I should also like to do this with the understanding that it doesn't prejudice our rights to object in the future; and I should also like to say that this will be the last time that we will voluntarily make them available. We would, of course, on the order of the Tribunal.
I understand that this interrogation consists of about 75 pages. and I take it that the whole thing would need to be translated to be of any value to the Court and to the Prosecution; and I make this offer on the understanding that it will be submitted by the Defense as a Defense exhibit.
As I say, I do not know what is contained in the interrogation, but I am quite certain that there is nothing which would indicate that anything improper took place. I am certain of that without reading it.
THE PRESIDENT: I think the Prosecution's position is eminently fair and proper. Judge Musmanno suggests, however, that before the burden of translation is undertaken that the Defense look at the interrogation and read it, and then determine whether there is any need for offering it in evidence and therefore having it translated. Perhaps it will not be necessary to do that after Dr. Schmidt has read the interrogatory.
MR. ROBBINS: Your Honor, I don't think Prosecution can agree to the procedure of just turning it over to the Defense and letting them decide whether or not they are going to use it. They have made rather serious charges here and I think that the matter should be made a matter of record. Perhaps, in order to save the translation difficulty, it should be turned over to a commissioner.
THE PRESIDENT: If the translation does not prove that the Defense contention is good, then there will be no need of considering the interrogatory at all.
MR. ROBBINS: Well -
THE PRESIDENT: Then the claim of the Defense is not substantiated -not proved.
MR. ROBBINS: This is, as it were, an unexplored territory. The Defense does not know what is in the interrogation, and I don't know what is in the interrogation.
THE PRESIDENT: And the Tribunal does not know what is in the interrogation! Suppose we all find out what is in the interrogation and then take up the question again. We may all agree that it is "love's labor lost."
MR. ROBBINS: I suggest again the most convenient procedure would probably be to turn it over to a commissioner because undoubtedly many defendants are implicated in the interrogation. It would mean that every Defense attorney would have to read it. There is only one copy.
THE PRESIDENT: I think you are unduly laboring the point. I suggest you turn the interrogation over to Dr. Schmidt and then let us talk about it after he has read it. We will see what our problem is then. Is that agreeable?
MR. ROBBINS: Well, it means, Your Honor, that Dr. Schmidt will know what is in the interrogation -- but I won't.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, there is no objection to your reading it before you turn it over to him.
MR. ROBBINS: It means that it will have to be translated before I can read it. That is the big difficulty with all of those interrogations.
THE PRESIDENT: Is your copy in German?
MR. ROBBINS: It is in German.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh well, Judge Musmanno again suggested that if Dr. Schmidt reads it and then drops the matter -- does nothing -- what have you to worry about?
MR. ROBBINS: Very well, Your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: We will take one step at a time and feel our way along.
DR. SCHMIDT: (Counsel for the defendant Josef Vogt): May it please the Court, I fully agree to the suggestion of the Tribunal, and I believe that a good purpose would be served if, first of all, I would read the transcript.
It is quite possible that then it will not be necessary to submit the transcript. Therefore, I think this is the best idea.
JOSEF VOGT - Resumed DIRECT EXAMINATION (Continued) BY DR. SCHMIDT:
Q To continue the examination of this witness, we shall now discuss, witness, a document which has been submitted by the Prosecution on cross examination of the defendant Pohl on 2 June, 1947. It is Exhibit 543; it is in Document Book 22 of the Prosecution, on page 58 of the German copy. That document represents an order from Office Chief Pohl of 4 July 1944. It concerns the administration of Jewish property -
THE PRESIDENT: What was the exhibit number, please?
DR. SCHMIDT: Five hundred forty-three. It is in Document Book 22, page 58 of the German copy.
BY DR. SCHMIDT:
Q On the distribution list of this document among other things, Office A-4 is named -- that is the auditing office. My question, therefore, is, witness, what was the connection between your office--A-4-and this decree of Pohl's of 4 July 1944?
A Office A-4 had actually nothing to do with the administration of Jewish property. This decree of Pohl's of 4 July 1944 -- certain decrees are contained concerning the booking of the administration of these items, and the income accruing- therefrom. When the treasuries of the Waffen SS were doing their counting, the Office A-4 -- if it wanted to carry out the preliminary auditing -- had to be informed of all these new regulations. The auditing office was under the obligation to carry out all regulations and decrees and submit it to the Reich Auditing Court as evidence. For that reason Office A-4 had to be named on the distribution list of such regulations.
