The VI/3 in a factual and technical respect makes spot-checks upon these bills. If there are only corrections to be made, they are carried out there, or the construction management is ordered to carry out these corrections. When everything has been coordinated, then the whole compels of bills as such is submitted to the auditing court of the German Reich. There the final auditing is carried out and the whole matter is dismissed. I have already described that as a result of the special conditions before 1939, and also as a result of the conditions which were current in war time, this auditing took many years to complete. While these personnel expenses were completed every three months ans were submitted to the preliminary auditing agency or the auditing court at that time, the construction accounts could only be sent to the preliminary auditing agency after a long interval of time had passed. The legal provisions in peacetime already gave time limit of three years after the last payment had taken place for these bills to be submitted.
EXAMINATION BY THE TRIBUNAL (JUDGE PHILLIPS):
Q. Let me ask a question. I understood in your examination in May that you listed C VI/1 as Building Marerial and Maintenance. Is that correct?
A. No, your Honor.
Q. What did you say?
A. Main Department C VI/1 was only the agency which took care of the Budget. It had no other functions.
Q. The Budget? Is that what you said?
A. Yes, the budget.
Q. Well, I copied down what you said; and I've got it down as C VI/1, Building Material and Maintenance; 2, Planning Economy; 3, Auditing and Price Control.
Now, if that's not what you said, the translation did not come through correctly. That is what I wrote down. That is what the translation said that you said.
A. Your Honor, the tasks of Main Department C VI/1 are compiled under the concept of that production maintenance. However, this concept only means that this office dealt with budgetary handling with regard to construction maintenance. With the execution of the maintenance this Main Department had nothing to do.
Q. Just a moment. Now, you say again what C VI/1 is, what C VI/2 is, and what C VI/3 is. Now, I'll write it down again. What is C VI/1?
A. C VI/1 had the title Construction Maintenance; and it worked on budgetary questions. That is to say, it allocated funds once a year.
Q. Just a minute. Answer my question. Now, give me C VI/2.
A. C VI/2 had the title Plant Economy.
Q. Planned or Planning?
A. Plant Economy.
Q. And S?
A. 3 was the auditing of bills.
Q. Not Auditing and Price Control?
A. Your Honor, that was up to 1943. Then from 1943 on it changed.
Q. All right, what was it after 1943?
A. After 1943 the Main Department Construction Maintenance was discontinued; and in its place came the Department of Price Control.
Q. Now, after you had received the bills in C VI for the construction for this building, you sent them on, and they finally wound up in Berlin in the Reich Treasury to be paid?
A. Your Honor, the payment had already taken place years before.
Q. I see; and they went there to be approved?
A. No. Approval was not taking place anymore. The approval had already been given with the construction order.
Q. Why did they go up there then?
A. They only went there so that the expenditures could be audited.
Q. All right.
A. Then to see whether the payments had been made correctly.
Q. Now would the same procedure take place if there was maintenance cost of the buildings and the plant in Buchenwald?
A. Your Honor, if repair expenses were concerned for the running maintenance, that is, the regular maintenance, then these bills would have been paid by the garrison treasury; and it would have been included in the general, the factual and personal expenses. There is a difference between construction maintenance and a perfectly new construction project. The bills in these two fields are completely different.
Q. I'll ask you what happened with the maintenance bills. Now, I don't want anything about the construction. We've finished that. The maintenance bills, now would they come to C VI for auditing?
A. No, they would not come to C VI.
Q. Where did they go?
A. They went to A IV as the defendant Vogt has already described it to us.
Q. So no bills came from the concentration camp in to C VI for auditing except that what you have described in construction work?
A. Yes, Your Honor.
Q. None for maintenance?
A. No.
None for any other purpose?
A. Only for new construction projects.
Q. I see. Now, did C VI, either 1,2, or 3, have any other connection, directly or indirectly, within any operational feature of a concentration camp?
A. Your Honor, C VI/1 only appropriated budgetary funds to the administration of the concentration camps, as far as the administration of those concentration camps, had made appropriate request.
