by Arthur Allen
The women—French: Adelaide Hautval, “Aperçu sur les expériences faites dans les camps de femmes d’Auschwitz et de Ravensbrück,” in André Lettich, Convoi Numero 8 (Paris: Éditions Retour, 2009), 122–25; Hans-Joachim Lang, Frauen von Block 10: Medizinische Versuche in Auschwitz (Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe, 2011), 167–76.
Fleck witnessed these terrible: Fleck, “Aufenthalt,” 488.
During this time, Fleck befriended: Shoah Foundation, 19441 Magda Blau.
“It was strictly forbidden”: Letter of Hautval to Schnelle, April 2, 1980, LFZ, Allgemeine Korrespondenz und Notizen von Thomas Schnelle 1978–1993, 4.1, Signatur 94.
The windows of Block 10: Bruno Seeman testimony.
One day, Fleck: “Aufenthalt,” 489. See also Irena Strzelecka, Medical Crimes: The Hospitals in Auschwitz, trans. William Brand (Owicim: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2008), 12.
Yet even as the gassings: Hermann Langbein, Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps, 1938–1945, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Paragon House, 1994), 14–15.
Hermann Langbein: Langbein, Menschen in Auschwitz (Vienna: Europa Verlag, 1972), 17.
Langbein, a former: Langbein, Against All Hope, 27
The camp commander: Rudolf Höss, Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz (New York: Da Capo, 1996), 323–25.
Arriving at the ramp: Shoah Foundation, 36554 Louis Micheels.
Langbein was working: Marc Klein, “Auschwitz I Stammlager,” in De l’université aux camps de concentration: Témoignages strasbourgeois (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1947), 447–48.
Wirths wrote detailed: Hermann Langbein, People in Auschwitz, trans. Harry Zohn (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 371–73.
The reports may have: Ibid., 552. For information on the SS judicial inquiry at Auschwitz and other camps, see James J. Weingartner, “Law and Justice in the Nazi SS: The Case of Konrad Morgen,” Central European History 16 (1983): 276–94.
On May 5, 1943, Weber’s: Mieczysław Kieta, “Das Hygiene-Institut der Waffen-SS und Polizei in Auschwitz,” in, Die Auschwitz-Hefte, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (Hamburg: Rogner und Bernhard, 1995), 213–17.
Inmates were already: Susanne Heim: Kalorien, Kautschuk, Karrieren: Pflanzenzüchtung und landwirtschaftliche Forschung an Kaiser-Wilhelm-Instituten 1933–1945 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003), 177; Peter Longerich, Himmler, trans. Jeremy Noakes and Lesley Sharpe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 685–86.
The United States was: Mark R. Finlay, Growing American Rubber: Strategic Plants and the Politics of National Security (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 19–20, 162–63, 205–7.
Himmler and Caesar: Wanda L. Blankenheim, Yad Vashem testimony, RG 0.3/3118.
At Monowitz: Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity, trans. Stuart Woolf (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996).
But while the: See Shoah Foundation, 24748 Rosette Moss, 4616 Ellis Hertzberger, 6370 Simone Floersheim, 653 Gertruda Milchova; and Simone Alizon, L’exercice de vivre (Paris: Stock, 1996), 264–81, Blankenheim testimony, 15.
The women in the: Anna Zieba, “Das Nebenlager Rajsko,” Hefte von Auschwitz 9 (1966): 75–90.
In October 1942, Caesar: Langbein, People, 418; Blankenheim testimony, 13.
The leaders of the: Alizon, L’exercise de vivre, 264–67; Claudette: Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1942–1945: Recherche en laboratoire,” trans. and ed. Lore Shelley (Chambéry: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 2002), 1–42.
Fleck and the other: Zieba,“Rajsko,” 75–90; Kieta, “Hygiene-Institut,” 213–17.
The walk took: Louis J. Micheels, Doctor 117641: A Holocaust Memoir (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 100.
Arriving at the institute: Kieta, “Hygiene-Institut,” 215; Lettich, Convoi; Berler, Journey; Léon Poliakov, Bréviaire de la Haine: Le IIIe Reich et les Juifs (Paris: René Julliard, 1964), 118–20.
