Official Transcript of the American Military Tribunal in the matter of the United States of America, against Oswald Pohl, et al., defendants, sitting at Nuernberg, Germany, on 23 June 1947, 0930-1630, Justice Robert M. Toms, presiding.
THE MARSHAL: Persons in the Court room will please find their seats. 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.
THE PRESIDENT: Marshal, you will please ascertain if all of the defendants are present in the Court.
ERVIN OSKAR RUDOLF TSCHENTSCHER - Resumed.
DIRECT EXAMINATION - Continued.
BY DR. PRIBILLA: Dr. Pribilla for the defendant Tschentscher.
Q With Your Honors permission I would like to continue to examine the defendant Tschentscher on his own behalf. Witness, on Friday we began our interrogation, and you had an opportunity of tolling the Court you personal history, also describe to the Tribunal what your idealogy was on account of which you went to the SS and the Party and, there is only one question left of a personal aspect in your life which is this. As you told us you were a bank clerk, and I know that these bank clerks are extremely conscientious people. Now you have described to us how good many things in the SS and the Party were against your liking already when you were a member without having functions to fulfilling the organization of the WVHA. I would like you to tell us why if you were not satisfied with a good many things, you did not attempt to retire into a civilian profession?
A It is quite correct, as I said before, that my activity as an administrative leader of the General-SS did no longer satisfy me altogether, nor did it really fill out my time completely. The inadequacies which I believed to see at that time were more even of a personal and human character, and I did not recognize any criminal activities or ten dencies.
I also decrived that my official office was located at Arolsen, which was a small town, a small country town with about 2,500 inhabitants. I should therefore, be clear that in a small town like that were hardly any big political intrigues or conflicts. We were rather isolated from the big difficulties of the day, and its conflicts. I can well imagine that had I remained in Berlin, or any other big city where inevitable you would have been involved in conflicts and intrigues, and where I would have had more immediate impressions of the disadvantageous nature, I would most probably have taken the decisive step, although this is easily said after the event, and it may quite easily sound funny when I say so now. But apart from that there was a personal angle. I regarded myself as a city man, and I was quite happy in a small country town, and for that personal reason I decided to remain, and in that small city I would hardly have had the possibility to choose another job in civilian life.
Q Now during the war until the end of 1943 you were with the WaffenSS. Did you during your time of service there see anything of atrocities, or heard anything about that. I think particularly of the activities of the so-called Special Task Troops?
A No. I may say that during my whole time of service at the front with the Waffen-SS, and also with the Police I saw nothing which indicated in any sense of the word from a human soldier, or an international point of view anything that would have been illegal. Individual offenses which happen in all armies of the World after all, so far as I could see at the time, were prosecuted legally whereby justice was done.
Q Before you were transferred to the WVHA, what had you heard about the task of that organization and, in particular, the activity that you were to take over?
A While I was serving at the front I had hardly any contact with the WVHA. I was given my direct factual orders by the administrative officials of the Wehrmacht. That is to say, I was just an administrative official, like anybody else, and I was merely in the SS uniform, as it so happened. I was under the WVHA from the point of view of personnel policy, and from there I would receive my general orders. My contacts with the WVHA were, therefore, were only a matter of correspondence, particularly in matters appertaining to clothing, because it was said once before that we were supplied with our clothing by the WVHA.
As far as the various sub-departments of the WVHA were concerned and the organizational changes therein, especially during the war, we were informed about these things by letters and organizational charts, but that did concern us to a comparatively small degree, because it is quite obvious that our official contact with the Wehrmacht went on without any interference from anybody else. Therefore, as to the form which these organizational changes took, I could form a certain impression on the basis of an organizational chart and letters, but these impressions were not too profound, and I regarded this additional organization in the shape of Office Group D as a relatively insignificant organization.
When the concentration camps were added in war time, we were told very little about this, because it was well known that at that time six concentration camps existed with about 20,000 inmates, that is to say as we hear now. We had heard nothing at all about an increase in the number of concentration camps and were unable to make any observations of our own.
In July 1943 I was withdraw from my police division and was called into the WVHA. I was told that I had been at the front long enough and that somebody else should go out in my stead.
That was a reason against which I could not object, as far as anybody cared for my opinion at all. That was how I was put in charge of Office B-1 in the WVHA.
