. NMT02-T0325
Volume II · Page 325
therefore, in all essentials confined itself to the question of to what extent crimes were committed on non-Germans. No conclusive evidence has been brought against defendant Helmut Poppendick in each single case to prove his knowledge of experiments carried out on non-Germans. In reality, nothing is more suitable to explain under whatever point of view we have to look at defendant Poppendick's knowledge of experiments, than his words at the end of the trial: "As to medical experiments on prisoners, human experiments were nothing striking and nothing new to me. I knew that experiments were being conducted in hospitals. I knew that the triumphs of modern medicine had not been achieved without sacrifices. I admit I cannot remember that in experiments in hospitals, the voluntary participation of the experimental subjects had to be such an indispensable and obvious prerequisite, as it appears to be according to the argumentation heard in this trial. Furthermore, I know that some scientific questions can only be solved by serial experiments in an unchanging environment, and that, therefore, in all countries, experiments are often conducted, particularly on soldiers in camps. Under these circumstances I was not at all surprised that during the war serial examinations and experiments were also carried out by scientists in concentration camps. I had not the slightest reason to assume that these scientists in the camps went beyond what was usual everywhere else in the world of science. As far as I was concerned, what I knew about medical experiments in the SS had just as little to do with criminal acts as the experiments about which I knew from my internship before 1933.
" IV. Consequences for future jurisdiction arising from the penalties imposed bay the sentence on PoppendickThe sentence imposed on Helmut Poppendick for his membership in the SS is altogether the first sentence in the American Zone against an SS member of this kind. Therefore, it has to be regarded as a precedent for all military tribunals and possibly, later on, for German courts, whose task it will be to punish members of criminal organizations. To sum up its consequences, the sentence creates a precedent, that —
1. Every SS leader with a rank higher than Poppendick's, who knew of SS crimes committed on Germans and non-Germans, can, on principle, only be sentenced to the maximum penalty.
2. Every member of the SS involved in crimes can be sentenced up to this maximum penalty again only on account of his SS Membership. What penalty can, for example, be inflicted on an SS Obergruppenfuehrer who saw how the gas chambers were run at Auschwitz, without, however, being otherwise involved in
