BY JUDGE MUSMANNO:
Q. These inmates who were brought before him, were they selected or did they just happen to be there close to him -- those whom he interviewed?
A. They were actually running at him and they surrounded him.
Q. Then it was just a casual contact. There were ten taken at random?
A. Yes, absolutely.
Q. So that out of these ten casual persons that he spoke with, two were released so far as you know?
A. I said, Your Honor, that they were people who came to the special attention of Himmler because, for example, they looked very intelligent or because they had particularly striking features or because they had an outstanding face.
Q. And you say out of ten names, so far as you know, two were released?
A. Yes.
Q. That would mean that of those with whom he spoke, 20 per cent Himmler declared to be unjustly in the concentration camp?
A. That cannot be said, Your Honor, because this may have been something in the form of pardon. A pardon could have been granted to these inmates. After all, these men did not have to be innocent, Your Honor, because according to them they were all innocent. All of them said that they hadn't done anything.
Q. Do you think they were all innocent?
A. No. But Standarenfuehrer Kaindl told me, "The man who said that he was innocent has a very big record.
He has to be confined to jail, for 35 years." There were people amongst them who felt themselves to be innocently confined, but there were also people there-
Q. If two people were released--and there may have been more---you only know of two--was there any attempt made following that to screen the rest of the inmates to determine if there were others who could or should be released?
A. I don't know the technical procedure. I know much too little about it, and therefore I can't give you any information.
Q. Well so far as you know, that ended the matter of determining whether innocents were there in that camp?
A. I haven't quite understood your question, Your Honor.
Q. So far as you know, this fatherly visit on the part of Himmler, as the result of which inmates were released, was the only time that you were aware that any attempt was made to release innocents from any concentration camp?
A I don't know whether these people were innocent. However, I have seen that with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears. I can't draw any conclusions whether there were any other possibilities. In order to do that I do not dispose over sufficient information.
BY MR. ROBBINS:
Q Did you know that at that time in April 1943 Himmler had for many months been engaged upon a wholesale program of slaughtering Jews and Poles?
A I know that today.
Q You know today that in April of 1943 he was carrying out that program?
A Whether this was in April, I don't know. I only know that these murders were carried out, but I don't know when.
Q Did you happen to hear anything about Himmler's speech at Cracow in that same month of April, 1943?
A No, I was not at Cracow. I never heard of this speech.
Q In that same month that you were with Himmler at Oranienburg -- when he showed such a fatherly interest in the Jews - he made this statement at Cracow to a meeting of Obergruppenfuehrer of the SS:
"Anti-semitism is exactly the same as delousing. Getting rid of lice is not a question of ideology; it is a matter of cleanliness. In just the same way, anti-semitism for us has not been a question of ideology, but a matter of cleanliness which now will soon have to be dealt with. We shall soon be deloused. We have only 20,000 lice left, and then the matter is finished with the whole of Germany."
Did you hear about that speech at the time?
A I must leave it to the Tribunal to judge the psychology of Himmler.
Q Well, did you visit any other concentration camps?
A I can't recall having visited any other ones during the war. Before the war I visited Dachau, and I saw it when it was in an outstanding condition.
Q What date was that?
A It must have been in 1938. It was a big inspection, and at least fifty people carried out the inspection - that included officers of the Wehrmacht.
Q. And from the time you joined the SS in 1933 to the end of the war you visited only three concentration camps: Auschwitz, Oranienburg and Dachau. Is that right?
A. I visited Dachau more frequently but I didn't enter the camp. I was in Dachau at least twenty or thirty times because, after all, the school was located there and I had to inspect that school. However, this school was about two kilometers away from the camp.
Q While we are on that subject, do you know that, as a matter of fact, it was a regular course of business for the instructors at the SS school to take their classes on a tour of the concentration camps or rather the concentration camp at Dachau?
A I haven't quite understood the question. I have already described it, and I have already stated that the administrative school for the administrative officers of the Waffen-SS was located at Dachau.
Q I am asking you if it isn't a fact that the instructor at the school took their classes of SS-men on a tour of the Dachau concentration camp.
A I don't know anything about that. Baier would have to know that but I don't know anything about it at all. I never participated in such an inspection.
Q You are not saying that it didn't happen; you are just saying that you don't know about it. Is that right?
A I have no knowledge of it whatsoever.
Q Now, were there any other concentration camps that you visited? Either before or after the war... during the war?