After Josef Mengele: Kieta, “Hygiene-Institut,” 216; Shoah Foundation, 35030 Victor Schnell; Deborah E. Lipstadt, introd. to Lucie Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Story, trans. Susan Ray (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1995), xiii–xvii. For more on Mengele, see Gerald Posner and John Ware, Mengele: The Complete Story (New York: Cooper Square, 2000).
On the same floor: Fleck, “Wie wir,” 523.
The dandelion scientist: Joachim Caesar, NA, RG238, M1019, roll 11.
A general state of: USHMM, Hygiene Institute der Waffen SS-Polizei, Auschwitz RG 15.108 (30 microfilm reels containing photographed records of serological and bacteriological tests performed by Fleck and others at Rajsko).
In a little room: Kieta, “Rajsko”; Lettich, Convoi; Berler, Journey; Shoah Foundation, 6246 William Schiff.
In an attic workshop: Kieta, “Rajsko.”
One day, Weber: Shoah Foundation, Herzberger.
Their wives had been: Frank Stiffel, The Tale of the Ring: A Kaddish (New York: Bantam Books, 1984), 256–61; Stiffel, interview with author, Jan. 2011.
Despite their celebrity: Bruno Seeman testimony.
As a Nazi boss: Blankenheim testimony.
He ran the labs: Berler, Journey.
Micheels said: Micheels, Doctor, 98–104.
Weber was needlessly: Ibid., 71–76, 84–85.
One irksome task: Lettich, Convoi, 74–76.
Weber enjoyed walking: Truck and Truck, Médecins, 156–57.
Fleck’s son, Ryszard: Imre Gönczi, personal communications, April 2011; YVA O.3/2874; Ryszard Fleck testimony.
“Our relations with the SS”: Klein, “Auschwitz I,” 449–50.
In the spring of 1944: Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis (New York: Norton, 2000), 628.
“Before that time”: Blankenheim testimony, 13.
Another doctor wrote: Adelsberger, Doctor’s Story, 85.
Near the end: Tadeusz Kielanowski, “In der Angelegenheit des Artikels von Prof. Dr. L. Fleck über ärztliche Experimente an Menschen,” in Denkstile, 584.
In Lwów, as the war: Ryszard Wójcik, “Pakt z diabłem” (Pact with the devil), Przegld tygodniowy 4 (617) (1994). Also see the five-part Wójcik series “Kapryna gwiazda Rudolfa Weigla” (The wayward star of Rudolf Weigl), in Odra 9 and 10 (1980–81).
The dilemma: Third Part of the Night, by Andrzej uławski, Polski State Film, 1971.
In practice, the Poles: Szybalski, interview with author.
Chapter 11: Buchenwald: Rabbit Stew and Fake Vaccine
Many of the doctors: Stanisław Kłodziski, “Sabota w buchenwaldzkim Instytucie Higieny SS; Dr. Marian Ciepielowski” Przegla.d lekarski 34 (1977): 141–45; François Bayle, Croix gammée contre caducée: Les expériences humaines en Allemagne pendant la deuxième Guerre mondiale (Neustadt, 1950), 1177.
Apart from Ding: Albert Kirrmann, “Les laboratoires du block 50,” in De l’université aux camps de concentration: Témoignages strasbourgeois (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1947), 115.
Mrugowsky from the: Mrugowsky testimony, NA, RG238, ser. M1019, roll 47, Mrugowsky, frame 1191.
The Giroud vaccine: Bayle, Croix, 1224; Haubold, file memo, HNOC, HLSL 2241.
Ding made two: Interrogation of Dr. Kogon in NMT trial 4 (Pohl Case), concerning medical experiments at Buchenwald, HNOC, HLSL 453.
There were plenty of doctors: Shoah Foundation, 20816 Marko Max Feingold.
Jellinek came to: Willy Jellinek, interview with Thomas Schnelle, April 8, 1980, in LFZ, Unterlagen und Notizen von Thomas Schnelle: Allgemeine Korrespondenz und Notizen von Thomas Schnelle 1978–1993, 4.1, Signatur 94; author’s interview with and personal communications from Howard Cohn, May 2012.
