. NMT02-T0045
Volume II · Page 45
[re...] warded by commutation of their sentence to life imprisonment in a concentration camp. For one who has even the slightest knowledge of the conditions in concentration camps and the life expectancy of an average inmate, this alleged defense assumes the aspect of a ghastly joke. We need only recall the remark made by one of the women used by Rasher to reward his frozen victims in Dachau, who when asked by him why she had volunteered for the camp brothel, replied: "rather half a year in a brothel than half a year in a concentration camp." But the defects in this spurious defense run much deeper. Concentration camps were not ordinary penal institutions, such as are known in other countries, for the commitment of persons convicted of crimes by courts. The very purpose of concentration camps was the oppression and persecution of persons who were considered undesirable by the Nazi regime on racial, political, and religious grounds. Hundreds of thousands of victims were confined to concentration camps because they were simply Jews, Slavs, or gypsies, Free Masons, Social Democrats, or Communists. They were not tried for any offense and sentenced by a court, not even a Nazi court. They were imprisoned on the basis of "protective custody orders" issued by the RSHA. Tens of thousands were condemned to death on the single order of Himmler, who, as Gebhardt put it so well, "had the power to execute thousands of people by a stroke of his pen." (Tr. p. 4025.) There were, indeed, a relatively small group of inmates who might be classed as ordinary criminals. These were men who had served out their sentences in an ordinary prison and then were committed to concentration camps for still further detention. A memorandum of 18 September 1942 by Thierack, the Minister of Justice, concerning a conversation with Himmler, tells us the fate of those unfortunates:
"The delivery of anti-social elements from the execution of their sentence to the Reich Leader SS to be worked to death. Persons under protective arrest, Jews, gypsies, Russians and Ukrainians, Poles with more than 3-year sentences, Czechs and Germans with more than 8-year sentences, according to the decision of the Reich Minister for Justice." (654-PS, Pros. Ex. 562.)The proof in this case has demonstrated beyond all doubt that so-called criminals sentenced to death were very rarely used in any of the experiments. True it is that Himmler said prisoners condemned to death should be used in those high-altitude experiments where the long-continued activity of the heart after death was observed by the experimenters. He was generous enough to say that if such persons could be brought back to life, then they were to be "Pardoned" to concentration camp for life. But even