Q Witness, you have referred to regulations concerning the accounting which are contained in this document. Will you please quote the passage which you had in mind from that document?
A I am afraid I have not got the document. (Document presented to witness). It says here, under paragraph 5:
"When these items are evaluated and income accrues, the treasuries concerned of the Waffen SS, under paragraph 21, have to show the income in their books inasmuch as direct transfer has not been effected to the Reich Main Treasury."
Q Was there another regulation concerning accounting in that regulation?
A Under paragraph 6 it says, and I shall quote:
"For reasons of simplification of administration, regulations contained in paragraph 3 dated 9.12.43, which had something to do with the transfer of money and cash on hand is herewith rescinded. Such income is to be booked on behalf of the Reich under 21-E by naming the source of income and submitting documentary evidence. If such evidence should be secret, income entry is to show that matter must be treated as secret."
Q Now let us turn to another document, which has already been discussed here. It is a document which was used in the IMT trial. It is PS-4024, Prosecution Exhibit GB-55-. It is a letter of Defendant Pohl of 16 February, 1944, addressed to Globocnik and concerns the Reinhardt Action in Lublin.
THE PRESIDENT: What Exhibit? 550?
DR. SCHMIDT: It is Exhibit GB-55- of the IMT Trial, of course, not of our trial here.
Q. I have put that letter to the Defendant Pohl when he was on the witness stand, and it deals with the auditing of bills from Lublin and I think it is necessary to have Vogt also give us his comments.
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Robbins, did we have a copy of that?
MR. ROBBINS: No, Your Honor.
DR. SCHMIDT: May it please the Court, I only have a German copy.
MR. ROBBINS: It wasn't submitted by the Prosecution, I suppose through an oversight. It's not in the record. It's not in evidence.
THE PRESIDENT: Do you have one copy of it that we can use? No?
MR. ROBBINS: Apparently he doesn't. I don't have a copy either.
THE PRESIDENT: We'll fight with this one.
Q Witness, from this letter, I should like to quote two sentences to you. I quote - the first sentence is:
"Special tasks of the Administration 'G' Lublin and the bills sent in for the period from 25 October 1942 up to 31 March 1943, have been submitted to the auditing office."
And the second sentences:
"Further bills for the period of 1 April 1943 up to 31 of December 1943 are being audited at this moment. The recital of that auditing will be put to your information in good time."
Witness, here is my question: Was Office A-IV concerned with the auditing of the bills named here?
A The bills up to the 31st of March, 1943, such as they are mentioned in paragraph 1, were audited already in Lublin. The letter mentioned here, namely that they had been submitted to the office, is therefore apparently incorrect.
I spoke yesterday of the fact that bills for April and May and later periods in 1943 were no longer submitted to Office A-IV. The reasons are not know to me. I assume that at that time bills were either sent to Office A-II/3 or they were, when the front was withdraw in the East, destroyed in good time. About this letter - the letter was sent from A-II/3, as I hear now.
DR. SCHMIDT: May it please the Court, I understand that the letter has the File Number A-II/3, Reinhardt - REINH.
Q Witness, was that letter know to you before it turned up here in the trial?
A I saw this letter here for the first time.
Q I shall now turn to a final questions concerning the Reinhardt Action. I would like to ask you, can you tell us something final about the whole Reinhardt Complex: that neither before nor after the auditing in Lublin you knew anything about the real context of the Reinhardt Action, particularly nothing about the fact that it was concerned with the extermination of Jews and the utilization of property of killed Jews?
A Neither before the assignment nor while assigned, nor even when I carried out the auditing in Lublin, nor afterwards, until this trial, did I know anything about a connection between my auditing activities and the extermination action against the Jews. I did not know that the funds, foreign exchange, jewels, and clothes, and so forth, were the property of Jews who had been killed. When auditing, I did not conceive the idea even that these things originated with killed Jews. I had the best faith that this had been confiscated property by virtue of the laws of confiscation, which had been issued at the time in other words, that Jews interned in labor camps had been relieved of their property, or otherwise that these things came from storage camps. I did not belong to Staff G, which has been referred to here before, nor did I know anything about its existence, nor even did I know anything about the order under which Hauptsturmfuehrer Melmer acted.
