As far as food was concerned they suffered along with us until the Swedish Red Cross took care of them and also of us. That was early in the autumn of 1944.
BY MR. McHANEY:
Q Witness, what ultimately happened to those 1200 Russian Prisoners of War that you said were not immediately killed?
A These 1200 Russian Prisoners of War were to work. However, they were unable to work any more because they were facing death by starvation. In 1942 they again returned to a Prisoner of War camp. However, the number of inmates who left the camp amounted to approximately 200 and these 200 men were not human beings any more but were only wrecks. Actually they were sent to work. However, in the meantime there was a quarantine because of typhus and at that time they were unable to carry out any productive work.
RE-DIRECT EXAMINATION BY DR. HAENSEL FOR GEORG LOERNER:
Q Witness, since the Tribunal has asked you a number of questions which I intended to ask you I only want to ask you about a very few things. Please tell me this, are you before a Tribunal for the first time with regard to the question of concentration camps?
A No, I already testified before British Military Courts about this question. I was examined by the British Prosecution.
Q I am not referring to the Prosecution now but did you testify in open court - how many times did you appear in open court?
A I can't remember.
Q Well, 20 times or 30 times?
A I have already stated I don't know that any more. You can't put down any figure for me because this question is not relevant at all to the objectivity of my testimony.
Q Well, yes it does. Since you don't want to answer my question that gives me reason to still want to refresh your memory to some extent. I am not referring to interrogations before an interrogator. I can forget the number of times I have been interrogated but I am talking about Court No. II, Case No. 4.your giving testimony before an open court.
After all, you should remember a number like that. I know exactly that I was interrogated 32 times or something like that, if it applies. Will you say something about that number?
A Mr. Defense counsel, if here we are discussing a question that I have to rely on my memory completely then your figures may be correct. However, here we have a question which affects my memory and my heart and brain so much that I am grateful to the Lord every hour that I don't have to think of it and have to be reminded of it. After I left the British Court as a witness then you can believe me I was glad when I forgot that. I have no dearer wish today than to be able to forget after such activity of testifying. I don't think that the objectivity which has been empowered to us has been suitable with all people who maintain such up to date.
THE PRESIDENT: Witness, now you can answer this question I am sure. Dr. Haensel has asked you about how many times you have testified as to war crimes in open court. Now, was it twice or was it 50 times?
A Your Honor, it was approximately 10 times in open sessions.
THE PRESIDENT: That you see you could have told the first time, he asked you..."about ten times" - see how simple it is.
A Oh, yes, your Honor, but I didn't know what the defense counsel was trying to put against me in this matter. I didn't know if he considered a session as such or an interrogation, or if he was referring to interrogations before an interrogator. In such things I want to be extremely careful.
THE PRESIDENT: With Dr. Haensel you should be very cautious.
A Thank you for the very good warning that you gave me.
BY DR. HAENSEL:
Q I also wanted to point out to the witness, whether he couldn't change the number of 10 a little bit.
A. I don't want to give any further testimony about the number of trials where I have appeared as a witness. I want you to acknowledge that fact.
Q. I understand completely when you say that you would like to forget these things, and that you don't want to be reminded of them. However, you wrote here and you offered to appear as a witness, isn't that true?
A. I received a request from an authority -
THE PRESIDENT: Yes or no.
A. I wrote to the Prosecution, and at the same time, for reasons of objectivity, I gave knowledge of that to the defense counsel of Mummenthey. That was my idea of duty on the basis of the orders which I received.
THE PRESIDENT: So the answer is yes?
THE WITNESS: Yes.
Q. (By Dr. Haensel) In the long chain of interrogations, no matter whether they were ten or as I assume thirty, did you always give the same description, or did your description change in the course of the years?
A. There is so much nerve in your question that I can only describe it as being completely sadistic. However, with respect, in view of the high Tribunal, I can answer that question. Murderers will remain murderers. The motives and the reasons for murder always remain the same. Nothing can change in that, and nothing can change in my memory and in the memory of the people who have seen it happen. The hatred may change. The example of the Allies for objectivity has made me realize it. However, the facts, Mr. Defense Counsel, and I want you to accept that as a legal expert, the facts cannot be changed.
