DR. LUMMERT: In this connection I ask to be allowed to offer Document Blume VIII. It is Document Book I, page 91, It is a draft of the letter which the witness just mentioned, and which he wrote to Mr. Wartenburg at the time. It is page 91.
Q. Witness, I submit to you the original draft of this letter. Is this the draft of the letter which you wrote to Herr Wartenberg?
A. Yes, at the time I just made a draft of this letter, and tins is the draft, I then wrote the proper letter and gave it to the guard with the request to forward the letter. On the draft which, retained I mentioned at the bottom, "Have had it mailed today by the guard in the prison."
Q. Did you hear anything further about it as a result?
A. No, I didn't hear anything from Mr. Wartenberg.
Q. Why did you not remind him?
A. At the time as a result of my attempted suicide which had not succeeded I was in a state of not caring.
THE PRESIDENT: You quoted Document I, Did you mean your own Document Book I.
DR. LUMMERT: Yes, page 91. BY DR. LUMMERT:
Q. Witness, please repeat the reply?
A. At this time as a result of my suicide attempt which had not succeeded, I was in a state of not caring. A few days later I received the first indictment, dated 3 July, and soon after that I had my first discussion with you, as my defense counsel. At the time until 10 July I told you about it all, and handed you a draft of my letter to Mr. Wartenberg.
Q. Yes, that is right.
DR. LUMMERT: May I mention that I want to introduce this COURT II CASE IX draft of the letter as evidence, because in it the defendant Blume already made the exact statements which he has testified to here on the witness stand.
It will not be necessary for me to read the letter into the record -- But I ask the Tribunal -- he wanted me to translate not "asked" but he wants "Request the Tribunal" in that the translation was not correct. I request the Tribunal to consider the letter in the case of the defendant Blume, and may I mention the following: When I asked Mr. Wartenberg during his cross examination at my request the Tribunal asked him to find out whether the original of the letter of the defendant Blume of 29 June perhaps might not be with the Prosecution after all, and I was to be informed about it. This is in the English Transcript, page 352, in the German page 354, and the reply has apparently been omitted by mistake. I would, therefore, like to ask the Prosecution to reply to this within the next few days if it is possible for them to do so. I now come to the last part of this second main section, other section.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Lummert, I see no reason why the Prosecution should have a couple days to reply. Let them reply immediately, they should be able to, whether they ever received the original of that letter.
DR. LUMMERT: Your Honor, may I add that at the time Mr. Wartenberg had then a folder before him on the witness stand in which the shorthand minutes of 28th or 29th of June was contained, and, also minutes which were probably taken in Detmolt. He said at the time that he had no other documents, and for that reason I requested at the time to look in the other documents of the Prosecution to see whether this letter might be among them.
DR. FERENCZ: Your Honor, I do have a typewritten copy of the letter under discussion. I have not found anywhere the COURT II CASE IX original of it.
I don't know whether it was in Mr. Wartenberg's file, or whether it is in the document room here in the building. It may be In the original document room. However, I do have a typewritten copy of it, but I have no objection at all to defense counsel introducing it in evidence.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
DR. LUMMERT: Therefore, it leaves no doubt that the letter of the defendant -- with this the statement of Mr. Ferencz it leaves no doubt that this letter of the defendant Blume of 29 June was received by the Prosecution, because this copy can only have been made iron the original. Mr. Wartenberg could not remember at the time to have received that letter. I now come to the last section of the second main portion in the examination of the defendant Blume. These few questions concern the defendant Blume, how he judged the Fuehrer Order concerning the shootings in the year of 1941, whether he considered it to be right or wrong, and what consequences he thought it would have in his opinion at the time. Witness, before I ask you about this in detail, please note the following: I am not asking you for your to-days opinion about the Fuehrer Order, but I am submitting to you purely witnesses questions, that is, questions about the facts at the time, which you are to answer to the best of your knowledge and belief as far as you remember. I therefore, ash you for the moment to forget everything that has happened since the bummer of 1941, and which might perhaps prevent you in some way to testify on this point. Please forget, therefore, completely that at a later period American and English airplanes destroyed the German Main cities, and hundreds and thousands of German women and children were killed. Please forget the atom bomb and its results.
MR. FERENCZ: Your Honor, I must object to, this type of question by the defense counsel; the atom bomb, and bombing of German cities are well known, there is no necessity of putting it in the form of a question for the witness. It is obviously being mentioned for the sole purposes of prejudicting either the answer, or the Court, and has no relevency in this case.