May it please the Court, I hafe not attempted here to call black white. I have endeavored to tell you everything as it really happened in Lublin. My conscience is clean towards myself, God and towards this Tribunal. If the highest persons who day after day moved in Hitler's and Himmler's circle did not know anything about the schemes of these criminals, how much less can that be the case in my case?
Q Witness, before turning to the last count of the indictment dealing with your membership of the SS, I would like briefly to use two Prosecution documents which are connected, at least superficially, with your office because your office is named on the distribution list of these documents. Firstly, I have Document NO-2117, which is Prosecution Exhibit 78 and is in Document Book IV. This is a letter from Hans Loerner to the Court of Audits of the German Reich in Potsdam, dated 2 September 1942 and it concerns the auditing of bills at Stutthof Camp near Danzig. This letter, as can be seen on page 3, was sent to the Chief of Office A-IV, at least a copy of that letter. Witness, therefore, I would like to ask you were you working at that time on the auditing of the bills of Stutthof Camp?
A That whole Stutthof business had nothing to do with Office A-IV. The correspondence between the Auditing Court was submitted to me through the usual channels, because I was the Preliminary Officer of the Court of Audits. I passed the matter on to Office A-II, A-I. Standartenfuehrer Loerner asked me at that time to go with him to Potsdam in order to have a conference with the Courts of Audits, because he didn't know anybody there. The Reich Court of Audits made some remarks here which were not concerned with the SS, but the Police Budget. I myself had nothing to do with this.
Q I shall now turn to another Prosecution document, which is Document NO-2130, Exhibit 497, and it is part of Prosecution Document Book XIX. That document is a decree from Pohl, the Chief of the Main Office, of 19 January 1945 and it concerns the dissolution of the SS Economist East as under the Higher Police and SS Leaders for Eastern territories and Northern Russia.
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
THE PRESIDENT: Give the exhibit number, please?
DR. SCHMIDT: 497, page 107. The distribution list of this decree among a great many other offices names also Office A-4 of the WVHA. Therefore, I would like to ask the witness BY DR. SCHMIDT:
Q What was the connection between your office and this decree of the Chief of the Main Office Pohl?
A That decree is headed Office A-5, and it reached me in the Auditing Department for my information, namely, that the SS Economist East had been discontinued.
Q I shall now turn to Count Four, and my question, witness, is, did you join the SS voluntarily at the time?
A When I joined the SS Administrative in March 1936 I was being transferred from one Reich Agency to another Reich Agency. The Administrative Office of the SS was interested in establishing this administration with the SS Special Task Troop or the "Verfuegeungstruppe". They needed expert military administrators. That Administrative Office, therefore, requested from the Reich Ministry of Labor that I be transferred to the Administrative Office of the SS. Needless to say with my agreement.
Q And what were the reasons which caused you to agree to the transfer?
A I hoped to improve my standard of living. I had been given a promise that I would take a position which was planned by the SS Special Task Troop.
Q Were you a member of the Algemeine-SS?
A No.
Q Were you promoted within the Special Task Troops rather quickly simply because you had acquired special knowledge, that caused it, or because you had special connections?
A No.
Q Before you had transferred to the SS Administrative Office, Court No. II, Case No. 4.did you have any contacts with the SS?
A No.
Q Will you please tell us, witness, what your rank was with the SS-Special Task Troops, or later on with the Waffen-SS?
A I became Obersturmfuehrer when I took up the position provided by the SS, that was when I was transferred around 1 October 1937. I then in October --- 1 October 1936, not '37. In October of 1937 I became a Hauptsturmfuehrer; in the Autumn, I believe in September 1939, I became an Obersturmbannfuehrer in 1941. I can not recall the month, and on 18 February 1944, which was my sixtieth birthday I became a Standartenfuehrer.
Q Now, you told me, witness, that you joined the SS with the rank of Obersturmfuehrer. I would like to ask you why it was your transfer was carried out with that rank?
AAt the beginning of my examination when I was giving my life story, I said that in 1918 I became a paymaster, and was made a 1st Lieutenant, and with that rank I was released from the Army in March 1920. The rank of 1st Lieutenant is equivalent to the rank of Obersturmfuehrer in the SS. My transfer, therefore, was simply that the two ranks were adjusted to each other.
Q Now, did you at any time attempt to be released from serving in the SS?
