TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT 1616-PS Letter from Dr. Rascher to Himmler Dr. S. RASCHER SS-Hauptsturmfuehrer Munich, 17 February 1943 To the Reichsfuehrer SS and Chief of the German Police Dear Reichsfuehrer ! Enclosed I present to you in condensed form a summary of the results of the experiments made in warming up people who have been cooled off by using animal heat. Right now I am attempting to prove through experiments on human beings that it is possible to warm up people cooled off by dry cold just as fast as people who were cooled off by remaining in cold water. The Reich physician SS, SS-Gruppenfuehrer Dr. Gravitz doubted very much that that would be possible and said that I would have to prove it first by 100 experiments. Up to now I have cooled off about 30 people stripped in the open air during 9-14 hours to 27º-29º. After a time corresponding to a transport of one hour, I put these subjects in a hot bath. Up to now every single patient was completely warmed up within one hour at most, though some of them had their hands and feet frozen white. In some cases a slight fatigue with slightly rising temperature was observed on the day following the experiments. I have not observed any fatal results from this extremely fast warming up. I have not so far been able to do any warming up by "Sauna" as ordered by you, my dear Reichsfuehrer, as the weather in December and January was too warm for any experi-ments in the open air,, and right now the camp is closed on ac-count of typhoid and I am not allowed therefore to bring the sub-jects to these experiments into the SS-Sauna. (I have been vac-cinated several times and continue myself to make the tests within the camp in spite of the typhoid in the camp.) It would be best if I were transferred to the Waffen-SS soon and could go together with Neff to Auschwitz and * * * the question of the warming up of persons who have frozen on land * * *. [rest of document missing] |
Document compiled by Dr S D Stein