DR. LUMMERT: I may reply something to this. Other Defendants, I remember one case at least replied to this question that they were not willing to testify because those things happened later. For that reason I would like to have a reply from the witness, and, I, therefore, ask that he imagine himself back in the year of 1941. I, therefore, ask the witness -
THE PRESIDENT: Just a moment.
DR. LUMMERT: -- to imagine -
THE PRESIDENT: Just a moment, Just a moment, please.
DR. LUMMERT: Yes, sir.
THE PRESIDENT: In the first place you asked the witness to become a superman and to perform magic, you asked him to forget what happened since 1941. How you know as an educated person that it is absolutely impossible. If I tell you to forget what happened yesterday, with all the willpower in the world you can not forget, what is engraved upon the mind, remains there. If anything is forgotten, it is forgotten because of the natural evolution of time, but you can not by ordering a man have him forget something which is already there, so that question is absolutely without any meaning or sense. Now if you want him to say or describe what happened in 1941, then ask him: "what happened in 1941?" but don't tell him to tear up the calendar, and the almanac, because the archives of the memory can not be destroyed.
DR. LUMMERT: Your Honor, I beg your pardon. I probably COURT II CASE IX did not express my intentions very well, I merely asked the witness about things he thought at the time in 1941.
BY DR. LUMMERT:
Q. Witness, when at the end of June and July, 1941, you moved to Russia with your Sonderkommando-VII-A; did you at the time consider the Fuehrer Order concerning the destruction and elimination of Eastern Jews in the Southern Territory -to be right or wrong, and, what personal conclusions did you draw from this?
A. If I try to imagine myself back completely into the year of 1941, I must stop for a moment to mention Streckenbach's announcement to us about the Fuehrer's Order in Pretsch. I already testified last Friday that on that day my feelings and thoughts conflicted, and that finally I tried to find a way out by asking Streckenbach to put me in charge of a small Sonderkommando. I need not repeat my testimony on this in detail. If you now ask me whether I considered the Fuehrer Order right or wrong at the time, I must say that at the time I did not concentrate my thoughts on the three words, that is, "right or wrong," but according to my opinion at the time the Supreme German leadership was responsible for this order, and particularly concerning the laws of war, and International Law: Insofar at the time I did not allow myself any criticism on the order, but I merely said to myself that the Supreme German leadership would have considered every pro and con of such an important order, and they could judge the situation better than I could in my inferior Sonderkommando position: insofar as this was an order of the State, that is, of the Supreme Commander of the State, and as the Supreme Command of the State was beyond good or Evil for me. On the other hand it seemed cruel and impossible for me from a human point of view, simply to shoot defenseless people, and en masse, and I followed my inner-voice when I COURT II CASE IX tried at the time not to carry out this order personally if possible, and thus personally and with human sense I rejected the order at the time.
I considered the order wrong in the sense, not in this sense, even as concerned men of military age, and most of all concerning the shooting of women and children. Owing to this view I carried out this order only in one occasion, namely, in Witebsk, when Nebe forced me to do this through his immediate order.
THE PRESIDENT: Just a moment, please. I didn't quite understand the witness' statement that he thought that the execution order was wrong insofar as it applied to men of military age, and women and children. Did I understand that correctly?
THE WITNESS: Your Honor, I said that in my personal opinion I didn't consider the order to be right, also not as far as it concerned men of military age, and, in particular, concerning women and children.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, did you think it was all right for those who were not of military age?
A. No. In particular not so: I said that owing to this, my inner-conviction, I only carried out this order on one occasion, namely, in Witebsk, when Nebe ordered me through his immediate order to do this, and at the time I limited the shooting to men of military age. I have already testified to all of this previously. When I said previously that this order, as an order of a Supreme Commander of the State, was beyond good and evil for me. I must add a word about my personal relation to the leader, Adolf Hitler, I must confess that I believed in the Fuehrer to such a degree as one could possibly believe in a person. I considered him to be a great, intelligent man; as a political leader of Germany he had overcome the terrible crisis of the year of 1932. He had done away with unemployment, and had established a wonderful order in Germany. He had joined Austria and the Sudetanland with Germany, and these were not invasions, as I know myself that more than 95% the Austrians and the people from the Sudetenland were enthusiastic about it, to be accepted into the Union of German Reich. After all, war until then had led to success only and, in particular in the middle of 1941, at the time the order was given, Hitler was at the height of his power. sidered unavoidable for many years. When in June 1941, it was made known in Germany that beyond the Soviet Border large armies had been marched up, and that a German attack was only to be first before the Russians attacked us, I considered the war against the Soviet Russia quite justified, and, of course, naturally also wanted the German victory over Bolshevism.