No vaccine experts were: Kłodziski, “Sabota,” 141–45.
Ciepielowski, handsome: Ibid.; Bayle, Croix, 1158, Marjan Ciepielowski testimony in Buchenwald trial, NA, RG153, box 255, v. 1, trial rec., pt. 4 (folder 10), 1123–31; photograph of Ciepielowski, courtesy of George Otlowski, Metuchen, NJ.
Perhaps the most: Hubert Habicht, ed., Eugen Kogon—Ein politisch
er Publizist in Hessen (Frankfurt: Insel, 1982), 7–12.
Kogon’s steadfast: Kogon, Hell, 263–65, 283–88.
Before long: undated document, “Officials of the Concentration Camp at Buchenwald,” NA, RG153, box 244; Konrad Morgen testimony, ibid., box 257, v. 1, trial rec., pt. 7 (folder 1), 2758–65.
Kogon maneuvered Ding: Kogon, Hell, 160–61.
The vaccine detail: Ibid., 160–61, 263–65.
Konrad Morgen, the SS: Morgen, affidavit concerning medical experiments at Buchenwald, HNOC, HLSL 794, 49–54.
Another political prisoner: Pierre Julitte, Block 26: Sabotage at Buchenwald, trans. Francis Price (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971), 105, 121, 129, 140, 176–77. For confirmation of identities, see Pierre Durand, Les Français à Buchenwald et à Dora: Les armes de l’espoir (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1977).
Block 50 had a well-cared-for: Julitte, Block 26, 100–101.
The building was startlingly: Kirrmann, “Laboratoires,” 115–18.
As Fleck wrote: Fleck, “Problems of the Science of Science,” in Cognition and Fact: Materials on Ludwik Fleck, ed. Robert S. Cohen and Thomas Schnelle (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1986), 113–27.
Ding pressed the: Bayle, Croix, 1179.
The Block 50 crew: Mimeographed typed manuscript, DGVG-Ding, green box.
The first samples: Bayle, Croix, 1166.
It was at this moment: Kogon, interview with Thomas Schnelle, June 2, 1979, LFZ, Unterlagen und Notizen von Thomas Schnelle: Allgemeine Korrespondenz und Notizen von Thomas Schnelle 1978–1993, 4.1, Signatur 94.
Fleck befriended: Jellinek, interview with Schnelle; Jellinek, letter to Fleck, Oct. 27, 1946, LFZ, Biographisches Material betr. Ludwik Fleck/1.2. Biographische Notizen und Korrespondenzen; Ewa Pleszczyska, testimony at pamiecmiejsca.tnn.pl.
In 1939, Mrugowsky: Weindling, Epidemics, 231.
He ordered Fleck: Kielanowski, “My meetings,” 582–85; Jellinek interview with Thomas Schnelle, April 8, 1980, LFZ.
Fleck’s authority: Jellinek interview with Schnelle; Kogon interview with Schnelle.
Fleck described: All quotations below are from Fleck, “Science of Science,” 113–27.
Here, Fleck referred: Klemens Barbarski, “Sabota w ampulce,” Przekrój 99 (1947): 16.
Their lives hung: Fleck, “In der Buchenwalder Angelegenheit; Kommentar zum Buch F. Bayles,” in Denkstile, 549–57.
This is also the: Bayle, Croix, 1178–79.
Ding, in short: Ludwik Fleck testimony, YVA Sign 03/650.
Block 50 produced: Jerzy Lutowski, “Was ist Leukergie? Wir sprechen mit Professor Fleck,” in Denkstile, 515–18.
Even Fleck’s son: Ryszard Fleck testimony, YVA.
The men in the block: Howard Cohn, interview with author.
Hummelsheim, the bilingual: Julitte, Block 26, 176–77.
Following the liberation: Vie académique (1984): 570–73, in ARC037, “Alfred Balachowsky,” at IHTP; Balachowsky testimony, PIA,, box LEPC1.
