“29 November 1943—Registered
“To Oberstarzt Professor Dr. Rose
“Inspectorate of the Medical Service of the Luftwaffe
“Saalow (Post Office Zossen-Land)
“Dear Herr Rose:
“Enclosed I am sending you the report about our experiments with
dehydrated typhus vaccine which I promised you several days ago. As I
intend to publish the findings, I have already written the report in
manuscript form. After it has been reviewed, I would like it to be
submitted to the competent authorities for their approval of its
publication in the ‘Zentralblatt fur Bakteriologie’ [Central Periodical
for Bacteriology].
“One hundred persons from a local concentration camp were put at my
disposal for immunization and subsequent infection. Unfortunately, these
people were in such a poor physical condition that eighteen of them
already died during transport; the remainder were likewise in such bad
physical shape that they could not be used for inoculation purposes. In
the meantime I have requested 100 additional persons from the SS Main
Office, who should, however, be in a normal physical and nutritional
condition, so that the experiments can be carried out on material which
at least approaches the physical condition of our soldiers.
“For the time being, we will concentrate on an epidemic culture in the
form of a virus, which we have received from Giroud in the meantime.
This seems to be a very good culture.
“With best regards,
“Heil Hitler!
“Yours—
“Enclosure: one report.”
And no signature.
This is the matter which I discussed yesterday. Haagen’s plan to test
the inoculation reactions to his live and virulent dry vaccine by
prevaccination with dead vaccine to weaken the reaction. That is the
same matter.
Q. I thought you said about two minutes ago that you didn’t know of the
incident where eighteen of the inmates put at Haagen’s disposal had died
during transport.
A. Yes, that’s true. That’s what I said. I had forgotten about it. I
thought that I had learned it for the first time from the records. If I
had remembered it, I would, of course, not have exposed myself by
denying it. But now I see this letter. It is obviously a carbon copy. I
must assume that on 29 November 1943 the mail was still fairly normal,
and that I received the letter, since a report is mentioned which I was
to deal with. It was apparently one of Haagen’s papers on his dry
vaccine, on which my knowledge is based and on account of which I can
give any information here at all as to Haagen’s experiments. This
knowledge of mine goes back to these papers of his which he wanted to
publish.
Q. It would appear that in spite of your fiery temperament your reaction
was even less significant than Haagen’s himself, wouldn’t it?
A. Since I was not concerned in the matter, as it was something between
Haagen and the concentration camp, there was no reaction in this case.
If somebody else tells me that he has had direct contact with abuses,
then there is no occasion for me to interfere, since that is settled
between the persons concerned. I had nothing to do with the
concentration camps. I did not have to carry out any inoculations there.
Q. And you insist that the words, “one hundred persons from a local
concentration camp were put at my disposal for immunization and
subsequent infection” really don’t mean subsequent infection at all, but
a subsequent immunization?
A. With the live and virulent dry vaccine, yes.
Q. Well, that is certainly an inarticulate way of saying that, isn’t it?
A. This is correspondence between experts, and they know what it’s
about.
Q. You state yourself that you are still not sure exactly what Haagen
did, although you were down there in the middle of 1943 and got him back
on the pay roll of the Luftwaffe, and you knew he was staying at the
laboratory and you knew he was going to work on typhus vaccines, but you
now sit here and say you don’t know exactly what he was doing.
A. Yes. That is true. I have given considerable information here about
Haagen’s work, and I have gone to considerable pains to get it all
together; but of course I can’t give you complete information, simply
because all these experiments were not under our direction and
supervision.
Q. Herr Professor, the first time the question of subsequent infection
came up was in a letter dated 1944, and you spent the best part of a day
rationalizing “subsequent infection” as meaning something entirely
different—that it was simply a subsequent vaccination, after the man
had already been vaccinated by the dead vaccine. Now, if you were told
on 29 November 1943 that he was going to carry out immunization and
subsequent infection experiments, you certainly would have known as a
matter of fact what he was doing, and you would not need to speculate on
this stand as you did yesterday. These words are entirely susceptible to
the meaning that they mean exactly what they say.