A In my examination I have said that when the auditing office had been dissolved in the Autumn of 1939, I was transferred to the First Death Head Unit. This was done completely against my will, and as I saw it, it violated the promise which the Personnel Office had given me. I was a member of the SS-Special Task Troops, which was the reason why I could not adjust the transfer to the Budget of the Death Head Units in this arbitrary manner. My conclusion at the time was to retire and draw my pension. I was over fifty years of age, and I reported sick. I was suffering from sciatica. Unfortunately I did not succeed in obtaining my pension because the war had broken out. On the Court No. II, Case No. 4.second occasion I attempted to be pensioned off in 1944.
My position within the Office A-4 had grown into a tiny and negligible routine position. I was no longer satisfied with my work, and there were other factors also which gave me cause to resign. I talked, therefore, with Obergruppenfuehrer von Herff, who was Chief of the Personnel Main Office. I asked him to pension me off. Von Herff told me it was difficult in wartime as a lot of objection was present there and that any resignation could only be allowed for total inefficiency. When celebrating X-mas in 1944, together with Hefff, I once more brought up the question about my health, I reminded him of my resignation, and he told me he would see what he could do, as I was then sixty-three years of age.
Q Excuse me, witness, you probably made a mistake, sixty years.
A Yes, of course, sixty years of age I mean. Thereupon in that year, February 1945, I was dismissed. The actual pension was carried out by the Supply Office of the Waffen-SS. The war condition, military situation, and heavy debt made it impossible for the pension to be done in a normal way, and it was only later that I was finally relieved of my duties.
DR. SCHMIDT: May it please the Court, at this point I would like to point out that I have an affidavit from the head of the Supply Office, ex-SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer Dr. Gustav Exner, which actually confirms that in February 1945 he did receive a decree of release concerning Josef Vogt, and that he had passed that on to the department for officers' pensions. This affidavit has not been mimeographed or translated, and I would, therefore, like to ask the Court to be allowed to submit this affidavit later on.
BY DR. SCHMIDT:
Q Witness, did you at any time wish to be transferred from the Administrative Office of the SS enterprises?
A In 1941 I received information that they were to have the Court No. II, Case No. 4.Supply Administration of the Waffen-SS subordinated to the Army.
I voluntarily at that moment had transferred to the Supply Office in order to try thereby to join the Army, but due to various reasons and particularly my rank, my transfer did not take place.
Q When was that?
A I don't recall the exact date. It must have been roughly in 1941.
Q What do you mean when you say you believed that your rank had prevented that transfer. Will you please explain that more in detail?
A The man in charge there, who was Sturmbannfuehrer Dr. Exner, was afraid that if I would be transferred with my rank as Obersturmbannfuehrer, he would have been pushed into the background.
DR. SCHMIDT: Mr. President, that point of the reasons i.e. Vogt's application for transfer to this Supply Office is confirmed by the affidavit of Dr. Gustav Exner.
BY DR. SCHMIDT:
Q Witness, when you joined the Administrative Office of the SS, were you a member of the NSDAP?
A No.
Q Did you join the Party later?
A I was later transferred into the party by the Personnel Office.
Q When was that?
A In 1937. I can not quite remember. '37 or '38, early in '38.
Q Did you, therefore, at that time not make an application to be received into the Party yourself?
A I don't know whether I signed an application or not. At that time I had to fill out quite a few questionnaires. I know for certain that prior to 1937 I had not made an application, and that when the question arose if I would be received in the Party, that Court No. II, Case No. 4.point was not touched upon at all.
Q Before that time, before 1937, had you been invited to join the Party by anybody?
A Well, that was the general custom at the time, in official positions, namely that those officials who were not members of the Party were again and again asked to join the party; for instance, in my office.....
Q Will you tell us what office you are referring to now, witness?
A I am now referring to my civilian office where I worked at that time, which was the Supply Office of Munich and surroundings, and, the custom there was that the block guardian would approach all those officials who were not members and give them an application form to fill in on every Monday.
Q Did you refuse at that time to work on joining the Party?
A Yes.
Q Do you wish or care to say anything about when your oldest son was to join the Leadership Corps of the Hitlers Youth, and that you prevented him from doing so?
A My son, when he had graduated from school, was invited by the Leadership of Hitler Youth to join the Hitler Youth as a fulltime leader. I heard about this when I was in the hospital where I was to be operated on. I did not stand for this for many specific reasons, and I achieved it, that my son did not join the Hitler Youth, but as an officer cadet he joined the Army.
