Nazi Research

It has been rumored that Nazi scientists have used civilian prisoners as guinea pigs for macabre biological experiments. Last week the rumors were documented. A French investigating commission reported on a huge prison camp in Alsace where hundreds of men & women had been tortured and killed under carefully controlled conditions in order to supply data for Nazi science.

The camp, known as Struthof-Natzweiler, was found in a thick wood in the Vosges foothills, 30 miles from Strasbourg. Near its rows of dark green huts was a "laboratory" equipped with gas and torture chambers, a crematorium, a vivisection room. There some 20,000 people (mostly Jews) were used and killed.

Some were inoculated with plague and leprosy germs. Thirty women were deliberately blinded, then given a 15-day "treatment" during which they screamed incessantly. (At the end a few recovered their sight, but all were put to death.) In another experiment, a white-uniformed doctor led 84 young women in batches to the gas chamber. German professors watched their dying reactions through a window.

The investigators got this sickening story from captured German assistants in the laboratory and French peasants who lived nearby. Director of the Nazi researchers was a Professor August Hirt of Frankfurt, an SS officer.

Reported Sonia Tamara, New York Herald Tribune correspondent: "The French have a picture of Hirt--a quiet, thoughtful-looking man."

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