Q. Witness, if you only had told us about facts then I wouldn't ask you this question. However, you have raised accusations against the German people which have not been raised so far. You have made charges which have nothing to do with murders.
If I ask you here about these things, I am not doing that in order to change anything in the murders that happened. I regret that they happened, and I think that the perpetrators should be punished. However, the question of the guilt which the Tribunal has to clarify here, I would like to go into the details of that subject. For this reason it is important for us to know whether the claim which you have raised here, and which you have repeated today, and which is of the greatest importance in this trial, whether you have maintained this allegation from the very beginning, or whether you gained your conviction later on?
A. In a negative respect you have quite rightly assumed that my opinion has changed to some extent, but on the 3rd of May, 1945, I left the concentration camp Neuengamme as the last and the only inmate --- and when I turned over the camp to the British Army on that day, I had voiced the request that a group should be appointed in the concentration camp, and that a circle be made of five kilometers and everything living within this circle should be shot with a bullet in the neck beginning with babies up to old men. In the objective sense, in a quite sober sense that was the first result, that was a result as fresh as blood to what I had seen. As today I explain soberly the things, then I must say that I have changed my conviction to some extent. I changed my conviction exclusively as a result of the example which the Allies have given us. However, I have not to decide here over guilt or innocence. I just report the facts very simply. Only this high Tribunal will decide about the question of guilt. The question whether it is a collective guilt or not --- it is not my task to decide. I am only here to give the facts which might cause the verdict to be negative or positive.
Q. Yes. You see in Hamlet here we have a speech by the hero and an actor, and here he says, approximately this: "And who amongst us does not deserve punishment?" Don't you understand me?
A. Yes, I understand you, and I shall also give you an answer by the poet. In Goetz von Berlichingen we have on word which says, "Speak clearly and unmistakably and just as your heart feels. Then all people will understand you." That is from Goethe's Goetz von Berlichingen.
Q. Yes, that is a sentence which is quoted very frequently. However, let me continue now in my questions. The impression which you have stated here, as far as I was able to understand it, from the time you spent in concentration-camp confinement, and this conviction lasted up to the collapse in 1945, and for ten years you were unable to leave the camp.
A. Yes, that is correct, from 1935 to 1945 I was incarcerated, and I must emphasize that here, as I have already stated on Friday, the last ten weeks, from the 10th of February until the 3rd of May, I was in the camp, I was in the big camp area, but I was not pure inmate any more. As you have heard on Friday, a short time before, by recommendation of the plant, I had lost my status as inmate and I now became a civilian bookkeeper at the same place of work--
Q. --and please don't forget Goetz von Berlichingen, I mean the following --- you were in the camp and other Germans were outside the camp, and they were two to three?
A. Yes, they were two to three.
Q. You had the impression that from the outside help should have come to you and nobody helped you?
A. Yes. No, I did not have that impression. I knew my German fellow nationals too well for that.
Q. You just spoke about the Allies. The general situation in Germany was such that people said, "We are not able to do anything about the Hitlerite organizations, and help must come from the outside, from abroad". Do you know that opinion?
A. I know that opinion, and even today it is being maintained.
People should say today, "We must do our share today, and we must not only depend upon the American wheat." You see at that time the German people should have said," I shall do my part, and I shall not do anything against it, against this help." Very well, if people spent forty pfennigs for the Winterhilfswerk and if your wife spent some money for that and she spent some money for the treasury of Streicher and Ley, you see, this was no help. This was nothing to support the Allies, but this money was used against the Allies. This at least was against the Allies in a psychological sense. Don't forget that in a newspaper on Monday about the Winterhilfswerk, instead of saying that thirteen million marks were collected, Your Propaganda Minister would say: The German people are backing up the Fuehrer, but I would like to refer to him as a madman.