DR. SCHMIDT: May I please the Court, I might point out here that in the affidavit of Kurt Ihssen, which I had submitted as Exhibit No. 2 sometime ago, it shows in paragraph 5 that the statement made by the defendant concerning his son is confirmed therein.
BY DR. SCHMIDT:
Q Witness, did you subscribe to the ideology of the program of the NSDAP concerning the church and the Jewish problems?
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
A No. The attitude taken by the Party towards our church, and towards the Jews was in direct contradiction to my own personal sentiments. Being a Roman Catholic I could not conform with the idea of anti-Semitism. Therefore, after I joined the Administrative Department of the SS, and the Offices, and after I was received into the Party, I remained faithful to my sentiments, and I did not leave the church, nor did my family.
DR. SCHMIDT: In this connection I would like to submit a few confirming affidavits. I wish to make it clear that neither the defendant nor any member of his family left the church. These are VogtDocuments Nos. 14, 15, 16 and 17. I submit them as Exhibits Nos. 17, 18, 19 and 20. I would like for the Court to take judicial notice of the contents of these affidavits.
BY DR. SCHMIDT:
Q Witness, are you in a position to give us examples of the fact that you were not an enemy of the Jews in your actions?
A That can not be told in one or two sentences. Nor do I wish to acquire a halo. But I do think it is necessary for me to tell the Court what my reasons were. I had two reasons. First of all, my own experience. I was born in Lower Frankonia. In that district the Jewish population was relatively large. In my own native village there were about thirty percent Jews. I grew up together with Jewish children, we played together, and attended the short term school. We visited the High School together. We played games together. During my military service my superior officers were of ten Jews. My social contacts very often were concerned with Jewish families. When the war broke out my Battery Commander was a Jew. Two Jewish officers were Schaal and Marx, and were good comrades of mine.
THE PRESIDENT: This is in the First World War?
THE WITNESS: Yes. Our relationship with one another was very extremely good. After the war we continued our contact socially, and also so far as business was concerned. That is, in my association with Court No. II, Case No. 4.the Jews we never felt that these people were different from us, and that principle I maintained faithfully, until this day.
My wife with my agreement and active support in war time until the Spring of 1945 had a Jewish family in Berlin, who lived in FeuerbachStr., and she gave them food and tobacco. Furthermore, on the occasion of a T.D.Y. detached assignment in Berlin in 1938 I lived in a boarding house which was Jewish owned.
Then I came back, when in October, 1939, I was transferred to Berlin, because my attitude towards the Jews was that these people are not different from us.
The second point at the back of my attitude is connected with my faith. I am a Roman Catholic and the Pope once said: "There is a divine and eccleastical law which says, 'Whoever regards the Jew as a different human being violates the divine law.'" Such were my reasons about my attitude against anti-Semitism.
Q.- Witness, would it not have been a logical thing to do for you, as a man with that ideological attitude, opposing as such National Socialism, to have declined to serve the Administrative Office of the Waffen SS?
A.- I regarded the Waffen SS, the SS Verfuegunstruppe at the time, as a purely military organization. They lived in barracks and they were armed. My own position was under the Reich Security Office and I had my pension to look forward to. And then I joined the party it did not shake my fundamental principles. The agitation of a pathological type like Streicher could not influence me. What he said in his paper I did not bother about either, No sensible human being took any notice of that rubbish.
Q.- Witness, apart from your work as an expert in the Waffen SS, did you work in any sense politically or otherwise?
A.- Because of my education I had no political training of any sort, Since the age of 15 I was a man in the soldiers' class and a soldier, of course, is not a politician. Therefore, later on I never dealt with political matters.
Q.- Did you take part in political meetings?
A.- No; nor did I visit the Reich Party rally.
Q.- Now, witness, another question: in this trial, when evidence was submitted by the prosecution, you heard of a large number of the most atrocious crimes committed by members of the SS in concentration camps.
My question is, did you know about these crimes?
A.- No. These enormities became known to me only here when I studied the documents. What we heard in war time was usually vague rumors and cross notices. In some cases one listened to foreign broadcasts despite the severe laws against it. But one could not always check up on these reports because one still thought that those things were propaganda on the part of the enemy.