A. At this stage of his experiments Haagen did not yet have a fully
developed vaccine. He was working exclusively on the problem of
weakening the reaction to this live virulent vaccine. That was the
problem he was dealing with at the end of 1943 and the beginning of
1944. He was looking for various methods of achieving this aim.
Q. What does he mean in the last paragraph when he says, “For the time
being, we will concentrate on an epidemic culture in the form of a
virus, which we have received from Giroud in the meantime”?
A. That means that up to that time he had worked with a murine strain,
and that now for the development of the dry vaccine he wanted in
addition to use a strain of Rickettsia-Prowazeki.
Q. Well, I now want to point out to you again that I am having
considerable difficulty in construing the word “infection” to mean
vaccination.
A. Yes. I admit that many of these documents are written in a confusing
way, but I believe that I can remember the whole matter adequately
enough to know what the problem is. The vaccine was not developed enough
to be used in vaccination without reaction and then to determine the
effect. There were strong fever reactions, and the problem was how to
avoid this fever reaction.
Q. Well, why call that infection?
A. That is a similar condition biologically. An injection of a live, a
virulent vaccine, from the biological point of view, is an infection.
This expression is used often enough, but it is an infection which one
can absolutely control.
Q. And after receipt of this letter, you then wrote him on the 13th of
December—and this is Document NO-122, Exhibit 298—you sent him the
Copenhagen vaccine, didn’t you, and asked him to test it in his
experiments on his concentration camp inmates, didn’t you, just as they
did in Buchenwald, as you put it?
A. I beg your pardon?
Q. You sent him the Copenhagen vaccine after receiving this letter of 29
November, and asked him to test that in his experiments on concentration
camp inmates.
A. When this discussion of the Copenhagen vaccine took place, Haagen was
specially interested in it, because it was a murine vaccine; and since
he could not yet control fever reaction with murine vaccine—he only
succeeded in doing that at the beginning of 1944 by storing the vaccine
for a considerable time—he was no longer interested in this Copenhagen
vaccine. But at the end of 1943, when he still had the same difficulties
as Blanc with the reactions with the live murine vaccine, he was
considerably interested in the Copenhagen vaccine. For it was the only
vaccine from murine virus available in Europe at the time.
Q. You sent it to him, told him to test it just like they did in a
series of experiments in Buchenwald, didn’t you?
A. I don’t remember that.
Q. Well, you remember mentioning Buchenwald to Haagen in your letter of
13 December 1943?
A. Oh, that’s what you mean. Yes, I pointed it out as a parallel,
because several vaccines were tested in Buchenwald for their effect
against infection, and Haagen in Strasbourg wanted to test various
vaccine for their reaction effect.
Q. You sent that Copenhagen vaccine to Buchenwald also to be tested?
A. No.
* * * * *
Q. Herr Professor, did Mrugowsky ever request you to give him vaccines
for use in typhus experiments?
A. No.
Q. Did you ever discuss the question as to whether the louse could be
infected by a vaccinated typhus patient with the defendant Mrugowsky?
A. That could be possible. This question played an important role for a
time in the discussion about the vaccines and their effectiveness. We
had some old Polish observations available to the effect that if
vaccinated persons received typhus in spite of the vaccination, no
further illnesses could be transferred by such persons. It is possible
throughout, since this question was of considerable importance that
something like that could well have been discussed by Mrugowsky and
myself. We talked a lot about that question.
Q. Did you ever negotiate with Mrugowsky concerning vaccines to be
tested in Buchenwald?
A. No.
Q. Let’s look at Document NO-1754.
(Document submitted to the witness.)
MR. MCHANEY: I will ask that document NO-1754 be marked as Prosecution
Exhibit 491 for identification.
Q. (Continuing) Herr Professor, will you read this document aloud?