Q. Yes, I would like to quiet you down on the last point. We were of the opinion that the number of millions was always fixed before the contributions were counted. However, let's come back to my question now. You have stated --
THE PRESIDENT: Better than that, Dr. Haensel, I say better than that, let's come back to the indictment. This is very interesting. I don't like to stop it, but don't you think we should do it in your library or some place like that? We must try the lawsuit, and that does not include trying the German people.
DR. HAENSEL: I understand you very well, your Honor, and please permit me to ask the witness a very brief question. I think it is important for the case. In the very last point that is important for Count IV in the indictment.
Q. (By Dr. Haensel) You agreed with me that the German people believed that help would have to come from the outside and that this pinion was not quite justified. However, don't you think that the same situation prevailed with regard to the concentration camps? There was an opinion that now, afterwards, if you really had knowledge of what happened there, we cannot understand that the concentration camp inmates just took everything that was done to them.
You have to admit to me that a large number of people like yourself and other citizens have stated here you could count upon the fact that you would die anyhow. Why wasn't there any resistance in the camps? Why wasn't the resistance in the concentration camps there so strong that it should have been heard on the outside?
A. Mr. Defense Counsel, I cannot explain that to you in words. May I show you something through my deed? I shall give you ten minutes of concentration-camp instructions and then you will know that we could not do anything to defend ourselves, ten minutes of instructions in fact, then the question which in my opinion has been clarified for everybody has also been clarified for you. However, I want to include something else here. Even in the concentration camp we had people who gave their lives for the right of humanity. On most every evening which God let us live in the concentration camp Neuengamme there would be public executions. All the inmates had to stand in a formation, and in the middle there was a gallows. Here the inmates were led up and hanged. There were very many inmates here, a very large number who were hanged because they had committed sabotage, because they had sabotaged an armament factory, for example. I can recall one Belgian engineer, by the name of Pierre. He manufactured torpedo tubes for the U-boats. He had to weld them together. He welded them together in such a way, with a seam, that immediately after the first shot was fired it had to break, and he have his life for that. You see, even here where it was practically impossible to take any active measures we could offer passive resistance. We helped the Allies in line with our own liberation. That was the situation.
Q And now we have the question of knowledge. Did people outside the camp hear about the details which you have just stated?
A Unless there were any particular reasons for secrecy. Actually the birds could sing these stories from the roofs in the neighboring cities. Only from the most internal secrets, people couldn't know anything about; however, we were only a few kilometers from there, and there were only a very few people who did not know everything. Don't forget one thing, Mr. Defense Counsel, that the power of a rumor is usually stronger than could be stopped by walls, even if they are meters thick. Only that is important. Secrets can be stopped by your ear drums only if you don't want your ears to hear it, or because the truth is unpleasant for you. And if unpleasantness is a guilt, go ahead and ask me more!
Q I also wanted to lead you to make your last statement, however, you are making a big jump here. When you came to the word convenience don't you think that it is much more important than the word "fanaticism" and the opinion which you can't do anything. Does it have to be convenience?
A Whenever I raised my charges of guilt, I also had the word -"German convenience". We had a great excuse, if not a total excuse. Mr. Defense Counsel, from the motives which you have just stated, I can not deduct any excuse in that very extensive form. If you want to go further than I have, then go ahead. My opinion is not so much against the German people as you have alleged just now in your question. As you have just claimed about the question, I can speak about what I have actually seen.
Q I don't know if you had much contact with Austrians; however, I would like to conclude the subject in recalling a phrase which went around in Austria. There was a slogan, and the Viennese said: "National Socialism is not a philosophy, but it is just a constant chasing around."?
A No, I didn't hear that. We had many Austrians in the camp, and I only met the greatest Austrian, and the greatest Austrian was an insane man; otherwise, I don't recall anything about the Austrians.
Q Well, it was very good to know that he was an Austrian.
THE PRESIDENT: What was the saying, Dr. Haensel, that the Austrians had?
DR. HAENSEL: It was a constant chasing around.