A I can not recall any additional ones at the moment. I have made one hundred official trips during the war. Whether I have seen any other concentration camps, I don't know. I certainly have never in my life been at Buchenwald, and I have never visited Flossenburg; I haven't seen Gusen.
Of the many concentration camps, I only read about them in the papers after the war. I didn't even know that so many of them existed. I can't remember ever having visited any additional ones. I have described the visits exactly as they happened, and which have remained precisely in my memory. I can't remember any other visits.
Q Did you visit any of the camps at Lublin, the labor camps, the concentration camps?
A I was in Lublin in the summer of 1942 when in the course of a big trip through Poland I visited the entire Waffen SS, and I visited approximately 17 or 18 garrisons. One of them was Lublin. After all, many Waffen SS units were located and stationed at Lublin - not in Lublin itself but in the vicinity. On this occasion I also came to Lublin. In Lublin I saw Gruppenfuehrer Globocnik because, according to military regulations, I had to report to him, and he welcomed me and then he invited me to have a cup of coffee with him.
Q Did you visit the concentration camp there?
A No. As far as I can remember, I didn't know that a concentration camp was located there, in 1942. It must have been far outside of Lublin.
Q Well, did you visit any of the labor camps there, in Lublin?
A Yes, Globocnik took me into the carpenters' shop at Lublin. It was a very interesting plant, and approximately 500 Jewish carpenters were working there. They furnished their own guards and they administered themselves, and in the whole camp, which was located in the city, there was not a single SS-man - only at the entrance two men were stationed.
Q Why didn't you tell me about visiting the labor camp in Lublin when I asked you the first time? Why was it necessary for me to ask you three times?
A Well, it wasn't a concentration camp.
Q I asked you the first time if you visited a labor camp. You gave us a long description; you didn't say yes or no. But you certainly didn't say that you had visited one.
I suggest in the future you give a complete answer to the question. What about Ravensbrueck. Did you ever visit Ravensbrueck?
A Yes, I visited Ravensbrueck on one occasion. However, I didn't go into the camp, but I saw the camp from the outside. At Ravensbrueck we had a branch office of the WVHA and that is why I came to Ravensbrueck.
Q What about Bergen-Belsen. Were you ever there?
A No, I have never entered Bergen-Belsen.
Q What about Nordhausen?
A No.
Q Were you ever at Stutthof?
A I have said that I was at Dachau.
Q Stutthof?
A No, I never have been at Stutthof.
Q Do you know whether your colleague, Hans Loerner, ever visited concentration camps?
A I can't give you any information about that. I don't know.
Q Do you know whether Fanslau ever visited a concentration camp?
A I don't know that either.
Q Do you know whether the defendant Vogt visited a concentration camp?
A I can't give you any information at all about it.
Q On any occasion, while you were working with the defendant Pohl, did you have quarrels or clashes with Pohl?
A What do you mean by clashes? Well, if you mean that he was my superior, and, of course, that is always a one-sided affair - I have had differences with Pohl in official matters, where we couldn't agree. However, I think that this happens in every enterprise or in every organization. Furthermore, he was the man with the senior service, and he was one grade higher. And, after all, I had to do whatever he ordered me to do. Aside from that, I had a very comradely relationship to Pohl, and I got along with him very well.
Q Did you have any clashes with him before the Reichsfuehrer SS, in June -A-BK-23-5-Schwab (Int.
Garand) Himmler's presence?
A Well, it couldn't be described as a clash, but we did have a difference of opinion. That was in the year 1944, when we were dealing with the question of who was to take over the office of the army administrative chief; if it was to be Pohl or myself. And since Pohl himself wanted to take over that position, and since Himmler was actually playing a very strange game in this respect by having assured Pohl that he would become chief of the administration, and since he told me, "Don't worry about what I have told Pohl; you will be the army administrative chief." And thus, naturally, a difference of opinion existed between Pohl and me. However, it did not have any consequences. We had a discussion about it, and that settled the matter.
Q Did you at any time ever try to influence Pohl on the administration of the concentration camps? Did you ever express your views about concentration camps to Pohl?
A I told him quite openly that I couldn't understand what the WVHAhad to do with the concentration camps. He replied, "Frank, I can't help it. The Reichsfuehrer has given an order to this effect, and you know that I can't oppose any orders from the Reichsfuehrer."
Q Did you ever tell him that you were opposed to concentration camps as a moral principle - as you have told us here in this courtroom?