According to all I had heard about Soviet Russia in previous years, and particularly when interrogating people who returned from Russia, I was also fully convinced and am so even now, that Jewery in Soviet Russia played an important part, and still does play an important part, and it has the especial support of Bolshevitic dictatorship, and still is. If now the Supreme German Command in this position issued an order for extermination, headed by Hitler, who was at the height of his power at the time, and whom I trusted deeply and admiringly, it can be understood that at the time I accepted the order as one takes any other order, or any other law by one's Supreme Power of the State; but independently of this I personally rejected the shooting of defenseless people, and for that reason I instinctively avoided this order. Through my report on the Jewish question, in White Ruthenia, I even tried through some other regulations the settlement of it, about which I already had testified last Friday. If I may summarize my opinion at the time, I would like to say the following: At the time there was a collision between my duty to obey, and my personal humane demands of my conscience. On the one hand I had a very bad conscience because I did not want to carry out the Fuehrer's Order if I could help it, and, on the other hand I could not bear the idea to carry out this order, and insofar as I did carry it out, I only did this because I was immediately forced by orders - which did not leave me any other way out.
DR. LUMMERT: At this point I would like to introduce Document Book Blume's No. IX. The witness testified at the time that in 1941 he believed in the Fuehrer as a wonderful great statesman and human being, and an outstanding man, whosoever expresses this conviction nowadays is mostly not understood, and especially in, the case of foreigners who do not understand this, who found it very difficult to judge the conditions as they existed, the conditions which existed in the decade since 1933 in Germany.
I considered it now my duty as defense counsel to submit at least one document to the Tribunal, instead of a hundred, or a thousand, which could be introduced, to support this testimony of the witness Blume. I request the Tribunal to consider this document as a kind of "window" through which you can get a view of the psychological condition of Germany under Hitler at the time. This document concerns Austria, the annexation of Austria, and it contains the statement of an Austrian Catholic Bishop, which wan given at the time in March 1938. The document is in Document Book page 95.
MR. FERENCZ: May it please the Tribunal. The document which is now being offered is as an opinion expressed in 1938 concerning the joining of Austria to Germany, The charges against the defendant Blume are very specific. They charge him with murder, mass murder, in the years following 1941. It is submitted that his opinion on anything in 1938 concerning the plebescite of Germany and Austria has absolutely no relevency in this case, and, we, therefore, object to the admission of the document.
DR. LUMMERT: Your Honor, may I reply to this. I believe the document is very relevent. The witness mentioned that the joining of Austria and Germany in his opinion was one of the great acheivements of Adolf Hitler, which improved his position in his opinion. In 1941 this still had effect, of course, and I intend to ask the witness now in detail about this statement by the Bishop, and on the joining of Austria.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Lummert, I just want to show you what difficulties you are going to get into with this kind of a document. You are asking the witness to express himself on the joining of Austria to Germany, You are going to ask him whether itwas morally justified. If we permit this question then I am going to ask the witness several questions. BY THE PRESIDENT:
Q. Witness, did you believe that in 1940 it was justifiable to bomb London and other cities in England which brought about the destruction of women and children? Did you believe that was correct? Did you believe it was morally correct for airplanes to fly over cities in England and drop bombs killing women and children?
A. According to the way the propaganda put it at the time, nothing was described to us which made us conclude that in the enemy territory targets were bombed which were not of military importance.
Q. Then you do not believe that women and children were killed in those air raids over England which included the destruction of Coventry which was razed to the ground?
A. No, your Honor, of course I cannot say that. I merely wanted to say the destruction......
Q. Please answer the question. Did you believe that was just?
A. I did not know it, your Honor.
Q. Very well. You knew that Germany marched into Poland. Did you believe that was just?
A. Yes, your Honor, I believed that this happened because the Polish attitude toward us forced us to do this. I am now speaking of the attitude and the idea we had at the time, owing to the way it was explained to us.