Q. Would the appropriation that you made to the concentration camp---would the requisition for that to your department show for what it was to be used?
A. No, your Honor.
Q. They would just ask you for so much money for this concentration camp?
A. Your Honor, I believe that the witness Kiefer has already told us that.
Q. I'm not interested in that now. Just confine yourself to your department.
A. Your Honor, then I must go on to explain in detail and must describe how the construction maintenance funds were compiled in peacetime once a year. The building site let us say of the concentration camp of Buchenwald, would have to be inspected.
Q. You need not go into that. You've been all over that. I remember it very well. I just want to know, when you made an allocation of funds to Buchenwald, did the requisition for this money show for what purposes it was to be used, or did they just ask your department for a lump sum of money for Buchenwald?
A. Well, that's what was done for the most part, your Honor. The funds were allotted in a total sum, certain amounts had been established by practical experience so that at the end of the year no specification of funds for the exact purposes was necessary any more.
JUDGE PHILLIPS: And you made that allocation once a year?
A. Yes, this allotment was done once a year. However, as a result of the opening budget theis procedure was not followed any more during the war and only very careful administrative officers would make such a request at war time.
JUDGE PHILLIPS: All right.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will be in recess.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is in recess for 15 minutes.
(A recess was taken)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
BY DR. STEIN:
Q Witness, we stopped talking about your Department C-VI-3, which was in charge of auditing, and I now ask you how many people were working in that office in 1942 and from that time on?
A The personnel strength of that department varied a great deal. In 1932 when I established it I started with two or three men, and by the end of 1942 there were about ten to twelve men, perhaps a few more, and it remained at about fourteen to fifteen men, including the assistant female personnel right until the collapse. The personnel consisted of two expertly trained SS officers, three or four noncommissioned officers, and the rest were civilian employees.
Q This Main Department was by far the biggest office wasn't it? Now will you tell us in detail what the tasks were after 1942 which this department worked on?
A I said that in 1941 the Office-I of the Main Office Budget and Construction, and the Auditing Office for construction of buildings had been established. That office never did any actual work; it only made a few spot tests, and then it had to discontinue its activity because of the conditions that prevailed. In 1942 I took over and I got my staff together to plan in accordance with their task. It never happened that construction bills were submitted. At that time the building agencies never rendered their accounts. That was the task of both the SS Building Agency, and also the agency of the Reich Finance Administration which were in charge of SS building funds from 1934 to 1942.
The SS construction agencies, because they were overworked and understaffed, did not have the opportunity to render their accounts. The only accounts which reached me during 1942 and 1943 were those from the Special Task Troops, the Verfuegungstruppe. These were audited in the usual manner with the various simplifications which the wartime measures had granted us. Bills once they had been audited were then passed on to the Reich Treasury, the Reich Auditing Court, and there another audit would be made.
Q What could you see from those building account?
A In peace time one could see how the entire construction matter had been taken care of.
Q In your office were construction accounts of the concentration camps audited?
A Construction accounts of concentration camps should have been audited by my office, but up to 1945 no account of a concentration camp had been rendered. Only as far as the Dachau garrison was concerned, the auditing courts had sent me a number of statements about the auditing there which I had to acknowledge. The actual accounting for the whole of the construction project Dachau, as far as it was paid by Reich funds, was audited by the Reich Court of Audits. Otherwise, as far as concentration camps are concerned, up to April 1944 they never rendered their accounts at all.
Q I put to you, witness, this affidavit by co-defendant Pohl, which is Document NO-2616, Exhibit 523. It is contained in Document Book No. 22. On page 3, paragraph 12, Pohl says that the auditing of bills, such as you did, enabled Kammler to exercise control over the construction carried out by the construction agencies. Will you please comment on that?
A That opinion is incorrect. As I mentioned before, the accounts, even in peace time, were submitted only years after a construction project had been completed. Therefore, they came much too late to permit C-VI to exercise any control.