A I can't say that any more today. I can't say that I ever discussed the question in the manner which you have just described.
Q You have told us you had differences of opinion, you even had clashes with him, you even had minor quarrels in the presence of the Reichsfuehrer SS. Why didn't you express to him your attitude about locking up people and mention destroying of the Jews?
A To Himmler?
Q No, to Pohl.
A Pohl? Pohl? What could he have changed if I had told him. I knew that he was acting on orders also and that my opinion wouldn't change anything in that. I believe that Pohl knew perfectly clearly that my comrades in Amtsgruppe A, as well as I personally, never tried to hide the fact that we were not very pleased about the incorporation of Amtsgruppe D into the WVHA.
Q But you never told him that you objected to it on moral grounds?
A I can't say that any more today. I can't remember that point at all.
Q Witness, it is true that there is a rather lackadaisical attitude about these big moral questions that were confronting you. You told us yesterday that you saw no reason to object to the concentration camps being financed at a very early date before the war, because von Krosick made no objection, the Reich Minister of Finance. You told us that you saw no reason to raise an objection to the confiscation of goods from the East because Funk and von Krosick made no objection. How is that you can explain such a lackadaisical attitude on these large questions, when today you take such a positive stand ** on them.
A lackadaisical attitude? In the years 1940, 1941, 1942, and 1943, if I had expressed such an opinion, it would have meant disaster for me. My personal contacts with Pohl were not sufficiently close so that I knew exactly that he wouldn't discuss these things with the Reichsfuehrer himself. Furthermore I had to assume that Pohl wouldn't have done it, but that wouldn't have guaranteed me that Himmler wouldn't find out that I maintained a negative attitude towards his orders and that I was criticizing him and that would have meant certain death for me and my family.
That couldn't have been asked for me, because my knowledge of these matters wasn't complete enough at that time for me to sacrifice my family.
Q Are you telling us, to raise any criticism of the system of concentration camps and slave labor as of that time would have meant your death, that is, criticism on a moral ground?
A It definitely would have meant my death. This was an open criticism of the measures which the Reichsfuehrer Himmler had ordered and he never would have pardoned me for doing that and if he had not removed me on this occasion, he certainly would have done away with me at another time.
Q You told us yesterday, Witness, that you and Fanslau were disappointed at the end of your climb in the SS, because you did not see in the SS what you had expected to see. Will you explain that statement, please?
A Yes, I still maintain that now. Fanslau and I, both of us, were old members of the SS and when we entered the SS we visualized other goals and we had in mind another solution of the so-called Third Reich. A man in my position could actually see quite clearly already in 1943 and 1942 that the procedure we followed would not lead us to the goal which we had once visualized. I believe it would be going too far to give a political speech here, just how I and thousands of my old SS comrades had imagined the Third Reich to develop and just what happened in reality.
Q Did that disappointment have anything to do with the fact that any criticism that you made of any of the systems would result in your death? Was that a disappointment to you, or did you envisage that as a part of the system when you pledged yourself to the SS?
A No, this was in larger aspects. Here we are not only dealing with the maintenance of the concentration camps. I want to emphasize that at the time I could think that if they were administered humanely they would be a legal matter in times of war.
I don't think there is any modern state which has to lead difficult wars and which from time to time does not have to remove the enemies of the State. However, today, I am of the opinion that this system was completely wrong. That is to say, the concentration camps in themselves were not the main center of disappointment, but the solution on the whole of the whole European question and the German question, and I certainly disapproved of the ways in which it was done.
Q When you joined the Nazi Party you knew about that solution, did you not? You knew Jews could not become a member of the race and that all Jews who were citizens of Germany - their citizenship would have to be taken away?
A In 1932, when I entered the SS, this subject wasn't even mentioned.
Q You didn't know that was the principle in the party platform in 1932?
A The Party program, according to the view of my comrades and according to my own views with respect to the Jews, had one aim to exclude the Jews in Germany from economy, from art, from commerce, and from thousands of other things, and to reduce their number in these fields to a reasonable amount, according to the number of Jews in Germany, which was 1% to 100%. I have discussed this matter very often with my brother-in-law and he had agreed that I was right that 90% of the German trade in toys and the major part of the trade in old metals was in Jewish hands and nobody but the German statesman Walther Rathenau who himself was a Jew has warned his comrades in this development. At the time, it wasn't even mentioned that the Jews would have to be killed and none of us could have assumed it. Otherwise, I certainly wouldn't have agreed to my sister marrying a Jew after I had become a member of the SS.