Born in Russia: Nicolas Chevassus, “Alfred Balachowsky: Un pastorien à Buchenwald,” La Recherche 370 (2003): 50–52; Alfred Balachowsky, Titres et travaux scientifiques de Alfred-Serge Balachowsky (1967); Jean Dorst, “La vie et l’oeuvre d’Alfred Balachowski,” La vie des sciences 1, no. 6, pp. 567–76.
From there, he was: Balachowsky at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/01-30-46.asp.
After learning of Balachowsky’s: Julitte, Block 26, 174–75; Vie académique (1984): 570.
Balachowsky was skeletal: Julitte, “Allocution de M. Pierre Juliette,” in 1972, “Remise de l’épée d’académicien” for Balachowsky, accessed from PIA, BAL1.
Balachowsky’s diaries: Balachowsky diaries, ARC037, IHTP.
After the war: Kogon, interview, Nov. 28, 1946, NA, RG238, ser. M1019, roll 36; Fleck, “Angelegenheit,” 549–60.
In Block 50: Balachowsky testimony, PIA, LEPC1.
Fleck conducted bacteriological: Fleck, “Bericht über den Aufenthalt im KZ Buchenwald,” in Denkstile, 492–97; Fleck, “Angelegenheit,” 549–60.
On one occasion: Ibid.; Balachowsky diary, Feb. 26, 1945, PIA, BAL1.
The mistrust would: Fleck, “Angelegenheit,” 552.
Kogon, who admired: ARC037, folder “Alfred Balachowsky, 1901–1983,” IHTP; Kogon to Schnelle; interview with Eugen Kogon, NA, RG238, ser. M1019, roll 36; cross examination of the witness Dr. Kogon, HNOC, HLSL 454.
Bizarrely, Balachowsky’s: See Eva Hedfors, “Medical Science in the Light of the Holocaust: Departing from a Postwar Paper by Ludwik Fleck,” Social Studies of Science 38 (2008): 259–83; and the response by the Fleck scholars Olga Amsterdamska et al., “Medical Science in the Light of a Flawed Study of the Holocaust: A Comment on Eva Hedfors’ Paper on Ludwik Fleck,” ibid., 937–44.
By the summer: Jellinek interview with Schnelle.
The bombs slightly damaged: Ding-Schuler to Mrugowsky, Aug. 26, 1944, DGVG-Ding, green folder.
As night fell: Christian Pineau, La simple vérité, 1940–1945 (Paris: René Julliard, 1960), 482–84.
“Even today”: Ludwik Fleck, “El Roble de Goethe,” El Malpensante 97 (May 2009), accessed at http://www.elmalpensante.com/index.php?doc=display_contenido&id=1025.
That night: Stéphane Hessel, Danse avec le siècle (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1997), 83–91.
In Kraków, Eyer’s: Eyer to Olga Weigl, March 12, 1944; A. Rohrmann to Eyer, Nov. 16, 1946.
Weigl’s older brother: Weigl to Eyer, Aug. 27, 1966.
After the Warsaw . . . relief: Heinrich Mückter to Erich von Redwitz, Nov. 19, 1946.
The war was not easy: Peter Eyer, interview with author.
Just before: Bruce Marshall, The White Rabbit (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1953).
Balachowsky sought help: Ernst von Salomon, The Captive: The Story of an Unknown Political Prisoner (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1961), 137–49; Marshall, White Rabbit, 230–53; Balachowsky testimony, PIA, LEPC1; Hessel, Danse, 85–91.
The secrecy: See NA, RG153, box 250, v. 1, clemency, pt. 6 (folders 1 and 2); Kogon Hell, 158–60.
To start the plan: Salomon, Captive, 137–49; Marshall, White Rabbit, 230–53; Balachowsky testimony, PIA, LEPC1; Hessel, Danse, 85–91; Kogon, Hell, 212–18; Durand, Les Français, 53–55; report by Balachowsky on events at Buchenwald, IWM, Yeo-Thomas, GB62–xx05, box 1, April 23, 1945.
Ding, whom Kogon: Yeo-Thomas testimony, Buchenwald trial, NA, RG153, box 254, v. 1, trial rec., pt. 2 (folder 2), 141–44.