A man like Kammler could have had through these auditing processes a very bad control over the projects. Control in that sense was not the purpose of Office C-VI. The purpose was to audit the bills as to whether the financial expenditures coincided with what the firms had actually contributed and the agency had spent. Any checking up on the actual construction as such was not up to C-VI but the Central Construction Inspectorate.
Q In paragraphs 16, 17 and 18 Pohl speaks about the construction of gas chambers and crematoria in Auschwitz. To quote from paragraph 18: "Accounts for these buildings were submitted by the Building Inspectorate at Auschwitz to Office VI of Office Group C for a preliminary auditing for the Reich Court of Audits, or they were submitted to the auditing official of Office C-VI, which was subordinate to Office Group C." Please give us your comments about that.
A I said earlier that I received no accounts for concentration camp constructions and that I did not even preliminarily await such accounts. As far as Auschwitz is concerned, I should like to say that even in the spring of 1944 an expert from my department was sent to the Building Inspectorate at Kattowitz, which is the competent agency there, in order to speed up the submission of bills. That colleague of mine, as I recall it, came back without having achieved anything, and I a few days later heard from Kammler, who gave me the order that I must not carry out any local auditing of the building sites and that he had to give his personal permission first. Therefore, I did not until the end of the war carry out any local auditing. All I did was that in March of 1946 I sent a small auditing commission to the central agencies in Fuerstenberg in order to get hold of the accounts of buildings for the years 1937 to 1939. In other words, in sending out that commission, I did not follow Kammler's order, because at that time it was no longer possible to get the files sent through the post. I do not know what happened to the commission in the end. In March of 1945 I had to leave Berlin in accordance with my orders, and I do not know what happened to these people.
Q Now, how were construction projects audited which were under a secret classification?
A No such case has happened to me, but there is a special order contained in the Reich budget regulations. In such cases, where secret construction work was carried out, a special procedure had to be observed, with special reference to the Fuehrer Order No. 1: Nobody was allowed to know anything about a project unless he had a very direct part in it. Whether that order was observed in Ausshwitz or not I am unable to say.
DR. STEIN: I would like to acquaint the Court with that provision contained in the Reich Budget Regulation. I shall submit it as an exhibit.
Q Under paragraph 20, which refers to the building of the concentration camp at Riga and has reference there to the auditing carried out by C-VI, I ask you, Witness, did you know anything about the construction at that concentration camp, and did you audit the accounts?
AAs far as the construction of that concentration camp is concerned, I was informed about it only through the documents here. The building agency at Riga itself was discontinued in '44 or '45 because the Russians captured it. The building agency for the Baltic and Russian territories had prepared accounts and collected bills. These bills were exclusively payments for the so-called Front Labor Enterprises. These were civilian firms who, with civilian personnel, worked in that area. Any indications that a concentration camp existed in Riga did not become evident from these bills.
Q Now, with regard to the knowledge which you might have obtained from your bills, I wish to refer now to an affidavit by the defendant Sommer. This is in Volume I, Document NO-1577, Exhibit 13.
JUDGE MUSMANNO: Counselor, before you leave the affidavit which you are just questioning on, I would like to put one question to the witness.
BY JUDGE MUSMANNO:
Q Your attention has been directed to paragraph 18 of the Pohl affidavit. Is what he states in that paragraph correct or not correct?
A No, it is not correct, your Honor. I never received any accounts from Auschwitz.
Q You will say this is untrue?
A Yes, it is untrue, your Honor. Gruppenfuehrer Pohl was not in a position to know anything about these things. I was concerned neither with Kammler nor with Pohl in talking to them about the auditing.
Q Do you have any explanation as to why he would incorporate in his affidavit on the activities of the WVHA this incorrect statement about your office; do you know why he would do that?
A I can only make an assumption here. I think Pohl assumed that it was like that, but actually I never received those accounts myself.
JUDGE MUSMANNO: Very well.
