. NMT02-T0287
Volume II · Page 287
Hoven joined the SS in 1934 and the Nazi Party in 1937. Soon after the outbreak of the war he joined the Waffen SS. In October 1939 he became assistant medical officer in the SS hospital at Buchenwald concentration camp. In 1941 he was appointed medical officer in charge of the SS troops stationed in the camp. He became assistant medical officer at the camp inmate hospital, and in July 1942 he became chief camp physician. He remained in the latter position until September 1943. At that time he was arrested on the order of the SS police court in Kassel for having allegedly murdered an SS noncommissioned officer who was a dangerous witness against Koch, the camp commander.
TYPHUS AND OTHER VACCINE EXPERIMENTS
The vaccine experiments with which Hoven is charged were conducted at Buchenwald under the supervision of SS Sturmbannfuehrer Dr. Ding, alias Ding-Schuler. They have already been described at length in other portions of this judgment.
The prosecution has shown beyond a reasonable doubt that Hoven was a criminal participant in these experiments. In collaboration with the SS camp administration he helped select the concentration camp inmates who became the experimental subjects. During the course of selection he exercised the right to include some prisoners and to reject others. While perhaps not empowered to initiate new series of experiments on his own responsibility — that apparently being a power which only Ding could exercise — the defendant worked with Ding on experiments then in progress. He supervised the preparation of diary notes, fever charts, and report sheets of the experiments. Occasionally he injected some of the subjects with the vaccines. He acted as Ding's deputy in the conduct of the experiments. He was in command of experimental Block 46 in Ding's absence. During the Period of Hoven's activity in the experimental station no less than 100 inmates were killed as a result of the typhus experiments. Many of these victims were non-German nationals who had not given their consent to be used as experimental subjects.
GAS OEDEMA EXPERIMENTS
It is asserted in an affidavit made by Dr. Ding-Schuler, who was in charge of Blocks 46 and 50, Buchenwald, that toward the end of 1942 a conference was held in the Military Medical Academy, Berlin, for the purpose of discussing the fatal effects of gas oedema serum on wounded persons. During the conference, KilIlian, of the Army Medical Inspectorate, and the defendant Mrugowsky reported several cases in which wounded soldiers who
