. NMT02-T0262
Volume II · Page 262
[Stras...] bourg early in September 1944, Sievers dispatched to Rudolf Brandt the following teletype message:
"Subject: Collection of Jewish Skeletons.
"In conformity with the proposal of 9 February 1942 and with the consent of 23 February 1942 * * * SS Sturmbannfuehrer Professor Hirt planned the hitherto missing collection of skeletons. Due to the extent of the scientific work connected herewith, the preparation of the skeletons is not yet concluded. Hirt asks with respect to the time needed for 80 specimens, and in case the endangering of Strasbourg has to be reckoned with, how to proceed with the collection situated in the dissecting room of the anatomical institute. He is able to carry out the maceration and thus render them irrecognizable. Then, however, part of the entire work would have been partly done in vain, and it would be a great scientific loss for this unique collection, because hominit casts could not be made afterwards. The skeleton collection as such is not conspicuous. Viscera could be declared as remnants of corpses, apparently left in the anatomical institute by the French and ordered to be cremated. Decision on the following proposals is requested:
"1. Collection can be preserved.
"2. Collection is to be partly dissolved.
"3. Entire collection is to be dissolved.
The pictures of the corpses and the dissecting rooms of the Institute, taken by the French authorities after the liberation of Strasbourg, point up the grim story of these deliberate murders to which Sievers was a party.
Sievers knew from the first moment he received Hirt's report of 9 February 1942 that mass murder was planned for the procurement of the skeleton collection. Nevertheless he actively collaborated in the project, sent an employee of the Ahnenerbe to make the preparatory selections in the concentration camp at Auschwitz, and provided for the transfer of the victims from Auschwitz to Natzweiler. He made arrangements that the collection be destroyed.
Sievers' guilt under this specification is shown without question.
Sievers offers two purported defenses to the charges against him (1) that he acted pursuant to superior orders; (2) that he was a member of a resistance movement.
The first defense is wholly without merit. There is nothing to show that in the commission of these ghastly crimes, Sievers