Q Did it come as a surprise to you shortly after you joined the Nazi Party that Jews were put in concentration camps as enemies of the State, just because they were Jews?
Q I don't know how big the total number of Jews was as inmates of concentration camps at the time. I only know that it was officially noted that up to the 30th of January 1933 not a single brutality in the concentration camps had been committed against the Jews. At that time mainly the communists were sent to concentration camps and above all the politicians who had a detrimental attitude towards the Party. I believe that the Jews at that time made up a very low percentage.
Q You knew about the Pogrom. Did this not take place in 1938 when properties of the Jews all over Germany were destroyed and synagogues were burned? The SS took a part in that. Did you know about that?
A Yes, I heard of it afterwards. However, I would like to ask you that in the big trial before the IMT it has been clearly explained that the SS on Crystal Sunday in 1938 was the least participant in it, and, if the SS had its fingers in every pie as it is usually alleged, it was the least to have anything to do with this matter. I can remember this very clearly. With many other SS leaders in the evening at eleven o' clock I was standing with 15,000 or 25,000 recruits before the Feldherrnhalle. We had torches with us and Himmler in the presence of Hitler administered the oath to the young soldiers. When I went home from the celebration at eleven thirty, I saw the glow of a fire, and I inquired where the fire was. I was told that the synagogue was on fire. That was the first knowledge I received to the effect that the synagogue was burning in Munich. The SS certainly had nothing to do with this matter, because all the high SS leaders, that is in Munich, on that day, attended the administering of the oath at the Feldherrnhalle and the celebration lasted until eleven-thirty and afterwards all the SS leaders went to the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten. I saw that news in Munich on the following day. I heard that the store windows had been pillaged, and that plundering and pilfering had taken place, and so on.
Q Who was responsible for the excesses if you exclude the SS?
A In my opinion this was the work of Goebbels.
Q Goebbels himself didn't do it; he is only one individual.
A No, but he had given orders to the SA and the Party.
Q You blame this on the SA?
A The SA and the political leaders. I believe that this matter has been explained in detail in the big trial before the IMT.
BY MR. ROBBINS:
Q You are quite right, Witness, and the IMT found as a matter of fact after hearing much evidence on the subject that the SS took an essential part in these pogroms. Where did you say you were on that occasion? Were you in Munich at that time?
A I was in front of the Feldherrnhalle when the young recruits were sworn in.
Q In Munich?
A Yes, that was in Munich.
Q You state from your own knowledge that the SS took no part in these pogroms in Munich?
A I haven't seen a single SS man who participated in it. As I have already stated, the celebration was solely a matter of the SS. There were thousands of SS men participating; and all of them were dressed in their best uniforms, that is to say, they were wearing their so-called parade uniforms. I don't think that anybody in his best uniform would take that uniform off in order to cause destruction and to set fires.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, the first thing tomorrow morning I'll bring you the report of an SS man who will tell you himself what he did. We'll recess until that time.
THE MARSHAL: Tribunal II will be in recess until 0930 tomorrow morning.
(The Tribunal adjourned until 0930 hours 10 June 1947.)
Official Transcript of the American Military Tribunal in the matter of the United States of America against Oswald Pohl, et al., defendants, sitting at Nurnberg Germany, on 10 June 1947, 0930, Justice Toms presiding
THE MARSHAL: Take your seats, please. The Honorable, the Judges of Military Tribunal No. 2. Military Tribunal No. 2 is now in session. God save the United States of America and this Honorable Tribunal. There will be order in the court.
AUGUST FRANK - RESUMED CROSS EXAMINATION - Continued DR. RAUSCHENBACH (Attorney for Defendant Frank): Mr. President, I shall withdraw the witness, Kurt Becher, and shall later submit an affidavit in my document book, signed by him, and therefore, this witness can be dismissed, in case he is waiting now.
THE PRESIDENT: Was this witness brought at your request?
DR. RAUSCHENBACH: Yes. He has been brought over here from prison and I believe he is waiting outside. I do not want him.
THE PRESIDENT: All right, the Marshal may dismiss the witness, Kurt Becher, who is no longer wanted as a defense witness.
