c. Selection from the Argumentation of the Defense

EXTRACT FROM THE FINAL PLEA FOR DEFENDANT GEBHARDT*

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The Legal Status of the Experimental Subjects

"Inmates of the Ravensbrueck concentration camp who had been sentenced to death by German courts martial in the General Government as members of the Polish Resistance Movement were employed as experimental subjects (in the sulfanilamide experiments)." The witnesses questioned in Court and all experimental subjects from whom the prosecution has submitted affidavits have openly professed their membership of the Resistance Movement and it must be added that some of them exercised relatively important functions in the Resistance Movement. If the legal status of the experimental subjects at the time of their activity in the Resistance Movement is examined, the result will be as follows:

LEGAL STATUS OF POLAND

The former Polish State ceased to exist as an independent subject from the point of view of international law at the latest on 28 September 1939. After the entire area of the former Polish State had been occupied by the German armies and the troops of the Soviet Union, and the Polish Government had gone into Romanian territory under pressure of the invasion of the Red Army on 17 September 1939, the two occupational powers decided to carry out a plan previously agreed upon which was to settle all matters concerning the territory of the former Polish State without interference by any other powers. This was brought about by the German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Pact of 28 September 1939. (Gebhardt 14, Gebhardt Ex. 13.) I refer to the contents of the pact for particulars. It was on this day, at the very latest, that Poland ceased to exist as a sovereign state and as bearer of rights and duties. Due to war, the former Polish State ceased to exist as a state and therewith as a subject from the point of view of international law.

The territory of the former Polish State, insofar as it fell within the sphere of Soviet interests, became part of the U. S. S. R., to which it still belongs today.

The Polish territory, which fell into the German sphere of interests and which is designated in detail in the Supplementary Protocol to the German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Pact, became either part of the German Reich or — and this concerned the larger part of

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*Final plea is recorded mimeographed transcript, 15 July 1947, pp. 10874-10911.