The Gestapo telephoned: Ibid.; Kogon, Hell, 214.
At this point: IWM, Wing Commander FF E Yeo-Thomas, GB62–xx05, box 1; file FFEYT2/3.
The other two cases: Air Ministry Press conference on Feb. 15, 1946, IWM, Yeo-Thomas, GB62–xx05, box 1.
That left Hessel: Hessel, Danse.
Yeo-Thomas remained: Yeo-Thomas testimony, 147.
On January 17: Accounts of the death march here include Shoah Foundation testimonies of Seeman, Milchova, Ryszard Arie Fleck, and Schiff; Freddie Knoller, Living with the Enemy: My Secret Life on the Run from the Nazis (London: Metro Publishing, 2005); YVA testimony by Blankenheim; Ryszard Wójcik interviews of Henryk Meisel and Felicja Meisel-Mikolajczyk.
In the beginning: Shoah Foundation, Bruno Seeman.
The men, separated: See YVA testimonies of Wonda Blankenheim, Bronisław Seeman, Ryszard Fleck, Henryk Meisel, and Felicja Meisel-Mikolajczyk.
They died by the hundreds: Pineau, Simple, 537.
Alfred Balachowsky’s diary: “Notes faites par A. Balachowsky,” in ARC037, IHTP.
The French, sustained: Pineau, Simple, 537–39.
Again, Fleck was: Jellinek interview with Schnelle.
On February 9, Erwin Ding: Erwin Schuler, insurance claim, DGVG-Ding, green box.
Increasingly he was plotting: Bayle, Croix, 1172.
In the final days: Fleck, Denkstile, 492.
As the Americans approached: Howard Cohn, personal communication; Kogon, Hell, 283–88.
On April 11, a crowd: John
Berman testimony.
Ryszard Fleck remembered: Ryszard Fleck testimony.
“When I walked into”: Shoah Foundation, 44720 Leon Bass.
The Communists put up: Meyer Levin, In Search (New York: Paperback Library, 1961), 216–18.
Chapter 12: Imperfect Justice
About a week: Ding-Schuler statement, June 18, 1945, NA, RG153, box 252, v. 1, trial rec., pt. 3 (folder 3).
Only a few months earlier: Ding to Osiander, Aug. 16, 1944, BA-Berlin, VBS283/6055002585.
Just as he won his: E.g., DVDG-Ding Ordner 1546, Aktenvermerk, March 31, 1945, re “Mittelwerke”; Ordner 1548 “Geheim,” Schuler to Mrugowsky, March 18, 1945; Mrugowsky to Lolling, Feb. 10, 1945.
Ding-Schuler had: François Bayle, Croix gammée contre caducée: Les expériences humaines en Allemagne pendant la deuxième Guerre mondiale (Neustadt, 1950), 1178.
If citizen Schuler: Ibid., 1199–201.
It may have been: Rose interrogation, NA, RG238, ser. M1019, roll 60, frame 151.
“My wife is alone”: Bayle, Croix, 1200.
After the war: Air Ministry press conference on Feb. 15, 1946, IWM, Yeo-Thomas, GB62–xx05, box 1, file FFEYT2/3; BA-Berlin, Do/1/28859 Standort 51, Magazine M 3 10.
But Irene: “Allocution de M. Pierre Juliette,” in “Remise de l’épée d’académicien” for Balachowsky, 1972, PIA, BAL1.
There were many Nazi: Gerstein is viewed sympathetically in A Spy for God: The Ordeal of Kurt Gerstein, trans. Norman Denny (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), and in Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 290; Wirths’s story is in Hermann Langbein, People in Auschwitz, trans. Harry Zohn (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 385; Grawitz’s end is mentioned in Naomi Baumslag, Murderous Medicine: Nazi Doctors, Experimentation, and Typhus (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005), 180.
Many more tried: Materials on the investigation of Weber, at Kew, WO309/469 and W0309/472, including an amusing account of the search by British agents leading to his arrest.
The SS commander of Galicia: Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1985), 708.
Several hundred: Norbert Frei, Adenauer’s Germany and the Nazi Past: The Politics of Amnesty and Integration (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 67, 94, 178.