BY DR. STEIN:
Q On page 4 of the affidavit by Sommer, I refer you to the passage where it says that in the auditing of construction accounts you must have seen that inmates were working on this project. Please give us your comments.
A This view on the part of Sommer is of an academic nature. As far as the auditing of construction accounts was concerned, it did not become evident that inmates were working on these projects. The documents have shown that no accounts were rendered who did construction work in the actual concentration camps. Because the wages were not listed, it might have looked as though this money had been saved, but the sums saved were not explained in detail and they did not state what figures were used, or that inmates were used at all. I would like to point out here that in wartime, apart from the work done by inmates all material for construction work was not paid for. The material came either from the building sites or was bought centrally, or, as in the case of barracks, the supplies came without any bills being sent out. For the most part they came through the agencies of the army and Waffen-SS, or something of that sort. In only a very small part of the construction work material was actually bought, so that when money was saved, apart from money saved by wages, the material which had not been paid for was also part of that sum of money saved. That is the reason why the labor allocation of inmates could not be deducted from such accounts and bills. I would like to point out once again that I never audited any concentration camp construction projects.
In the case of building constructions carried out by private firms, the accounting of the money paid for the inmates reached the owner of the private firm, and he would furnish his bills to the construction agency only in accordance with the estimated cost, and therefore the bills would contain only the actual material supplied, say 1000 cubic meters earth moved or something like that. For the rest I would like to point out that the Reich Court of Audits in wartiie could work without comparing the actual cost with the estimated cost, and was interested only in the actual cost of the material involved.
Q Did you know that the agencies of Office Group C used inmates?
A That the agencies of Office Group C used inmates was known to me.
Q Had you any idea of the number of inmates who worked?
A No, I had no possibility of forming an impression there.
Q Did you yourself have anything to do with the labor allocation of inmates?
A No.
Q Did you see the inmates who did the work?
A Yes, I did.
Q Did you see anything particular, what they looked like?
A No.
Q Were they driven on their work?
A I saw no such case where they were mistreated. I did not see one single case of mistreatment.
Q Did you know anything about the working hours of inmates?
A No, I had no idea.
Q Did you know anything about the personal fate of the inmates, why they were in a concentration camp?
A I did not know anymore about why a man was sent to a concentration camp than any other average German. I knew that they had been arrested by the Secret State police. Whether this had been proceded by a trial or any other police court proceedings.
I did not know.
Q Did you make any observations that among the inmates there was a large number of foreigners and Jews?
A I was not in a position to make such observations. I had nothing to do with the inmates and for that reason I didn't look too closely at them.
Q What do you think of the labor allocation of inmates as such?
A If the inmates were used in a humane manner, they should have been happy to be given some work, because that helped to divert their attention from the gloom of their time in confinement. During my own imprisonment -- has now which lasted for a year and a half, I was sorry to see that the SS was not allowed to do any work.
Q When you worked with the SS, did you have anything to do with the construction of gas chambers of crematoria?
A No.
Q In that connection I have to put to you Document NO-2325, which is in Volume 21. It is Exhibit 514. This is an affidavit given by Eichele. On page 3 of this affidavit Eichele says:
"In the summer of 1940 the crematorium was built by the Building Management of Dachau. The order to do so came from the construction office in the main office Construction and Budget (Standartenfuehrer Eirenschmalz) who was then in charge of construction matters in the administrative office of the SS."
Eichle has submitted another affidavit which was given on the 18th of July, 1947 which I shall submit to the Court as Exhibit No. 2. In that affidavit Eichele said that his statement, that you had in 1940 given the order to construct the crematorium was based on a mistake on his part. At the time, Eichele did not know that you were no longer in the Office for the Budget and Construction. That is how Eichele has corrected his earlier statement.
THE PRESIDENT: This is the second exhibit which you have offered. Have you delivered the originals of these exhibits to the SecretaryGeneral?
DR. VON STEIN: Not yet, Your Honor, the translation is not ready yet, but I can submit it to you. But I wanted to submit them altogether in a document book.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, be sure that the original of your exhibit is filed with the Secretary-General. Be sure that the original affidavit, Exhibit 2 and Exhibit 1, are filed with the Secretary-General, and then copies after translation can be furnished to the Court.