The field of tasks which I found there was entirely familiar to me from my previous activity at the front. It was really a continuation of my activities at the highest agency of troop administration. That was how I had to understand it at the time, so there I as at a central agency, just as the administrative officials of the army were also. I worked just as I did at the front, together with the gentlemen of the army administrative office, in the same manner, and they would continue to give me my special orders concerning food and food supplies, and I was entirely committed to carrying out these orders, just as I was at the front. Thus it was that I regarded my duties throughout my term of service with the WVHA, and I never came across anything which would have shaken me in this belief.
Q Now, witness, on 1 October 1943 you joined the WVHA. The Prosecution maintains that you were one of the oldest and closest collaborators of Pohl. I should therefore ask you whether previous to that date you had a special activity you did for Pohl or whether you had any personal contacts with him. What were your relations with Pohl prior to 1 October 1943?
A Pohl was the administrative chief of the SS. He was thereby my highest superior officer, whereas otherwise the other superiors I had were with the General-SS or my commanding officer with the Task Troop and the Waffen-SS were above me. Pohl was my superior officer, just as much - to use a comparison - as the chief of the army administrative office was the highest superior officer of all administrative officers in the army. When I was with the Allgemeine SS I was in charge of an administrative office of a district, as we called it at the time. There were twelve such agencies at that time who became more and more insignificant as time went on, as compared to the growing importance of the special task troops. The personal contact, therefore, was such that in peace time we would meet for an expert conference once a year.
There matters of a purely administrative nature of the Allgemeine SS were discussed. Sometimes it would happen that we would not have any personal contact for a long period of time. For a certain reason I remember that I did not go to Munich for over a year. Any other immediate and official or personal contact I did not have at the time.
Q What was the position you were given in the WVHA?
AAs I said before, on 1 October 1943, I became Chief of Office B-1 in the WVHA within the Office Group B.
Q What were the main duties there? What was your competence?
A In the Office B-1 all matters pertaining to food concerning the Waffen-SS and the police at home were looked after, roughly, for about 1,000,000 men. That duty comprised also the negotiations with the army administrative office in order to fix the food rations for the troops and any additions which might occur. My office also worked on the planning and the actual deliveries of the food, the ear-marking of the rations and their supply to 30 troop storage camps which were scattered all over the Reich. These troops storage camps were directly under my office. The essential task, therefore, of my office was to have the food ready so that it could be collected by the troops.
Then, a supplementary duty was one which was not actually connected with my office itself, but which kept me busy for a considerable period of time. At that time I was an air raid precaution office of the WVHA, although it was a somewhat inferior activity - I should like to say a task which an ordinary captain could well cope with, but the main office chief insisted that that task should be taken care of by a staff officer in accordance with the importance of the WVHA. Therefore, I had to do this took, and as at that time the air raids had a tendency to intensify, it kept me busy quite a bit. We said here once before that our office building had three direct hits, and that of course disorganized the whole office work and our contacts with other agencies.
Although I did not have to take care of this in every detail, it did concern me.
Q Your Office B-1 within Office Group B did. have three subdepartments under you, did it not?
A Yes.
Q You said that your main task had been to have the food supplies ready for the SS troops. Did you not also have to see to it that these food supplies would be collected, that they would be prepared properly when they reached the troops, and would be distributed properly?
A No. The collecting of supplies and anything else beyond that how they were cooked for instance, or the proper and fair distribution - was out of the hands of my office. That was entirely up to the troops. No commanding officer of the troops would have allowed an administrative office to tell him what was what. I have to say that this duty was not even within my competence when I was a troop administrative officer. I was not allowed to look into these things. That was entirely in the hands of the commanding officer.
Q What agency within the Wehrmacht could be compared to your agency in the WVHA?
A My last agency could be compared possibly with that of an administrative official in the Army Administrative Office.
Q And the duties were roughly the same as those of any army administrative office?
A Yes, it was entirely the same.
Q Did you, in your position with the WVHA, have any contact with the parallel agencies of the Wehrmacht.
A Yes, I and my colleagues were in almost daily contact with the Army Administrative Office, particularly with Department V-III, which, I think, was the agency for food supplies in the Army Administrative Office, and we also were in contact with the administrative centers of other branches of the Wehrmacht, the Navy, the Luftwaffe, and also of the Todt organization and the Reich Labor Service.
I said that I was entirely committed by the orders of the Army Administrative Office. I was not allowed to decide to increase the rations to the advantage of the Waffen-SS, nor was I allowed to make certain dispositions about the distribution other than by army orders. I am therefore bound to say that apart from the Army Administrative Office I was only equally and immediately connected with the other distributing centers under me, which was the direct channel from above to below.
