With public outrage brewing over the Globe article, the situation escalated quickly. The Pentagon became involved, and the matter was sent to the office of the surgeon general of the United States Air Force. That position was now held by none other than Harry Armstrong, recently promoted to major general. Armstrong knew the situation could very quickly get out of control. And hardly anyone had more to lose, personally and professionally, than he did. With the assistance of Dr. Hubertus Strughold, Harry Armstrong had personally recruited fifty-eight former Nazi doctors for work at the U.S. Army Air Forces Aero Medical Center in Heidelberg, five of whom had been arrested for war crimes, four of whom were tried at Nuremberg, two of whom were convicted at Nuremberg, and one of whom was acquitted and then rehired by the U.S. Air Force to work in America before being revealed as incompetent and fired. That said nothing of the thirty-four doctors who had since been hired to work at the School of Aviation Medicine, many of whom were Nazi ideologues as well as former members of the SS and the SA. The Schreiber scandal could trigger a domino effect, shining an unwanted spotlight on the highly suspicious backgrounds of Dr. Strughold, Dr. Benzinger, Dr. Konrad Sch?fer, Dr. Becker-Freyseng, Dr. Schr?der, Dr. Ruff, and so many others.
Major General Harry Armstrong wrote to the director of intelligence of the air force regarding Major General Dr. Schreiber. “I have been advised by the Commandant, USAF School of Aviation Medicine, Randolph Air Force Base, Texas, that they recently forwarded to your office a request for a new contract [for] Doctor Walter Schreiber until June 1952,” Armstrong wrote. “Recent information indicated that Doctor Schreiber may have been implicated in the medical war crimes in Germany during World War II, and his presence in this country has aroused a considerable amount of criticism. As a consequence of this, it is the firm opinion of this office that the Air Force Medical Service cannot associate itself with Doctor Schreiber beyond the six months’ contract under which he is now employed.” Further, said Armstrong, “it may be advisable to terminate this contract even prior to its expiration.” Armstrong promised that the commandant of the School of Aviation Medicine, Major General Otis Benson, “concurs with this recommendation.” General Benson had equal reason to want the Schreiber scandal to quietly disappear. After the war, Benson had served as technical supervisor of the German scientists working at the Army Air Forces Aero Medical Center in Heidelberg.
Two weeks after the scandal broke, Dr. Schreiber was informed that his contract would not be renewed. General Benson delivered the news in person. According to Schreiber, Benson also proposed a secret, alternative plan involving Schreiber’s future career in America. In an affidavit, Schreiber swore that General Benson “stated that he felt sure my services could be utilized in other branches of the government or in medical schools, and offered his assistance in soliciting for a position for me.”
In Boston, the matter continued to generate press. The Janina Iwanska story was news people were interested in reading about. Despite what had been done to her during the war, Janina Iwanska was a vibrant, beautiful, credible young woman; it was almost impossible not to marvel at her resilience. After being liberated from Ravensbrück, she had moved to Paris, where she had been working as a journalist for Radio Free Europe. She also worked as the Paris-based correspondent for several Polish newspapers in Western Europe.
When Iwanska was experimented on at Ravensbrück she was only seventeen years old. While imprisoned there, she and several other female prisoners had taken remarkable steps to get word outside the camp about what was being done by Nazi doctors at Ravensbrück. With the goal of getting their message to the Vatican, the BBC, and the International Red Cross, Iwanska and four other women sent secret messages to their relatives outside the camp. Remarkably, a French prisoner named Germaine Tillion took photographs of the women’s wounds, then smuggled a roll of film out of the camp. The story was printed in the Polish underground press during the war, notifying the world about the Ravensbrück medical experiments. The story was eventually picked up by the BBC, as the women had hoped.
Now, with the Schreiber story gaining momentum, in January 1951, FBI agents arranged to interview Janina Iwanska in Boston. Under oath and from a photograph, she identified Dr. Schreiber as a high-ranking doctor who had overseen the medical experiments at Ravensbrück.
“How do you know that the Dr. Schreiber, whom you saw in the Concentration Camp in Germany in 1942 and 1943, is the same Dr. Walter Schreiber who is now in San Antonio?” an FBI agent asked her.
“Three weeks ago, the journalist was coming from the Boston Post [sic] and they showed me about fifty (50) pictures and they asked me if I know [which one] is Dr. Schreiber,” Iwanska said. She described how she had no trouble picking Schreiber’s photograph out of fifty presented to her. “I saw this face in the doctors’ group in Ravensbrück,” she said. “After, they asked me if I knew Schreiber’s name. I told them, ‘I know Schreiber’s name.’ ”
Dr. Schreiber, in a separate interview, claimed that he had had nothing to do with the Ravensbrück experiments, that he had never even visited a concentration camp, and that he had never met Janina Iwanska, who was accusing him of outrageous acts. In response, Janina Iwanska had this to say: “I had an operation done on my legs by Dr. Gebhart [sic].… During the first dressing after the operations I spoke to him. I asked Dr. Gebhart why they did the operation and they gave the answer, ‘We can do the experiment because you are condemned to die.’ The number [tattooed on] my legs are T. K. M. III. If Dr. Schreiber cannot remember my name, I am sure perhaps he can remember the experiment [number].”
Janina Iwanska said she was sure that Dr. Schreiber was at the concentration camp; she had seen him with her own eyes. After operations were performed on seventy-four women, she explained, there was a doctors’ conference at the concentration camp.