BY MR. ROBBINS:
Q. Witness, you attended the speech by Himmler in Posen in October, 1943, did you not?
A. Yes.
Q. And yesterday you spoke about the clothing treasury, the clothing treasury in Lublin, under your supervision. Will you tell us by whom these pieces of clothing were repaired? You said that certain clothing was manufactured in Lublin and other clothing was repaired and mended there. Will you give us more details in that connection, please?
A. You mean only the treasury in Lublin?
Q. Yes, the clothing treasury.
A. That business goes back a long time and I can only reconstruct it from my memory. As far as the manager there told me about the manufacturing of the clothing treasury, new manufactures and repair work were carried out by the so-called textile work, Onjatova, and a few thousand sewing machines were placed there. It must have been that the workers there were jewish craftsmen who had been found by Globocnik and who worked under a German manager, under Globocnik's supervision.
Q In the so-called labor camps?
A I assume so. They must have been billetted in a labor camp, but I am not entirely familiar with the billeting conditions there.
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Robbins, may I interrupt?
EXAMINATION BY THE PRESIDENT:
Q I told you yesterday, Witness, that I would show you a statement which indicates that the SS were the men responsible for the terrorism of the nights of November 10 and 11, 1933. By the way, where were you that night?
A Mr. President, that night I was present when young recruits were sworn in, young SS recruits, outside the Feldherrnhalle, that is, a large square in Munich where large celebrations were held, in the open air.
Q Did you observe any disorder and destruction that night yourself? A fire in a synagogue which was burning.
A Mr. President, I said yesterday that this ceremony started at 10:00 o'clock and as was usual on ministry occasions you had to be there an hour before. The whole of the SS that night was assembled at the latest at 9:00 o'clock on the square which I mentioned. At 10:00 o'clock the ceremony started. Himmler made a speech-
Q I know, you told me that everyone was in uniform and of course wouldn't soil his uniform by doing any of the things that have been mentioned and that all you saw was a fire from a synagogue which was burning. Is that right?
A Yes, Mr. President. The ceremony was over at half past eleven. We dispersed then and went home. It was then that I passed by the square where the synagogue was on fire. I saw that something was up and asked a policeman, "What's going on here?" He told me, "The synagogue is on fire. I have no time. I must rush there at once." I went home because it was midnight and I did not notice anything further of the whole action.
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
Q That's the only disorder that you observed?
A Yes, Mr. President.
Q On the 10th of November 1938 an order was issued by order of the Group Commander that "all Jewish synagogues in the area have to be blown up or set afire. The operation will be carried out in civilian clothing. Execution of the order will be reported."
A Your Honor, I did not understand who issued the order.
Q I don't have the man's name. I am quoting from the order. I don't know who signed it.
A Mr. President, last night I looked at the testimony of Freiherr von Eberstein, the Higher SS and Police Leader in Munich, that is to say, the most responsible man on the spot. That statement made by the Higher SS and Police Leader of Munich to the IMT makes it quite clear that he had not received any official order to take part in any type of disorder whatever. On the contrary, he stated under oath that in the middle of the night at 1:00 o'clock in the morning he contacted the SS through his commanding officer, saying that any participation in the excesses would be prosecuted with heavy punishment. As he was also in charge of the Munich police, he saw to it that the policemen in Munich went to the most dangerous spots in order to restore law and order. From this testimony it also becomes clear that the Gestapo Chief Heydrich had actually issued an order, which describes the interference of the Secret State Police in the disorder. That was not the SS. It was the Criminal Police.
Furthermore, the testimony shows equally clearly that the same night and at the same hour when the SS was on the Feldherrn Square to be sworn in, Gauleiter Goebbels in one of Munich's biggest assembly halls made a wild speech against the Jews; and the participants of that meeting after the Goebbels' speech, roughly at half past ten, went all over the city, and there started the excesses.
Q It is always some other group or some other person that does these things, isn't it? Either the man that did it is dead or the Court No. II, Case No. 4.organization that did it is one that you didn't belong to?
A I'm sorry, Mr. President, that night the SS in Munich did not take any part at all; and if individual SS men committed excesses that night, one must not conclude from that that the SS as such, as an organization, took part in that particular pogrom. For, I believe.
Q Of course, Munich was just one spot in Germany where the excesses occurred. You don't know who participated in Berlin, in Frankfurt, and all of the other cities, do you?