Q Could you say, therefore, that you had contact with the Army Administrative Office and the other agencies under you, more so even than with the other agencies in the WVHA?
A Yes. Well, that was a matter of course. It could not be otherwise.
Q Now, did your office, B-I, exist until the end of the war and work in the same manner?
A No, Office B-I at the end of March of 1945, that is to say six weeks before the war was over, was dissolved.
Lengthy negotiations had preceded that. That was connected with the task to simplify the army administration which as been discussed here before. Also our troop warehouse camps were, most of them, dissolved. Some of them survived, and, looked after by SS personnel, joined the army administration. They supplied the entire Wehrmacht, not only the SS.
Q If I understand you correctly, you had the same tasks as the army agencies. You worked in very close contact with those agencies of the Wehrmacht, and when the emergency had reached its highest peak, your office was completely taken over and swallowed by the various departments of the Wehrmacht?
A Yes, that is quite correct.
Q Now, was among your duties any part of the concentration-camp affairs?
A No. I can only confirm here what people have said before me, other witnesses, that we had nothing to do with it. We had to look after roughly one million men, and about twenty or thirty thousand of those men were concentration-camp guards who were fed by us. That particular aspect of our feeding policy was done by the troop camp stores in the area where the concentration camp was located. Those twenty or thirty thousand sentries and guards amounted to about two or three percent of our entire strength to be fed. Therefore it should be clear that did not matter too much, and these troops were not a complete whole as far as that is concerned.
Q Did your office have anything to do with feeding and supplying with food concentration-camp inmates such as the Prosecution alleged some time ago?
A No. There again I must repeat that we had nothing to do with it.
Q Now, in your opinion, was the feeding of the concentrationcamp inmates secured, and what was the organizational background to this?
AAll I knew was the same as Georg Loerner told us in such detail here as a witness, namely, that concentration camps did receive and buy their food from firms of the wholesale market for which they received vouchers from the civilian food offices. Apart from that I can say one more thing, because there seems to be an element of doubt here. The feeding on this civilian channel was entirely secured because the civilian food offices supplied in their districts hundreds of thousands of men and people. For instance, the food office in Greater Berlin could supply about four and a half million people. It therefore, could not, and was not allowed to happen that inmates could arrive in a camp without notice being given, even if they be 50,000, and not be supplied with food thereby. Therefore, no difficulties should arise ever.
Q Now, Witness, are these deliberations which you made now, or did you have any insight at the time?
A No, I had no insight at that time into these things, but ordinary reasoning can tell you this immediately.
Q Now, under your troop warehouse camps, did they have any duties to supply concentration-camp inmates with food?
A No. The warehouse camps were not involved in any sense of the word in the process of distributing food. They only supplied the troops.
Q You were in charge of Office B-I. Were you not even given statistics of food supplies, strengthen reports or current reports about the concentration-camp administrations and the food supplies for the inmates?
A No, such reports never reached me, and I am quite sure they were never sent to me.
Q Were you ever shown applications or complaints concerning the food situation in a certain concentration camp?
A No, that never happened either, because it was not within my competence. I must admit, however, that Burger, Chief of Office D-IV, throughout my term of service, came to see me three or four times.
Burger asked me on those occasions to help him out. No large quantities were involved actually, but he told me that he granted to leave special diets for sick inmates, for instance, fruit and canned vegetables, red wine for strengthening, in small quantities, of course, which I let him have from my troop warehouse camps. As things stood Burger had to realize at the time that he had no claim for me to do so. It was merely that we obliged him, and, of course, on those three or four occasions I was only too glad to help him out.
THE PRESIDENT: You say, was it Burger?
THE WITNESS: Yes, Burger, B-u-r-g-e-r-, of D-IV.
Q (By Dr. Pribilla) Witness, did it not strike you as a bit peculiar that Burger of D-IV would come to see you and express such requests to give him special food, did that not strike you as very peculiar and give you food for thought?
A No. These three or four visits over a period of one year and a half were in no way particularly striking because I had hundreds of similar approaches which reached me from the Waffen-SS, from the police, which had every right to ask me, and also from offices of the party, civilian offices, including even the Wehrmacht or the Reich Labor Service or any other organization.
I would like to say, without wishing to boast, that our readiness to help was well known, and in some cases was exploited in an almost disagreeable fashion.
Q Therefore, other visitors came to see you just as Burger did and had just the same wishes, namely, to get special rations?