Q. Did you believe that it was proper to bomb Rotterdam killing thousands of women and children? This was all prior to 1941.
A. I heard about this. I heard that Rotterdam had been previously asked not to defend themselves as an open city and that they did not do this.
Q. And you believe, therefore, it was proper to bomb that city killing thousands of women and children?
A. Your Honor, if an enemy defends a city........
Q. Will you answer that. You believe it was proper then, that is your answer, yes.
A. If it was defended by soldiers, yes. Then it is a fortress.
Q. You believe that it was proper to make war on Norway which had not declared war on Germany?
A. Your Honor, I can only repeat that at the time it was explained to us quite clearly and we believed this.
Q. You believed it was proper; you believed it was proper?
A. Because we believed......
Q. Now, please answer that question.
A. We would be first this way.
Q. Well, regardless of what was told you, you believed it was proper to invade Norway?
A. Only because of what I was told.
Q. You believed it to be proper in view of what had been told you?
A. Yes.
Q. And you believed it was proper to invade Denmark and Holland and Luxemburg?
A. All this was connected with the statement that we had to carry out this in order to avoid that they attack us.
Q. Well, you believe that it was proper?
A. From that point of view, yes.
Q. You believed it was proper to invade Greece?
A. At the time there were differences already.
Q. But you believed it was proper. That is the only thing I want to find out.
A. Yes, your Honor.
Q. You believe it was proper to invade Yugoslavia and Belgium?
A. Yes, we were told at the time.
Q. Yes, now, do you justify all those invasions today. Do you think today that it was proper to have invaded all these countries?
A. Your Honor, I have no possibility to study history here.
Q. Do you believe today it was proper to invade Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg and the other countries?
A. I can't reply to this, your Honor.
Q. Very well.
A. Because I cannot judge this.
Q. Then how can you judge whether Austria was proper annexed to Germany?
A. At the time we heard how enthusiastic they were, and we were in Austria.
Q. Well, you were in Belgium; you were in Holland; you were in Norway; you were in Greece; and you were in Yugoslavia. You were in all these other countries too.
A. No, your Honor. I personally merely wanted to give the impression which the annexation had on the people in Austria at the time.
THE PRESIDENT: Now, Dr. Lummert, I am going to ask you a question. You have seen that the witness is unable or refuses to justify the invasion of all these countries, but he stands upon the annexation of Austria to Germany. Now, what has that got to do with what happened in 1941? If you intend to show that everything which Hitler did up until that time was proper and correct, then it is not in order to show what he thinks about Austria, but you must take all that history and not one specific episode.
DR. LUMMERT: Your Honor, may I add something about this? I am afraid that I have not been completely understood. The witness testified that he believed in Hitler, that he worshipped him, and that for that reason the order of 1941 concerning the executions had special importance for him, and simply as one example on what this special belief in Hitler is based, he mentioned the annexation of Austria, and in this connection, that is merely to support the testimony of the witness, I wanted to introduce this Document No. 9. I believe that in this connection it could be considered relevant.
THE PRESIDENT: You said you would offer this affidavit as a window. We are perfectly willing to have a window, but we don't want to have the view shut off from the one who is looking through the window, and if we look through a window we do not only see Austria, but we see all the other countries which I have mentioned.
DR. LUMMERT: Your Honor, I certainly did not have any such intention.
MR. FERENCZ: The explanation offered by defense counsel who is offering this document as it will explain why the Defendant Blume adored Hitler. The prosecution is ready to concede that the defendant adored Hitler and that in his opinion he had good reason for it.
THE PRESIDENT: With this concession on the part of the prosecution as to the reasons for the adoration of Adolf Hitler by the witness, it doesn't seem that this affidavit has much probative value. However, the Tribunal is willing to give you every possible latitude, Dr. Lummert. The objection of the prosecution is overruled, and you may introduce the affidavit.
DR. LUMMERT: Your Honor, may I point out the fact it is not an affidavit but it is a statement which the Austrian Catholic bishops published at the time and which appeared in all German papers in facsimile.
Q. (By Dr. Lummert) I now ask, do you remember this statement by the Austrian bishops?
A. Yes. I remember the days in March 1938 because they Were the most beautiful days of my life and I know that many other Germans felt the same way. The statements by the bishops and the statements of many other authorities who all agreed to this at the time were, then, a confirmation for me of the fact that Adolf Hitler had a great mission for the German people.
