. NMT02-T0223
Volume II · Page 223
The defendant Gebhardt is charged under counts two and three of the indictment with special responsibility for, and participation in, High-Altitude, Freezing, Malaria, Lost Gas, Sulfanilamide, Bone, Muscle and Nerve Regeneration and Bone Transplantation, Sea-Water, Epidemic Jaundice, Sterilization, Typhus, Poison, and Incendiary Bomb Experiments.
The defendant Gebhardt held positions of great power and responsibility in the Medical Service of the SS in Nazi Germany. He joined the NSDAP in 1933 and the SS at least as early as 1935. He took part in the Nazi Putsch of 1923, which aimed at the overthrow of the so-called Weimar Republic, the democratic government of Germany, being then a member of the illegal Free Corps, "Bund Oberland." When, in 1933, the hospital at Hohenlychen was founded, Gebhardt was appointed chief physician of this institution. In 1938 he became the attending physician to Himmler. He was also personal physician to Himmler and his family. In 1940 Gebhart was appointed consulting surgeon of the Waffen SS and, in 1943, chief clinical officer (Oberster Kliniker) of the Reich Physician SS and Police, Grawitz. In the Allgemeine SS Gebhardt attained the rank of a Gruppenfuehrer (major general), and in the Waffen SS the rank of major general in the reserve.
SULFANILAMIDE EXPERIMENTS
The purpose for which these experiments were undertaken is defined in counts two and three of the indictment.
In the Ravensbrueck concentration camp during a period from 20 July 1942 until August 1943, the defendant Gebhardt, aided by defendants Fischer and Oberheuser, performed such experiments upon human subjects without their consent. Gebhardt personally requested Heinrich Himmler's permission to carry out these experiments and attempts to assume full responsibility for them and for any consequences resulting therefrom. He himself personally carried out the initial operations.
While it is not deemed strictly necessary in this judgment to describe in any detail the procedure followed in performing these experiments, a brief statement will now be made thereon. The first experimental subjects consisted of 15 male concentration camp inmates used during preliminary experiments in July 1912, but later 60 Polish women, who were experimented on in 5 groups of 12 subjects each.
In the first series of experiments the healthy subjects were infected with various bacteria, but resulting infections were not thereafter considered sufficiently serious to furnish an answer to