A Yes, yes. That is how it happened.
Q Did you, when there were conferences concerning the food situation and the food supplies for concentration-camp inmates, within or outside your office, were you called in; did you take part in such conferences?
A No such conferences concerning concentration-camp affairs or food supplies there ever took place, nor did I take part in them.
Q Did you give any orders in that respect which committed such agencies as were competent with feeding their inmates?
A No.
Q Particularly for additional rations did you not in that field issue any special orders?
A No, that never happened, and in accordance with what I said before this was quite impossible automatically.
Q Now, on several occasions it was said here that food rations for inmates were fixed by the Reich Ministry of Food in contact with the WVHA. Who, in your opinion, was the agency in the WVHA, who, concerning food supplies for inmates, would negotiate with the Reich Ministry of Food and make arrangements with it?
A I believe that statements of that sort were made duly through the ignorance of the witnesses concerned. All I can say in that respect is that my office had nothing to do with it. Who negotiated I an quite unable to say unless Burger of D-IV did so, but I an not sure whether this was so or not. I read somewhere food rations were fixed in negotiations between the Reich Ministry of Food and the Reich Ministry of Justice, and all I know is that rations were the same as they were for prisoners in justice prisons.
Q Witness, if B-1 had nothing to do with the supplying of food to concentration camp inmates, then you probably had no right nor authority to supervise concerning collection or preparation of food for concentration camp inmates?
A No. I said before that I did not even have that right or that authority as far as the troops were concerned. Even less did I have it, therefore, as far as concentration camp inmates were concerned, to whom I did not even supply the food.
Q Witness, one final question about this. Your office was dissolved later on in March of 1945, and it was decided that the Office B-1 would be transferred to the Wehrmacht. I should like to know whether at that time when the transfer was ordered concentration camps were mentioned at all.
A No, that was not the case. These tasks of supplying food did nob overlap at all. I seem to remember that in the final negotiations with the OKH a sentence was mentioned that the civilian sector should not be touched at all by these new regulations; and that, of course, included the supplying of concentration camps.
Q Witness, was your Office B-1 responsible for clothing?
A No, no. My office had the subtitle "Food Administration." Therefore, it was quite impossible for us to have anything to do with it. I knew about Office B-II quite generally that it had to take care of clothing. Whether my colleague Lechler manufactured the clothing in his enterprises under B-II or in other economic enterprises would have been entirely irrelevant to me at the time and of a purely academic nature. It hardly interested me at all at the time.
Q Office B-III looked after accommodation, didn't it? Did you know any more about that?
A No, As far as B-III was concerned, I knew even less. From my point of view it is true that as a troop official I assumed that it had to look after the troops only, and it was only here that I saw in detail that it was competent also for the concentration camp factor.
Q When you were in charge of B-I, October 1943, until the end of the war, were you very busy, or did the work become less and less as the war went on? Were you actually so overworked with your own office that you didn't have time to look into the affairs of other offices?
A The latter part of your sentence applies. We were more and more overburdened with work. SS divisions grew and became more and more plentiful; the personnel shortages became more and more acute; we had fewer people to do more work. I mentioned before the frequent air-raids. Even when we had the preliminary alerts, whoever knows these things knows what I mean, this meant that work was interrupted for several hours. Files and typewriters had to be taken downstairs to the cellar and then carried upstairs again. Work stopped and had to be done some other time. The result was, to put it drastically, our nose was never very far away from our desk.
Q Witness, you said that you did not have any normal official connections with concentration camps; that you supplied the concentration camp guards only as part of the other troops without these guards appearing as such, as far as you were concerned. Did your office not at least have a sort of friendly contact with its offices of the WVHA which would have enabled you to form a precise picture about the work done in every single other office of the WVHA?
A No. As far as my own Office Group B was concerned, for instance, my contact was vague. It isn't as though, in view of the incriminating statements, I make frantic efforts to deny any personal or official contacts. Nothing could be further from my mind. But it is surely obvious that between clothing, for instance, and feeding no direct points of contact exist. The only point in common was that our efforts served the troops. I knew of the other offices only so much as one could imagine anyway from their designations. For instance, of the legal office I knew that legal matters would be dealt with there, insurance policies, for instance, law suits, and so forth, but nothing else.
The same will apply vice versa. I did not have any deeper insight into their factual tasks. I knew this or that colleague, of of course, in a personal way; b ut we merely talked to each other as other normal people will - talked about our families or experiences which we had in common at the front, or anything else which might occur to us, because if you ran into one another casually, you did not immediately have to talk about official secrets.