DR. LUMMERT: The Document Blume No. 9 is in Document Book I, page 95 to 99. I will now read a few lines of the bottom half of page 96. I quote, page 96 - just below the middle:
"We, the Austrian bishops, after exhaustive deliberation, in view of the great historical times through which the Austrian people have lived, aware that in these days the thousand-year-old longing of our people for union with the great German Reich will find its fulfillment, have decided to make the fallowing appeal to all our faithful." ment on page 98 of the Document Book. I quote:
"Solemn Manifesto: We, the Austrian Bishops of the Austrian diocese declare, with serious conviction and of our own free will, on the occasion of the great historical events in German-Austria, we gladly recognize......."
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Lummert, it isn't necessary to read the manifesto. If you desire to sum it up in a few phrases we will permit that, but certainly we shouldn't take time to read this manifesto issued in 1938 on a subject which is not involved in the indictment.
DR. LUMMERT: Yes, Your Honor. I then request that I may just refer to this statement. I think it is not necessary for me to summarize the contents.
Blume on the witness stand. This section concerns Charge 3 of the indictment. That is the membership in organizations declared criminal by the International Military Tribunal. Only the time after 1 September 1939 is concerned here. 3, I first deal with the membership in the SS.
Q. (By Dr. Lummert) Witness, in your testimony you talked about your professional career and you mentioned that in June 1935, when you appeared on a scoial case in a civilian suit, Heydrich arranged that you be transferred from the SA to the SS in the same rank, namely in the rank of SS-Untersturmfuehrer. Untersturmfuehrer is the same as a lieutenant. Please give me further details now about your SS membership, in particular whether you did service in the SS.
A. I was never active in the SS but as a police official I was merely a formal member of the SS, no real or active member of the SS. Already before 1936 certain relations existed through Himmler between the SS and the police. These became closer when Himmler, the Reichsfuehrer-SS in June, 1936, became chief of the entire German police in the Reich Ministry of the Interior. zations which served for the special protection of the state would be united, in particular the SS, the SD, and the entire police. This idea of the state protection corps was not realized until 1945. Only a few odd measures were taken concerning this. Concerning these measures, or some of them there was a sort of equivalent protective corps of the police with the SS about which a special decree was issued by Himmler in the year 1938. On the basis of this there was an assimulation of ranks since 1938. According to my promotion in the police service I was always promoted to the corresponding SS rank. Therefore, an Regierungsrat I became Sturmbannfuehrer. That is a major. As Oberregierungsrat I became Obersturmbannfuehrer. That is Lieutenant-Colonel. Finally as Ministerialrat, Standartenfuehrer. That is a Colonel. But these were only SS ranks. Official positions I did not hold in the SS, and as I said, I was not active in the SS either. Only in the last eight days of the war, approximately, I was drafted into the Waffen-SS.
DR. LUMMERT: In this connection I offer the Assimilation of Rank Decree of 23 June 1938 as evidence Blume No. 10. The document is in Document Book, Pages 100 to 105. The listing of the corresponding rank is on Pages 101 to 103. In section 1 of this decree, Page 100 of the document book, it sags that members of the Security policy, upon request, be received into the SS. That means voluntarily, apparently. Witness, how about this voluntary effort?
A. Since the assimilation of ranks of the members of the police and the members of the SS confirmed the wish of Himmler, it was put in practice. It was fixed that every member of the Security Police should make this application if he fulfilled the conditions required in the decree.
Q. In Section 3 of this decree, Page 103 of the document book, it is said, and I quote: "The employees of the Security Police will be put into that SS rank which corresponds to their rank as civil service members of the Security Police. Incorporated into the SS they will be assigned to the units of the Security Service of the Reichsfuehrer-SS according to the more detailed instructions of the Chief of the Security Police and of the Security Main Office of the Reichsfuehrer-SS." The quote was on Page 103 in the center. Witness, what was the sense and the meaning of this instruction?
