back to the report in just a moment, but right now
I want to go on with your discussion with Holzloehner. Can you tell us,
more or less, exactly what he told you?
A. That is a little too much to ask me to recall a brief remark that I
made in 1944 on the occasion of a very short visit. I do recall that I
met Holzloehner outside my hut, and I asked him to step in a moment;
then I asked him about the experiments. He answered me briefly and that
was the end of our conversation. The only thing that struck me was that
Holzloehner, who previously had been a very lively and brisk person,
seemed very depressed and worn out. I attributed that to the 5 years of
war that had passed. That there were other reasons, perhaps, for this, I
could only adduce later from his tragic demise. It could be that I
commented to my adjutant on this subject. I am not sure at the moment,
but I think it is quite possible because Augustinick knew Holzloehner
very well and liked him. Perhaps Augustinick can be asked about that
later.
Q. You said a moment ago you got the impression that Holzloehner did not
want to talk about these experiments, and you also had been dabbling in
Dachau experiments yourself. I think under these circumstances it might
be expected that you would have questioned Holzloehner rather closely
about what went on in his experiments. You did not do that?
A. He told me briefly that his observations from the English channel
coast could be checked on experiments being performed in Dachau on
criminals condemned to death, and that these experiments had been
described in the report which he had submitted. That made it perfectly
clear what was going on, so why should I ask anything further? I was not
particularly interested in going into that specific result.
Q. Well, were the sea-water experiments over at that time?
A. Yes, some time before, and that must have been why Holzloehner came
to me because these experiments had long been concluded.
Q. You did not have any one in the nature of representative at the
Nuernberg meeting in October 1942?
A. No.
Q. Now, you mentioned this report which you received on that meeting;
that is Document NO-401, Prosecution Exhibit 93. You stated that you did
not know that Rascher and Finke were working with Holzloehner. I found a
statement on page 11 of this report which reads as follows: “For the
relevant statements, we have to thank the cooperation of Stabsarzt Dr.
Rascher and Stabsarzt Dr. Finke; they refer to a stay in water of 2 to
12 degrees.” That statement indicates very clearly that Rascher and
Finke were working with Holzloehner, does it not?
A. Yes.
Q. Now, I think you stated to your own defense counsel that it was
impossible for you to conclude from this report that experiments had
been carried out, but rather, you thought they were clinical
observations made on people fished out of the North Sea, is that right?
A. Yes, I based my testimony solely on the Holzloehner report which was
the only thing that interested me. There were reports by Rose and others
but I did not read them. I glanced through them briefly but gave no
further attention to them because I did not know the people who had
drawn them up.
Q. Let’s just look briefly at one or two points here and see if they
might not indicate to you, if you thought about it a little bit, that
these were really experiments and not clinical observations on people
who accidentally fell into the sea. For instance, on page 11 of the
translation it states as follows:
“The rapidity with which numbness occurs is remarkable. It was
determined that already 5 to 10 minutes after falling in, an
advancing rigor of the skeletal muscles sets in, which renders
the movement of the arms especially increasingly difficult. This
also affects respiration. Inspiration is deepened, and
expiration is delayed. Besides this, heavy mucous secretions
occur.”
Now, when you read that little paragraph about a man who had been in the
water 5 to 10 minutes where it is said that he had rigor of the skeletal
muscles, where his inspiration is deepened and his expiration is delayed
and where there is a heavy mucous secretion, did you imagine that they
had Dr. Holzloehner in a lifeboat in the North Sea making these
observations on some aviator who had fallen in accidentally? Did you
think that, General?
A. Yes, that’s what I thought. You don’t know the local situation at
Visson. There were a beach and dunes, and a guard from the rescue
station always stood on the dunes to keep an eye on the water and the
surrounding country, particularly when flights to England were taking
place, so that it actually did happen that fliers bailed out and fell
into the water just in front of the shoreline. Rescue boats were ready
at that time and went out to sea immediately, so that it was altogether
possible that fliers who fell into the water close to the coast could
very quickly be observed and rescued. These are the facts of what
actually took place at that rescue station at that time.
Q. On the same page they have this remark: “With the drop of the rectal
temperature to 31°, a clouding of consciousness occurs, which passes to
a deep, cold-induced anaesthesia if the decline reaches below 30°.”
Now, do you suppose that they pulled this aviator in and inserted a
rectal thermometer and found his temperature at 31° and then tossed him
back and let it drop another degree, all the time watching closely a
clouding of consciousness, and then hauled him back in when it was 30°
and noted a deep, cold-induced anaesthesia?
A. No, that isn’t the correct way to put it either. This is one of the
observations that was new to us and to which we paid a great deal of
attention in order to explain these incomprehensible fatalities, namely,
the fact that when the people were removed from the water their
temperature still dropped and simultaneously with the drop in
temperature a fatal collapse of the heart occurred. This was one of our
fundamental and new observations. And I must report again and again that
this rescue house was a small place, but it did have the apparatus for
observing these people very exactly. That was the sense of the whole
thing.
Q. General, you’ve already covered yourself a little bit by saying you
didn’t read these discussions after Holzloehner’s lecture very
carefully; but I want to read you the one by Rascher, in any event, and
see if you won’t admit that if you had read this little comment by
Rascher that there could have been no doubt whatsoever in your mind that
experiments were carried out and not observations on aviators in the
North Sea. This is on page 15 of the translation, and Rascher has said:
“Supplementing the statements of Holzloehner, there is a report
on observations according to which cooling in the region of the
neck only, even if it lasts for several hours, causes merely a
low sinking of the body temperature up to 1° C., without
changing the blood sugar level or the heart function. Checking
of the rectal temperature was carried out by taking the
temperature in the stomach and showed complete agreement. After
taking alcohol, body temperature decreases at a quicker pace.
After taking dextropur, the decrease is slower than with the
experiments in both a sober and an alcoholic condition. Hot
infusions (10 percent dextro solution, table salt solution,
tutofusin, table salt solution with pancortex) were successful
only for a time.”
Now, General, if you had read that, wouldn’t it have been perfectly
clear that these were experiments?
A. Today, of course, after this whole question has been exposed I
should; but at that time I never suspected the possibility from that
report that these were a special group of human experiments. I can say
that here under oath, and I should like to reiterate it. That was my
attitude toward the matter at that time and it has only been changed by
what I have discovered here.
Q. I might also point out to you that Benzinger’s comment expressly
speaks of Holzloehner’s experiments repeatedly; but I assume that that
also made no impression on you?
A. I can say one thing to that. My comrades, the medical officers in my
office at that time in Italy, had no notion either that human
experiments were the basis for these reports. Never was one single word
said about such a thing on the occasion of my inspection visits. Of
course, during my visits to the Mediterranean such matters were brought
up; but I never heard any indication that these reports were the result
of a long series of experiments on human beings. In other words, others,
too, did not see so clearly as is pointed out here that these were human
experiments.
Q. And you heard no rumors in the air force at all about these
experiments, although there had been a large meeting at Nuernberg in
October, with considerable comment there about these experiments?
Holzloehner later gave a lecture before all the consulting physicians,
at least those who attended the meeting on internal medicine where he
spoke. He gave another report there on these experiments. You never
heard any rumors in the air force about these things; is that right?
A. No.
Q. You never talked to Finke about these experiments, did you?
A. I have stated frequently that I don’t even know Finke.
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