Malaria experiments Rose's predecessor as Head of Department at the Robert Koch Institute was
Claus Schilling. Schilling had performed malaria experiments; Rose continued his experiments, mostly with psychiatric patients. In 1917, the Austrian psychiatrist
Julius Wagner-Jauregg used malaria infection as a treatment for
General paresis of the insane. Rose used the same treatment for
schizophrenia. Rose carried out his malaria experiments on the mentally ill at
Dachau concentration camp,
Buchenwald concentration camp, and with Russian prisoners in a psychiatric clinic in
Thuringia. Between 1941 and 1942, Rose tested new
antimalarial drugs for
IG Farben in
Arnsdorf. The Arnsdorf sanatorium documented the malaria experiments which Rose performed. By July 1942, 110 patients had been infected by mosquito bites. In the first test series, which had 49 human subjects, four people died. The experiments in Arnsdorf coincided with the
Aktion T4, the Nazi government's mass murder campaign against the disabled and mentally ill. Psychiatric patients in Arnsdorf were transferred to other institutions and killed there. According to the company, Rose sought out one of the main organizers of Aktion T4,
Viktor Brack, and was promised that his subjects would not be transferred.
Typhus vaccine trials in concentration camps The isolation of the Jewish civilians in
ghettoes and of foreign prisoners in the
POW camps led to
typhus outbreaks in the
German-occupied East. As many typhus cases came out of
Warsaw, the
General Government said that the outbreak was "originating from the Jewish quarter of Warsaw [from] vagabond Jews." met with Rose in Warsaw. In the autumn of 1941, the disease spread west as Wehrmacht soldiers returned to Germany on leave and as
forced laborers were deported to Germany. In December 1941, a meeting was held to discuss the search for a suitable vaccine. Representatives of the Armed Forces, manufacturers, and representatives of the
Reich Interior Ministry gathered to discuss a potential typhoid vaccine. Some manufacturers had designed new vaccines, but did not know if they were effective. Those gathered agreed to test potential vaccines on prisoners in Buchenwald. The experiments were under the control of
Joachim Mrugowsky, who worked for the Hygiene Institute of the Waffen SS. In Buchenwald,
Erwin Ding-Schuler led the experiments. On 17 March 1942, Rose and Eugen Gildemeister went to the experimental station at Buchenwald. By that time, 150 prisoners had been infected with typhus, with 148 of them showing signs of disease. At the 3rd session of the Consultative Medical Wehrmacht in May 1943, Ding-Schuler held a lecture entitled
On the results of the examination of different spotted fever vaccines against the classical typhus , in which he discussed the results of human experiments. Rose, who was present at the conference and had been informed of the nature of the human experiments, voiced his objections about the nature of the human trials. According to the testimony of those who were present, Rose quietly whispered "that this could have been concentration camp experiments." Rose's opposition was later confirmed by
Eugen Kogon. Kogon was an inmate of Ding-Schuler, who repeatedly voiced his displeasure with Rose's interventions in Buchenwald. Despite his protests in May 1943, Rose went to Joachim Mrugowsky on 2 December 1943 with a request. He asked to perform further tests of a new typhus vaccine at Buchenwald.
Enno Lolling, head of Office D III (sanitation and camp hygiene) in the SS economic and administrative main Office, approved the series of experiments on 14 February 1944. He said that "30 suitable
gypsies" should be transferred to Buchenwald. The tests were performed between March and June of 1944. Six of the 26 prisoners infected with typhus died. On 4 October 1943, Haagen wrote to Rose to complain that he lacked the appropriate prisoners to carry out infection experiments on vaccinated persons. On 13 November 1943, the SS office sent 100 prisoners to Haagen. In early 1944, the Institute of Hygiene of the Luftwaffe, led by Rose, settled into the Pfafferode sanatorium near
Mühlhausen. In Pfafferode, led by Theodor Steinmeyer, patients were murdered by food deprivation and drug overdose as part of Aktion T4. ==Defendant in the Doctors' Trial==