A No, I am unable to tell you that, Mr. President; but the higher SS and Police Leader whom I mentioned, Baron von Eberstein, who was also responsible for the Nurnberg district, said in his speech, "We were deeply worried because of Nurnberg because of Streicher's being there. The Police President, Dr. Martin, was also strictly opposed to any excesses and took actions in that respect by which he thus made it clear to the International Military Tribunal that in Nurnberg there was a central spot of anti-Jewish agitation because Streicher was there, Streicher being the editor of the "Stuermer"; and he should have assumed that it all started from Nurnberg actually. But it was proved that Goebbels with his speech was the real cause for this pogrom.
Q Goebbels was stirring up the people in Munich and Streicher was stirring them up in Nurnberg?
A That must have been the way it was.
Q While Himmler was conducting graduation exercises for young SS officers?
A Yes, he swore them in.
Q Yes.
A I don't know anything about Himmler's real part in this affair, Mr. President. I haven't the knowledge.
Q Well, you do know that he was safely in the hall swearing in the new SS officers while the synagogues were being burned, do you not?
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
A That I know for certain, Mr. President.
Q Heydrich was contributing by telling his police not to interfere with the excesses?
A That I don't know but I think that must have been the case because Eberstein said so.
Q Of course. Then it is your belief that no SS man participated anywhere in Germany in the excesses of November 10 and 11, 1938?
A No, I don't believe that, Mr. President. Certainly a few SS men were present.
Q Oh, well, that's some concession.
A -- Just as much as Germans took part in it who wore no uniform at all or were not members of the Party.
Q You mean hoodlums, just lawless civilians?
Q You mean hoodlums and those who acted just as lawless civilians?
A No, they were not hoodlums, Mr. President. They were fellowcitizens who are marching around proudly today after having been denazified, and at that time were also anti-pillaging and plundering the Jewish stores. I am firmly convinced of that. Today these people do not wish to be involved in anything at all, and they claim not to have had any knowledge of these excesses. Today they just blame the SS.
Q They were not hoodlums. They just acted like hoodlums?
A Quite so, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: That makes it hoodlumism in my mind. I have given enough time to this.
JUDGE MUSMANNO: Witness, you have stated that some individual testified before the IMT that the SS had not participated in any excesses on November 10th?
A Your Honor, that testimony was given by the competent SS and Police Leader of Munich. Of course, he could speak only for Munich.
Q That is right, and the IMT heard this testimony, and accepted it?
AAccording to the transcript in my hands, yes, Your Honor.
Q And you are under the impression that the IMT in some manner or another obsolved the SS as an organization from any participation in the excesses referred to?
A I didn't believe that the IMT did that, Your Honor.
Q I just want to call your attention to this fact, and, let me say that the Tribunal in any questions which it asks does not do so for the purposes of confusing, embarrassing, or even accusing you but only for the purpose of ascertainment of the truth; and I got the impression yesterday as you testified, which was confirmed even this morning, that you labor under the impression, that you labor under the belief that the IMT accepted this testimony which you have quoted here quite literally, that in some form or another absolved the SS from participation in the excesses of November 10th. Now you seem to be laboring under that belief, and it is only fair you know what is going on entirely and forever.
Now I shall read to you just what the IMT said on that point. It is not a matter of guesswork. The IMT for ten months had been hearing testimony and their deliberation was made, and this is the conclusion: "The SS played a particularly significant roll in the persecution of the Jews. The SS was directly involved in the demonstrations of November 10, 1938; the evacuation of Jews from occupied territories was carried out under the direction of the SS, with the assistance of the SS Police Units. The extermination of the Jews was carried out under the direction of the SS Central Organization," and so on for two pages the IMT enumerates what the SS did before and during the war. I call that to your attention only so that you may clarify in your mind what the IMT did and what their conclusions were regarding the SS criminal activities.
A Yes, Your Honor.
BY MR. ROBBINS:
Q Witness, after you heard Himmler's speech in Posen, you had no doubt that the policy of the Reich and the policy of the SS were committed to the extermination of the Jews, did you?
A Yes, quite.
JUDGE PHILLIPS: Was that in '42 or '43?
MR. ROBBINS: '43; Your Honor, October.
BY MR. ROBBINS:
Q You say you did not have any doubt?
A It was in October 1943 when I heard Himmler's speech at Posen and I heard it as Chief of the Administration of the Police.
Q And at that time it became clear to you that the policy of the Reich was the extermination of the Jews? I did not quite get your answer?
A No doubt could be possible anymore after that. As a man of thinking faculties I had to deduce from Himmler's speech what he wanted to say.
Q Is that the first time you heard about this, his policy?
A Yes.