RECROSS EXAMINATION
DR. HOFFMANN (Counsel for the defendant Scheide): Your Honor, I only have three questions. Since I have already discussed the subject on Friday, I was always of the opinion that this was a defense witness. Just now I heard that the witness had turned to the prosecution.
BY DR. HOFFMANN:
Q I didn't know that at the time, is that correct? I didn't know that?
A I want to repeat this once more. All committees have received the request that all inmates who knew anything about W-I should report. Of course, it was my duty to comply with this request, and in order to be objective, I notified the defense counsel of Mummenthey about the things which I knew which concerned. Mummenthey. I think that I have stated that for the third time now. After all, we are obstructing the work of the Tribunal here.
Q However, I have understood you to say that you have turned to the prosecution. Then I misunderstood you?
A I received the request by the authorities and the committee that all former inmates who knew something about the competency of W-I from their activity in the concentration camps, and for this reason, I informed the prosecution here of my address and told them just what knowledge I had. At the same time, I notified, for reasons of finesse, the defense counsel for Mummenthey, and I told him that I knew certain points about the work of Mummenthey, is that clear?
Q No, I have only heard it twice now. Witness, you said that the glow from Auschwitz could be seen in Neuengamme.
A Yes, that is correct. That was only in the symbolic sense. I didn't mean it actually. And he who didn't think it was a symbol should have looked at the map, he could see it there.
Q Witness, one more question. Do you have a family?
A Yes. My first marriage ended as a result of the fact that my wife died while I was imprisoned.
Q Aren't your parents alive anymore?
A No, they are dead. During my time in the concentration camp, all my family, with the exception of a brother, died.
Q And now you have remarried?
A I don't know what this has to do with the trial.
Q Witness, I am talking quite openly. You were talking about various things because I want to ask you what did those people do who were next to you. If you say now that nobody contributed to your liberation and helped you in order to alleviate your suffering, and I want to know whether you include these people in the general guilt question?
A The family of a concentration camp inmate, in the material sense and psychologically they did so much that they can say with a good conscience that they actually used to ride behind us. They were on our side. They even saved on their food -- and I am now referring to a special case -- in order to send things to me. That was a part which they contributed to maintain our lives. In order to give you an example, we did not receive any underwear in the camp. Whenever we received underwear we would only receive what had belonged to murdered Frenchmen, Poles, or Jews. However, as a result of an order by the W-Offices, we could have our own underwear sent to us. In the course of the many years -- and this was for the first time in 1941 -- many things disappeared as in the 6 years before. For example, my brother would send his shirts to me.
Q However, witness, with that you are disrupting your opinion about the collective guilt which you have maintained, at least with regard to the hundreds of thousands of people and people who were related to concentration camp inmates.
A Exceptions, Mr. Defense Counsel, exceptions only confirm a rule.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Heim will you conduct your examination after the recess.
(A recess was taken.)
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
DR. FICHT (ATTORNEY FOR DEFENDANT KLEIN): May it please the Tribunal, I request that Klein be excused from this afternoon's session, so that he may prepare his defense.
THE PRESIDENT: Defendant Klein may be excused at the request of his counsel.
DR. GAWLIK (ATTORNEY FOR THE DEFENDANT BOBERMIN): May it please the Court, I have the same request to make on behalf of Dr. Bobermin. I would like him to be excused all day tomorrow.
THE PRESIDENT: The Defendant Bobermin may be excused for the entire session tomorrow.
DR. FRITZ (ATTORNEY FOR DEFENDANT BAIER): May it please the Court, I have only a very few questions to put to this witness.
BY DR. FRITZ:
Q Witness, while you were examined, the name of Baier was mentioned. You mentioned it. If I remember correctly, you said that you had seen Baier in Neuengamme.
A What I said was that I saw Baier. Where, I couldn't remember very clearly. I thought it must have been Neuengamme. It might also be that I saw him on the occasion of a visit at Sachsenhausen.
Q How did you know Baier?
