EXPERIMENTS ON CAMP VICTIMS

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5278, 13 December 1946, Page 5

EXPERIMENTS ON CAMP VICTIMS

- (Press Assn.—

TESTED UNTIL DEAD

GERMAN MEDICAL MEN CHARGED IN COURT

- Rec , 9.30 v.m.)

NUREMBERG, Dec. 12. Records showing that Nazi doctors singled out certain concentration camp victims to undergo successive experimeiits until they died was produced by the prosecutor, Mr. James McHaney, at the trial of 23 German doctors on charges of condueting inhuman exp'erfments. Letters from Dr. Sigmund Rascher, who committed suicide, allegedly implicated at least three of the doctors on trial. Each letter feferred to groups assigned to "external experiments" that meant that the victims would be under constant testing in that if they were strong enough to survive one experiment they would be^ subjected to another. Victims were placed under high altitude conditions at Dachau to see how much the Luftwaffe pilots could be expected to stand if they had' to bale out. One record showed that a Jew, aged 37, died under the tests, but that his heart continued beating even after his brain had .been remoyed. This lcd Himmler to suggest in a letter that those who could be revived should be pardone'd and committed to" life imprisonment, provided that they were not Poles or Russians. One subject lived 'through tests stimulating an altitude of 10 miles without oxygen. Dr. Rascher wrote that this subject was submitted to more tests and eventually died. Other Horrors Related At Ravenbruck Trial HAMBURG, December 12. ■ Laughter ibroke through the grimness of the trial of the Ravensbruck concentration camp officers for atrocities when a Dutch midwife explained a rush of babies when she was preparing- a statement for the War Crimes Commission. The midwife, Neltje Vopker, asked why she introduced evidence in court which had not been included in her earlier statement, said: "I was busy at the time. I think the stork must have gone mad in Holland." As the gust of laughter subsided she added: "l had to deliver nine ■babies within 24 hours." Neltje Vopker declared1 that the camp staff turned bloodhounds on to the prisoners. "It was suicide to resist," sh'e sdid. Mary O'Shaughnessy, an 'Irish governess of Reading, England, told the court that three British girl parachutists who were dropped into France were shot at the Ravensbruck camp. Two other British girls were gassed and sik or seven of 10' British women in the camp died. She haid been arrested in France in March, 1-944, for helping British soldiers. A S.S. woman guard at Ravensbruck broke her teeth and nose. Miss O'Shaughnessy said that it was pitiful to see women trying to pluck up strength to walk steadily across the grciunds so as to avoid being selected for gassing.