Q You realize, of course, Witness, that this one-sidedness and ignorance concerning parallel fields of tasks in other offices are somewhat difficult to understand. One would assume that in an office a certain amount of friendship and comradely contact would exist which would lead you to discuss even factual matters with one another.
A I do not find that quite so surprising, Doctor, if you bear in mind the position and situation at the time. We did not work peacefully and calmly with ordinary office hours up to 5:00 in the afternoon; and as far as the ignorance concerning parallel fields is concerned, it is also possible to explain that quite simply by the fact that the WVHA, as far as its organization and extension is concerned, carried these things out only in war-time. Only a very few of the officials in the WVHA had a normal peace-time training behind them. The majority consisted of reserve officers who had been called up during the war and who were trained only in their special field of tasks and did not know anything beyond that. If, therefore, there was any contact with other offices with the WVHA, it was an occasional and casual one which should make it all the more understandable that definite official secrets were not communicated at all.
Q Is there not another point which you should explain? Do you know the top secret order number 1?
DR. PRIBILLA: Mr. President, may I add here that this secrecy order Number 1 has been submitted as evidence here, for instance in Document Book Georg Loerner, English and German page 41.
A Yes, of course, I knew that secrecy order. At that time it was fixed on all the walls, doors, and file cabinets of all the offices. You had to read that order whether you wanted to or not wherever you went.
Q Was this a theory or was that order strictly observed among the various offices in the WVHA?
A That order was followed most strictly; and although I personally did not wish to embarrass anybody by nutting superfluous questions to him to tell me about his official secrets, just as little would I allow myself to be questioned. I should even say that my references to that secrecy order would have been quite sufficient to shut up anybody who was becoming too curious. Also, I should emphasize that we, being in uniform and having certain ideas the observation of which was our duty, were even more committed and more isolated than any private person. A particularly striking example of this secrecy might perhaps be that it was only here in the files from the curriculae vitae of my colleagues that I learned that one of us, himself an office chief in 1944, was relieved of his office and put under guard, an event which in our comparatively small circle surely should have caused a stir, even if we did not know each other too well. But that was not the case. I heard that only here.
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
Q That was an office chief of your rank in the WVHA?
A Yes. His office was outside. I believe he will probably mention it himself.
Q Was that co-defendant Klein?
A Yes. Yes.
Q Herr Tschentscher, if you did not discuss these things, was it not the case that regular official conferences in order to coordinate matters were held and that on these occasions you heard about business in other office groups?
A No. Other witnesses have confirmed this. And it should be really quite convincing. When we met or had we met, only one special topic could have been discussed. In some cases it might be fairly interesting and edifying for other colleagues, but we were not able to waste this time. In my own small circle of colleagues, in my own office, I frequently attempted to do this, for instance, when the mail was distributed in the morning, but even there I had this experience: two colleagues sat there and were bored because they had to be away from urgent daily tasks. Within the office group B, I can only recall two or three such conferences where the topic was the reform of Army Administration which was a matter of policy concerning several of us.
As far as other office groups were concerned, no conferences were held because there were no tasks which would have interested all of us.
Q How about joint conferences of people from the concentration camps? I was struck by the fact that the Commandant of the Concentration Camp Buchenwald says in an affidavit which is document NO-2327, Prosecution Exhibit 75, in Document Book 3, Page 109 of the English Text, that in Berlin there had been regular conferences of the Commandants. It mentioned a few names and he includes you. What is the explanation of that?
A I believe that question was dealt with and clarified by other witnesses. Pister must have made a mistake as far as I am Court No. II, Case No. 4.concerned, just as he made a mistake with others.
He probably saw me in the Officer's Mess of the WVHA the evening before. And I do not believe that when we ate in the Officer's Mess, I became so obvious that he should name me in the third place. Anyway, I never took part in the Commandants' Conferences, nor would I have had anything to do with it.
Q On the Organizational Chart, you are listed not only as Chief of Office B-1, but also as Deputy Chief of the Office Group B. In other words, Deputy of Georg Loerner. Is that correct?
A Yes. That is correct.
Q With what was that deputizing concerned? Was it concerned exclusively with Office Group B or any other functions of Loerner? You know that he was also Pohl's Deputy and also had connections with Office Group W?
