Dachau: The Harrowing of Hell

24. Research

24 RESEARCH In my spare time, I wander through the camp-there is always something to explore. On one of these walks, I enter a one-story building that contains laboratory counters and storage shelves. Almost everything in it has been smashed: I step over broken benches and drawers, twisted instruments and shattered glassware. In the debris, I am surprised to find a few specimen jars and bottles intact, filled with preserved human and insect tIssues. I am told that this is the malaria station where selected prisoners , used as experimental subjects without their consent, were either directly exposed to infected mosquitoes or were inoculated with infected blood. They were then treated with experimental drugs, some before they developed the symptoms of malaria , others afterward. This was only one of the many medical investigations conducted at Dachau between 194I and 1945; information about them is uncovered by a 7th Army investigating unit which prepares a special report about Dr. Klaus Karl Schilling, now an Allied prisoner. Formerly a professor of parasitology at the University of Berlin and a member of the Malaria Commission of the League of Nations, he was in charge of the malaria project at Dachau. Of 1,000 prisoners used in the test, 30 to 40 died of malaria and 300 to 400 from other diseases thought to be fatal because the prisoners' resistance had been depressed either by the malaria itself or the toxic effects of the drugs being studied . In many of the subjects severe pain and disability occurred. Nearly all of the Polish priests in the camp were forced to participate in the experiments.' 178 I Three series of phlegmone (purulent infection) experiments were conducted at Dachau. Subjects were injected with pus and then treated with chemicals or antibiotics. A Polish priest of the Capuchin Order, Father Stanislaw Wolak, sends me a copy of his description of one of the experiments . Twenty Polish, Dutch, and Czech priests were selected to perform their "duty for the welfare of mankind," he wrote. His ordeal began during the third year of his imprisonment, in November 1942. He thought he was picked because he was one of the few Polish priests considered to be relatively healthy. The subjects were taken to the hospital and superficially checked to be sure they were free of disease. Then they were divided into two groups, one to receive biochemicals, and the other to be treated with surgery and antibiotics. That night, about 3 cc. of pus were injected into each prisoners' leg; the pus was obtained from other prisoners with draining infections. The effect was immediate. Some of us had to be carried to bed because we could not stand on our legs. The pain was terrible, the temperature rose enormously. During the night I lost consciousness and regained it only a few times . . . during the next ten days. In those moments I saw by my side doctors examining my swollen leg . . . now three times normal [in size]. The tenth day when the swelling changed its color from red to whitish-yellow and when the whole thigh to the knee attained the form of a great sack of pus, I was taken to the operating room. Father Wolak described the development of other sores on his back. The pain became "insupportable." He thought he was dying. He begged for amputation. His sight and memory were gone. He was in continuous agony. After four months, during which he was operated on seven times and received blood transfusions , he recovered to some extent. He also observed other tortured patients. Of the twenty priests who received injections, seven died. According to the 7th Army Counterintelligence Corps detachment , several incredible "mad" scientist projects were carried out, one to investigate the physiologic changes occuring in a parachutist falling at a tremendous speed from a high altitude to sea level. For this purpose, a mobile decompression chamber Research I 179 was placed next to Block 5, and, in a series of tests, was packed with Jews, Russian POWs, and Poles. Descent conditions were simulated. There were no survivors. Two immersion experiments followed, one to record the reactions of prisoners forced to stay in icy water, the other to evaluate methods for warming chilled or frozen men. One of these methods required the services of prostitutes from the Ravensbriick concentration camp.2 Repeatedly we hear that the SS had developed a new material for making book covers, lamp shades, riding breeches, and saddles : human skin. Dr. Blaha described this...