The origins of thalidomide were never accounted for. Grünenthal had always maintained that it lost its documents that showed where and when the first human trials were conducted on the drug. Then, in 2008, the Thalidomide Trust, in England, headed by Dr. Martin Johnson, located a group of Nazi-era documents that produced a link between thalidomide and the drugs researched and developed by IG Farben chemists during the war. Dr. Johnson points out that Grünenthal’s 1954 patents for thalidomide cryptically state that human trials had already been completed, but the company says it cannot offer that data because it was lost, ostensibly during the war. “The patents suggest that thalidomide was probably one of a number of products developed at Dyhernfurth or Auschwitz-Monowitz under the leadership of Otto Ambros in the course of nerve gas research,” Dr. Johnson says.
The Thalidomide Trust also links Paperclip scientist Richard Kuhn to the medical tragedy. “Kuhn worked with a wide range of chemicals in his nerve gas research, and in his antidote research we know he used Antergan, which we are fairly sure was a ‘sister drug’ to Contergan,” the brand name for thalidomide, Dr. Johnson explains.
In 2005, Kuhn experienced a posthumous fall from grace when the Society of German Chemists (Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, GDCh) announced it would no longer award its once-prestigious Richard Kuhn Medal in his name. Nazi-era documents on Kuhn had been brought to the society’s attention, revealing that in “the spring of 1943 Kuhn asked the secretary-general of the KWS [Kaiser Wilhelm Society], Ernst Telschow, to support his search for the brains of ‘young and healthy men,’ presumably for nerve gas research.” The Society of German Chemists maintains that “the sources indicate that these brains were most likely taken from execution victims,” and that “[d]espite his scientific achievements, [Richard] Kuhn is not suitable to serve as a role model, and eponym for an important award, mainly due to his research on poison gas, but also due to his conduct towards Jewish colleagues.”
It seems that the legacy of Hitler’s chemists has yet to be fully unveiled. Because so many of these German scientists were seen as assets to the U.S. Army Chemical Corps’ nerve agent programs, and were thus wanted as participants in Operation Paperclip, secret deals were made, and the many documents pertaining to these arrangements were classified. President Clinton’s Interagency Working Group had access to eight million pages of declassified documents, but millions more documents remain classified. In U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis, the Interagency Working Group’s authors write that “the truest reckoning with the official past can never be complete without the full release of government records.”
Part of the problem lies in identifying where records are physically located. For example, a 2012 FOIA request to the State Department, asking for the release of all files related to Otto Ambros, was denied on the grounds that no such files exist. But it is a matter of record, owing to a May 1971 news article in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, that Otto Ambros traveled to the United States twice with the State Department’s assistance, despite his status as a convicted war criminal. In an interview with State Department official Fred Scott, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency learned, “Ambros came to the United States in 1967 after the State Department recommended to the Justice Department a waiver on his eligibility, which was granted,” and that in 1969, Ambros received a second visa waiver and traveled to the United States again. In the spring of 1971 Ambros was attempting to get a third visa waiver from the State Department when the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported the story. According to Fred Scott, Ambros’s host for his May 1971 visit was listed as the Dow Chemical Company. After the story was published, Jewish groups held protests, and Ambros allegedly canceled his trip. But none of this information is contained in Ambros’s declassified U.S. Army files, FBI files, or CIA files. Otto Ambros was a convicted Nazi war criminal. In accordance with the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, all files about him should have been released and declassified. But records that cannot be located cannot be declassified. Where are the Otto Ambros records hidden? And what secrets might be guarded therein?
Names and dates continue to come to light, and researchers, journalists, and historians continue to uncover new facts. Fate and circumstance also inevitably play a part. In 2010 a cache of almost three hundred documents was found in the attic of a house being renovated in the Polish town of O?wie?cim, near Auschwitz. The documents include information about several Nazi doctors and Farben chemists who worked at the death camp. “The sensational value of this discovery is the fact that these original documents, bearing the names of the main murderers from Auschwitz, were found so many years after the war,” says Adam Cyra, a historian at the Auschwitz museum.
Otto Ambros lived until 1990, to the age of ninety-two. After his death, the chemical conglomerate BASF, on whose board of directors he had served, lauded him as “an expressive entrepreneurial figure of great charisma.” Is the old German proverb really true? Jedem das Seine. Does everyone get what he deserves?