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that state of mind I was arrested on 7 May 1945. The Tribunal is well
aware of all further events.
If, in conclusion, I look back on the many
years of my professional career, if I recall again all that the evidence
reminded me of, if I examine and evaluate all my intentions and actions I can
say with sincere conviction: I never intended anything wrong and I always acted
in accordance with my sense of duty and my conscience. I believe and trust that
the juridical examination of my actions by the Tribunal will also show that I
did no wrong. |
| |
| 4. DEFENDANT HOERLEIN |
| |
PRESIDING JUDGE SHAKE: Professor Hoerlein.
DEFENDANT
HOERLEIN: Mr. President, Your Honors: As a layman with respect to legal
matters, I believed that the prosecution would give facts in their closing
statement, which at least, in their own opinion, would give them the right to
claim individual guilt. Instead, the prosecution merely mentioned my name again
in connection with the general charge of criminal medical experiments, ignoring
the result of the presentation of evidence, and without giving any concrete
facts.
It is so simple to make charges, but it seems to be difficult to
acknowledge errors. What is my case really like? My life work was research and
its application to the health problems of the whole world. I worked for
humanity, for the honor of German science, for the benefit of German economy,
for my firm, and for my family. There was no conflict of interests and no
conflict of conscience in all of these goals.
The Elberfeld plant which
I organized for pharmaceutical purposes, and which I managed, was the smallest
unit of Farben which was taken care of by a technical Vorstand member, but I
would not have traded with any of my colleagues, and I refused another position
which was offered me, which was a larger sphere of work, because the tasks
which I had in Elberfeld were unlimited and were devoted to one of the greatest
problems of humanity, namely, health.
A great American inventor, Victor
Heiser, who, for 20 years, travelled in the Far East for the Rockefeller
Foundation, in his book, “An American Doctor’s Odyssey,”
described his tasks as follows: |
| |
“My choice was to open the
golden window of the East to the Gospel of Health; to let in knowledge so that
those teeming millions who had no voice in demanding what we consider
inalienable rights, should also benefit by the discoveries of science, and that
in the end they, too, could have health.” |
| The search for drugs to combat tropical diseases was one of our aims
at Elberfeld. I shall mention merely one of these problems, our strug-
[...gles] |
1063 |
. 