DR. VON STEIN: Yes, Your Honor, I will have the documents translated immediately alter the examination of Eirenschmalz has been terminated. I can put in the document immediately because I have the original with me here.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, it is not necessary to do it immediately, but be sure that the originals are filed with the Court records with the Secretary-General in this Court before we get through so that they will be properly recorded, will you?
DR. VON STEIN: Yes, Your Honor, I will.
WITNESS: Am I to come in at this point to what Eichele said?
BY DR. VON STEIN:
Q. Tell us briefly about this.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal already knows that before the summer of 1940 this defendant had been transferred to the SS Chief Construction Office, and was out of the WVHA before that. It won't be necessary for you to make that statement over again. We know that now.
BY DR. VON STEIN:
Q. Witness, who in your opinion, built the gas chambers and crematoria, and what agencies were connected with that? Tell us from the beginning who gave the order, and what happened afterwards until the bills were finally ready, so we know precisely what you and your office had to do with the construction of gas chambers and crematoria.
A. As far as the construction of gas chambers and crematoria is concerned, I cannot say anything at all. I know nothing about it. There fore I cannot even indicate who gave the order. I cannot say what the administrative side of it amounted to; nor do I know who built the crematoria. I can only assume that it was done by one of the construction agencies--but I have no knowledge of my own.
DR, VON STEIN: Mr. President, here we have a witness, Grosch, who is a Prosecution witness. I have asked for this witness to appear tomorrow here and that witness in his affidavit has made precise statements as to how these things were handled when a gas chamber was constructed, for instance. I would be grateful if I could put such questions to that witness tomorrow. To the witness I only have to put these questions today: whether afterwards in his capacity as chief of Office C-6, Main Department 3, he had anything to do with preliminary auditing, and thereby received any knowledge at all of the construction of gas chambers and crematoria. That is the only question which I wish to put today to this witness.
THE PRESIDENT: Do you expect that the witness Grosch will be able to tell us who planned or built gas chambers or crematoria?
DR. VON STEIN: If your Honor please, if the veracity of the witness is in order, he has already made such statements in his affidavit. This affidavit is available here. If he maintains these statements we will see that Office C-6 was in no way connected with the construction of gas chambers and crematoria.
But I would like to have the following clarified today: whether later on or once the construction was completed the defendant Eirenschmalz saw anything or heard anything about it on the basis of the bills and accounts.
THE PRESIDENT: All right.
DR. VON STEIN: That is the question which I would like now to put to the witness.
BY DR. VON STEIN:
Q. Witness, did you understand me? Do you know what questions you are to answer now? Your biggest department was C-6-3, the department of preliminary auditing. I would like to ask you now, on the basis of that preliminary auditing, did you obtain any knowledge at any time of the construction of gas chambers and crematoria? In other words, did bills and accounts reach you concerning the construction of gas chambers and crematoria in your office?
A. I said before that in my office, up to April 1945, not one single bill arrived which was connected with any such construction projects.
DR. VON STEIN: If the Tribunal please, in order to support what the defendant has said just now I shall also submit an affidavit by Frau Barth, who is a resident of Austria. She has given me an affidavit because she is unable to come here in person. From her statement the Court will be able to see what work was done between '42 and '45 in Office C-3, the question whether accounts about gas chambers and crematoria reached that office was also touched upon by that witness.
That affidavit I shall also make part of my document book, and it will become an exhibit.
BY DR. VON STEIN:
Q. You said, witness, that from the accounts you learned nothing about crematoria and gas chambers, did you not? Was there any other was by which you can hear about the fact that gas chambers and crematoria existed?
A. I heard about the gas chambers when I was interned. Before then I did not know that such things existed.
Q. What about crematoria?
A. About crematoria, I heard in the autumn of 1944 because somebody was telling me something about them - I do not know in what connection. Neither did I know where they were and what they looked like.