As far as the extermination program is concerned, of Hitler and Himmler, I did not know anything of the extermination of the Warsaw Ghetto and its consequences. We knew only what we saw in the papers, and in Germany there was really only one newspaper which was the Voelkische Beobachter.
DR. SCHMIDT: Before resting my examination of this defendant I would like, in order to give a picture of the defendant's character, to point to two statements made in the document which I have submitted. This is first the character description contained in Kurt Ihssen's affidavit, Exhibit Vogt 2, in Document Book Vogt No. 1, Page 4 of the German. Before I read this paragraph I would like to read the second paragraph of this affidavit where the man Ihssen says about himself, and I quote:
"I" -- that is Kurt Ihssen -- "have not been a member of the party, I have a politically and militarily clean record and I welcome this opportunity of making, from my own knowledge and experience the following affidavit with regard to Herr Josef Vogt."
And then on Page A of that affidavit it says, and I quote:
"To sum up, I can, with a clear conscience, make the following statement as my personal opinion of Josef Vogt: If all representatives of the SS up to the very top had the same inherent principles as Vogt, this nameless disaster would never have befallen our Germany. These scandalous transgressions against Jews or helpless people would never have happened. Nobody would ever have been hindered in his re ligious practice, not even in the slightest degree.
For me and my family, Vogt will always remain the intrinsically decent, modest and shy man and father, faithfully caring for his family, whom we would never think capable of any evil. It is possible that by his promotion to higher ranks his appearance became more self-confident and assertive, but we always saw him as timid and uncertain of himself rather than arrogant and conceited."
And in the last paragraph it says: "In conclusion, I and my family are firmly convinced, that Herr Josef Vogt, due to his fundamentally honest and modest attitude and disposition which appeared somewhat hesitant could never have done anything which by our general moral standards would have to be called damnable."
And as a second description of his character I wish to read from Document 9, Exhibit 9, which is the affidavit of Arthur Haleck. In that affidavit it says, under Paragraph 3:
"Description of Vogt's Character: In regard to Vogt with whom I have been closely associated for more than five years, I wish to make the following statement concerning his character:
"Vogt is a modest man. In his personal contacts, especially in those with superiors, he was full of inhibitions and his bearing was diffident rather than self-confident. Although his appearance conformed due to a well-fitting uniform and high rank insignia to the type of SS-Fuehrer which the late Reichfuehrer SS emphatically demanded, inside, however, he had remained the simple average administrative army official, which he had been before he joined the Waffen SS. His modest home and his family conformed to his petty-bourgeois character. His family meant much to him. I had especially occasion to observe how pathetically concerned a father he was to his sons. His political views were not those of a blind follower of the SS. Exaggerations of any kind were against his sound sense of justice. Often, in confidential conversation, he would raise critical objections against radical measures.
"In summing up I would like to say: Vogt is everything but a conspirator by nature."
May it please the Court, I have at this point no further questions to the witness.
THE PRESIDENT: We will take our customary recess.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is in recess for fifteen minutes.
(Whereupon, a brief recess was taken)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
BY DR. HAENSEL: (Attorney for Defendant Georg Loerner)
Q. Tell me, witness, you had to do a good deal with figures during your activities. Did you ever deal with mysticism of figures, a strange combination of figures? I should like to give you an example. In the Document Book I, of the Prosecution, there is an affidavit, NO-1576, and another affidavit, NO-1567, which is just a slight change. One is Exhibit No. 4 and the other is Exhibit twice 4 No. 8. And both of those affidavits are of two entirely different persons -- there are the same statements and the same expressions. I shall quote in Exhibit No. 4 NO-1576, on page 6, Document Book I-- that is the German document book. Georg Loerner, the chief of food questions with the Reichsfuehrer SS, and on the next page it says: Georg Loerner as the highest authority for food and clothing of the concentration camp inmates. And in the other affidavit, NO1567, Exhibit No. 8, it says on page 45: Georg Loerner, highest authority for food of concentration camp inmates, and also the highest food chief of the SS. However, in these twenty-two document books otherwise, I have not found this term highest chief of food questions for the SS. How did you find this expression?
A. This expression is the interrogator's expression; I did not tell him myself.
Q. You did not?
A. No.
DR. HAENSEL: This is the end of my mysticism of figures.
EXAMINATION BY DR. HOFFMAN: (Attorney for Defendant Scheide)