A The name I knew from documents, orders, and so forth. It was extremely familiar to me, because his sphere of duties was concerned with my own. I was a bookkeeper and he was the Chief of the Auditing Department in charge of that bookkeeping department.
Q Did Baier have anything to do with questions of inmates?
A No. He was purely an auditor concerned with balance sheets, accounts, and auditing. Particularly, Baier issued the order as to how the technicalities of a balance sheet were to be handled. He was also in charge, I believe, of the many auditors with whom I had so many contacts, because they drew up balance sheets and so forth. This work had to be done very precisely, and was under extremely strict control and supervision.
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
DR. FRITZ: Thank you very much. No further questions.
BY DR. HEIM (ATTORNEY FOR DR. HOHBERG):
Q Witness, I only have two brief questions to put to you. During cross examination, you said that among the SS leaders a strong divergence of opinion prevailed. Can you tell me what the relations were between SS officers and their civilian colleagues?
A The civilian in the SS -- you must bear in mind what sort of an organization the SS was -- was respected very little or not at all by the uniformed SS men of officers.
Q Witness, my last question. Do you think from your experience and observation it is possible that a civilian is in a position to give orders to an SS-leader, say in the rank of a Hauptsturmfuehrer?
A Scarcely. If, by virtue of some organizational measure which the SS would have regarded as a mistake, a civilian would issue orders to a higher SS-officer, he at least, would have opposed this intuitively and emotionally, an opposition which would have amounted, if not to sabotage, to at least resistance, because after all, this most Prussian militarist is the SS-officer I mean, would not be told anything from what he regarded an inferior human being. The SS saw that for which reason those civilians who were necessary to them as experts were given SS ranks wherever possible.
On Friday I gave the example of Schondorf. He was a civilian; he knew all about brick works and in order for him to be able to say anything at all and reach some equivalent rank, he was promoted by leaps and bounds.
DR. HEIM: Thank you very much. No further questions.
REDIRECT EXAMINATION BY DR. FROESCHMANN (Counsel for Mummenthey):
Q Witness, after our political conversations before the recess, I want to come back to the things with which we are concerned in the indictment inasmuch as the prosecution have made it their subject in their cross examination.
The prosecution have asserted and have named the name of witness Kruse, whose testimony has taken place in this court. I find it necessary to put to you a number of questions because of the cross examination in connection with Kruse's testimony. In order to help you, I should like, by permission of the Court and the prosecution, to show you the two German transcripts of 15 April, and I have marked those passages which will become the subject of our examination.
I shall give you the pages and I would be obliged if you would give us your comments. Will you please look at page 466. Kruse says there there that the Klinker Works in Neuengamme was established during 1942.
Is that correct?
A I'm afraid he's at fault there. The foundation of the Klinker Works in Neuengamme was laid on 15 August 1940. Thereupon the construction work started.
MR. MC HANEY: The witness has already testified about when they started constructing the Klinker Works at Neuengamme, and I think also when they started operating the Klinker Works. If his testimony stands in contradiction to that of Kruse, it can certainly be pointed out and made clear in any way that the defense cares to do so by way of closing statement or brief, and I don't think that it is necessary now to go over Kruse's testimony in great detail.
If there is some new subject which Kruse touched upon and testified about which has not been asked this witness, then Dr. Froeschmann can direct a question to him concerning that. If it brings forth a contradiction that can be pointed out at a later date. There is no necessity of carrying this witness over Kruse's testimony, I think.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I don't anticipate that he is going to do it in too much detail. I think he can be shown a contradictory statement and then asked if he wishes to agree with it or if it causes him to change his testimony. That's proper cross examination.
DR. FROESCHMANN: If the Tribunal please, it was my intention only to limit myself to those points where Kruse has made incriminating statements about Mummenthey which the prosecution had stressed or has made statements which are in contradiction to those made by the witness Bickel. I shall be extremely brief.
THE PRESIDENT: All right.
BY DR. FROESCHMANN:
Q Is it true, witness, for Kruse to say on page 468 that the Klinker Works had been established by Office Group C?