Q. When you heard that, did you not have misgivings about the purpose of the crematoria?
A. No. I did not have any misgivings because every city has a crematorium and since the concentration camps had grown to the size of large cities I did not think that they served any other purposes except theose usually served by a normal crematoria; that is, people who had died a natural death in a concentration camp would be cremated.
Q. To repeat the question, did you see any order or did you give any orders that crematoria or gas chambers should be established?
A. No, no such cases have ever been known to me.
Q. Now, to turn to Kammler's special staff, what do you know about it?
A. I heard for the first time of Kammler special staff in the spring of 1944 when I returned from my sick leave. I heard about that from a number of colleagues in my office who in my absence had been ordered to join Kammler's special staff.
Q. Did you know who was on that staff?
A. The actual composition of that staff I could only deduce from what my colleagues told me. Mainly, they were members of the Luftwaffe, the army, some branch of the SS, and a large number of civilian engineers, and architects whom Kammler had conscripted for that purpose.
Q. Do you Know who financed the constructions of that special staff?
A. I am not able to give you any precise information, but I think it is pretty certain that Speer's ministry did that.
Q. Did you have anything to do with the planning and execution of these constructions?
A. No.
Q I also mean by that, did the accounts of the construction reach your Office, C-VI?
A No, they did not reach my office.
Q Where did they go then?
A I don't know.
Q Did you hear anything about Nordhausen and Dora?
A Nordhausen is a name which I heard in this trial for the first time. The term, Dora, I came across, I believe, in 1945, or it might have been the end of 1944. What I thought at the time was that it was a labor camp connected with the production of V-2's where civilian workers were used. That it was a camp for inmates was unknown to me.
Q Did you know that in these armaments constructions a large number of inmates were being used?
A No, I did not know that, nor did I think it likely, because the colleagues in my office told me once that in his field they were employing a large number of miners.
Q Did you ever make an inspection trip with Kammler?
A No.
Q How often did you report to Kammler directly? How often did you have a discussion with him?
A Between 1942 and 1945 I saw Kammler 8 or 10 times at the most.
Q What did you talk about?
A Our discussions concerned complaints from the auditing sector when I had come across irregularities committed by members of the WaffenSS.
Q Were these irregularities taken up?
A What happened after that was entirely up to Kammler and all I was concerned with was that the financial side was taken care of.
Q What was the purpose of your auditing office, really?
A To prevent embezzlements and other administrative deficiencies.
Q When the experts met at Kammler's office were you regularly in attendance?
A When I was present in the office I went there. I always received a special order to go.
Q How often did these conferences take place?
A Every week, every fortnight, sometimes every third or fourth week.
Q What did you do yourself? Did you make a report or take an active part?
A I cannot remember that I said one word at any of these conferences.
Q How long did these conferences last?
A Usually a quarter of an hour. If they lasted half an hour, then there must have been a special reason for it, perhaps because the Office Chief had a birthday.
Q Were secret matters reported there, matters which could not be discussed in public, which one would not want to put in writing?
A I don't recall any such occurrence.
Q Did you frequently receive secret matters in your office?
A My secret files consisted of about twenty pages at the most which were orders of a general nature issued by the OKH under a secret classification, but they were purely files.
Q What was the purpose of these expert meetings?
A Kammler did not want to lose contact altogether with his people.
Q Have you ever inspected a concentration camp and I want you to make a distinction between the garrison of a concentration camp, that is to say, the commandant's office and the actual protective custody camp?
AAt the beginning of my examination I stated that in 1936-37 I visited the Dachau concentration camp on several occasions. What I recall is that in 1940 I went to the Buchenwald garrison. I went to the troop barracks of the Anti-Aircraft Auxiliary Regiment, which was billeted in the district of that garrison. The Commandant's office and the actual protective custody camp I did not enter on that occasion. On one occasion, as I have said before, I went to Auschwitz, the garrison there, to estimate the cost of a new bakery shop.