A I can only confirm what Loerner said himself. Toward the end of 1943, I was appointed to deputize for him quite formally, only however, within Office Group B; but even that position as his deputy, did not result in my being informed about all important matters of the Office Group. The other Office Chiefs would not have stood for any interference in their fields on my part; nor did they report to me about their fields. For instance, when Loerner in the spring of 1944 was away, and I deputized for him for about four weeks; Pohl, as main office chief was present himself. Therefore, quite automatically, more important matters would have been decided on by him. I cannot recall having come across anything particularly important. Should Pohl not have been present at that time, only the next Senior Office Group Chief could have deputized for him, that is Kammler, or Fanslau. Not even Gluecks, for he was not in the building. He was in Oranienburg.
Q At any rate, it was never you. You were only an Office Chief?
A No.
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
Q Witness, you knew that some organization of the WVHA concerned itself with Concentration Camps?
A That part of the WVHA was concerned with concentration camps is really saying too much. I knew that concentration camps were under the WVHA in the person of Main Office Chief Pohl. I also knew that the inmates in Concentration Camps were used to do some work. I knew that as such, to use an example, as I knew that the Justice Administration was in charge of prisons, I was just as unable to judge whether persons in Justice Prisons had deserved their faith, as I was unable to do that as far as concentration camp inmates were concerned. Then war broke out. Six concentration camps existed and I was then abroad for a number of years. I did not observe, myself, how the camps extended and grew. I was unable to form a personal impression. When I returned home my interest was claimed by totally different matters. I had to get used to my new field of tasks; although I was not entirely unfamiliar with it, I had to learn new methods. The military situation became more and more complicated. Our activity toward the end of the war was almost an impediment from morning until evening. Therefore, I was quite unable to pay any attention to these things.
Q How far did you know concentration camps? Have you seen any?
A I went to concentration camps in a few cases. In the spring of 1941 my troops and I were in the Dachau Camp, in that part of the Dachau Camp which was the troop training camp. On that occasion, I once took part in an inspection of the actual concentration camp; I should say, I could see whatever they showed us, of course. We saw, as far as I can remember, two barracks for inmates. They were extremely clean and quite worthy of being lived in by human beings. We were also shown the inmate's kitchen, the hospital, the dental station which was very much up-to-date. We were even told that it was better equipped than that which they had for the troops. And I could confirm that from my own observation later on. Then we saw the bakery shop and the carpenter shop. In all those workshops, one often could not have dif Court No. II, Case No. 4.ferentiated between inmates and civilian workers.
Q To interpolate here, Witness, that was in 1941?
A Yes, in 1941.
Q What sort of an inspection was that? Were you and your troops shown around?
A No. A few SS leaders took part in it, five or six perhaps, but I am not able to tell yon now who showed us around and who took part apart from me. It did not last much more than about an hour and a half.
Q And at that time, you were part of a troop unit which was housed and organized in the troop training camp of Dachau?
A Yes.
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
Q Did you later on.....
A Yes, in the Buchenwald Camp, towards the end of 1944, I had stored specially valuable food which was done because the front was being taken back and this special food we had to take back from the danger areas. We had nowhere to put it and I had heard that there was an empty hall at Buchenwald, which I used to store this food temporarily. When I passed through those parts on an official trip, I paid a visit - it was already winter time, it must have been about November 1944. I arrived late in the evening and I was walking around only in the neighborhood of the commandant's office. On the following morning I went to that hall, in my official car, and looked at the space for the food there, but I did not see very much of the actual camp. At some distance I saw some inmates march past and I saw some soldiers but anything special I did not notice. Above all, I saw nothing of atrocities or anything like that. Other camps or the interior of protective custody camps I never visited at all. Until the end of the war I did not even know that there was a concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. I knew the names of these villages, on frequent occasions I heard that a big clothing warehouse was located there but any other conclusions I was not able to draw from that.
JUDGE MUSMANNO: Weren't you supplying guards to these camps?
A Yes, I did mention that. Did you say supplied or provided the guards?
JUDGE MUSMANNO: Well, you sent guards there - you had charge of soldiers of the Waffen-SS who acted as guards in these camps?
A No, I only supplied them with food.
JUDGE MUSMANNO: Yes. Well, you know that you were supplying so much food to so many guards at certain places. How could you then fail to know that there was a concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen or anywhere else?
A I said before that the 20,000 men whom I supplied with food were distributed all over the Reich Area and certain units of about 200 Court No. II, Case No. 4.or 300 men went to the troop warehouse concerned.