A. Although Himmler ordered that the members of the police would be given a rank in the SS, on the other hand he did not want these members of the police to be subordinate to the SS Main Office. He, therefore, decreed that these police members, concerning their SS Activity, should be subordinate to the Chief of the Reich Main Security Office of the Reichsfuehrer-SS, that is the later Chief of the SD, and that formally they would be assigned to the units of the SD. The police members with SS ranks were, therefore, not subordinate to the SS-Main Office, but were subordinate to the SD-Main Office, and since the SD-Main Office was subordinate to the Chief of the Security Police and the SD, the whole matter more or less remained within the police. Thus is shown particularly clearly that the whole SS assimilation of ranks was only a formal matter because in reality the police members did this service according to their assimilation of ranks in the same manner as before, and only served in the police and were active neither in the SS nor in the SD. personal files for the persons who were assimilated in rank in the police, only, as far as I remember, in the year 1943 or 1944. These are files which the Prosecution has used against a few defendants, including myself; by the way, those personal files contain a great deal of inaccuracies. The SS-Personel Office could not find out the personal details at this stage of the war to such an extent and in such detail.
Q. Witness, I do not intend to ask you about these small inaccuracies in detail, because in my opinion this is not the important point. You said that you were never active in the SS apart from a very few days at the end of the war when you were drafted into the Waffen-SS. Please give me some details about this.
A. At the end of April, 1945, I was drafted in Salzburg in the normal military drafting order and had to join the Waffen-SS. In Salzburg it was the branch, the Ausweichstelle of the Reich Security Main Office. From Blankenburg I had retired to Salzburg.
THE PRESIDENT: One moment plese. Mr. Ferencz, are you charging the witness under the count in question with the subject matter of his present testimony, namely his membership in the Waffen-SS in 1945.
MR. FERENCZ: Your Honor, we are charging the witness generally with membership in the SS after 1939.
THE PRESIDENT: Up to and including the day of surrender?
MR. FERENCZ: That is right.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
Q. (By Dr. Lummert) Witness, please continue with your testimony.
A. There the Reich Main Security Office released me from military service because they could not find any other work for me. I, therefore, received the normal drafting order to the Waffen-SS, which I had to follow like any other drafting for military service. Before the war I had had military training twice for eight weeks at a time, with the Fourth Antiaircraft Regiment in Dortmund and had been promoted to be a corporat and as a reserve officer. For that reason, when I was drafted into the Waffen-SS I was given the corresponding rank of an SS-Rottenfuehrer. Already, eight to ten days, Germany capitulated and I was taken prisoner of war.
DR. LUMMERT: Your Honor, "Gefreiter" has just been translated as corporal. I don't know whether that is quite correct. I believe the translation is Pfc., Private, First Class.
THE INTERPRETER: I beg your pardon, your Honor. That is the English translation.
Q. (By Dr. Lummert) Witness, we now come to the membership in the SS. The indictment says under Count 3, Figure 13b you had been a member of Offices 3, 6 and 7 of the Reich Security main Office. Does this apply and were you active in these offices?
A. No, I never had an official position in these offices, and I was never active in those offices either. If it says so in my personal files, which, as I already said, were started in the years 1943 or 1944 in the SS personnel office, it means merely a matter of form which was based on my SS rank which was assimilated. In reality I only worked as an official in the Security Police.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will be in recess until 1:45.
(A recess was taken until 1345 hours.)
(The hearing reconvened at 1345 hours, November 4, 1947.)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
DR. RIEDIGER (Attorney for the Defendant Haensch): Your Honor, I would like the Defendant Haensch to be excused for this afternoon and tomorrow morning in order to be able to prepare himself for his examination. I would like him to be brought to Room N. 57 now, if that would be possible.
THE PRESIDENT: The Defendant Haensch will be excused from attendance in court this afternoon and tomorrow. He will be taken to Room 57 under guard immediately.
(The Defendant Haensch was excused.)
DR. LUMMERT: May I proceed, Your Honor?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, certainly. BY DR. LUMMERT (ATTORNEY FOR THE DEFENDANT BLUME): of the defendant in organizations which were declared criminal by the IMT. I had finished the questions referring to the SD and SS and I now deal with the membership in the Gestapo. Witness, the indictment says, referring to Count III, under No. 353C, that you had been a member of Office IV of the RSHA, the Reich Security Main Office. Is this true? In May and June 1941 and then again from the end of August 1941 to July 1942 I was Personnel Office Chief of Office I of the RSHA. Since my return from Greece, that is from August, 1944, I was again a member of Office I of the RSHA. This position did not change even when in March, 1945, I was detailed to Thuringia by the Office Chief of Office I in order to deal with personnel and organization of the censorship and to transfer it to the Reich Security Main office.