A No, that is entirely incorrect. There was a strong antagonism between DEST and the Central Construction Management because there was a tendency to be noted that the Central Construction Management should also take over the constructions of Office W. Office W-I had a construction management of its own.
From a purely architectural point of view the important man there was architect Rohmann-Fuerth. He approved of the plans, etc.
Q You told us about that. This is enough.
A The whole plant was constructed by DEST on their own account. Office Group C had nothing to do with it.
Q My next question is also concerned with page 468. Is it true that the labor detachment of the Klinker Works supplied about two thousand inmates per day for the construction works?
A The figure is too high pitched. At the most there were twelve to fifteen hundred, but I do not think that is too important, whether there were a few hundred more or less.
Q Please look at page 469 and pay attention to this statement when Kruse says that the labor detachment of Klinker Works had been a typical punitive detachment. What have you to say about that?
A That is a somewhat relative statement. Somebody who was doing extremely heavy work for the Klinker Works would regard it as an extremely bad detachment. For somebody who had easy work to do, he liked the detachment. But to look at it from above the Klinker Works detachment, if you can talk of anything good at all in this connection, it was relatively good. The most unpopular detachment at that time was the canal construction on the Elbe. The fact that you were on the canal detachment showed that you were at the worst.
Q For whom and on whose orders was that construction work at the Elbe carried out?
A The order came from the city of Hamburg and Gauleiter Kaufmann. I have already submitted to the prosecution the contract concerning that point.
Q Was the labor detachment Klinker Works a detachment of DEST?
A The Klinker Works was a plant of DEST.
Q On the same page, the witness Kruse speaks of the truck detachment where he worked. He also says that he did not actually work in the clay pit. I don't understand it. These trucks were in the pit, weren't they?
A Well, apart from the clay pit detachment, there was a transportation detachment. That detachment had these lorries on which they loaded stones and transported them along on a special track to the harbor or else from the harbor they transported material for the works such as concrete, sand, and so on, back to the pit. I think Kruse was talking about that detachment because the inmates in the clay pit did not have to operate the rolling carts themselves.
Q Please look at page 470 and 471. There the witness says that until the plant was complete, work was inhumanly difficult because of the speed. My question to you is, to what labor detachments does he refer here and who was in charge of them?
A The statement that work was inhumanely difficult because of its speed can, normally speaking, apply only to detachments and groups which did not work with machines. That was the case also in the Klinker Works; and he is quite right when he speaks of too much speed, which was particularly difficult for inmates who were not used to manual work. A decrease in speed came about as the plant was more and more mechanized. Moreover, the works managers and office W had finally achieved it that speed would reach a normal standard because as Kruse so rightly remarks, this speed was favorable to the SS, and the SS NCO's would like it, but senseless from the point of view of work. Exaggerated speed always means less production than normal speed.
Q Who was in charge of that detachment?
AAs I said on Friday, the labor detachments were under the SS officers of the camp, the commandant.
Q In some cases also the Capos?
A Yes, the Capos had to supervise the work direction, but the activities of the Capos was regulated exclusively by the SS block leaders of the camp.
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
Q Please look at page 472. There Kruse speaks about rubber boots about which you had made a brief statement. Did the managers of DEST omit doing something in that respect?
A No, one couldn't say that because that reproach would also hit the inmates who had to look after these things in the Klinker Works. There was always a more or less adequate store of rubber boots. If they had to be repaired at all inmates had to repair them themselves.
Q On page 472 Kruse said that beatings were the rule of the day in the Klinker Works. Did members of the plant mistreat the inmates?
A Beating was a normal part of the day. It would have been unusual and abnormal not to be beaten. Members of the plant were not in a position to beat anybody. There was somebody called Rath who, I believe, in some cases hit somebody whom he was not supposed to. The block leaders would not have anybody taking over their privilege of beating the prisoners. It hardly ever happened that a civilian would beat a prisoner.
Q Witness, the witness Kruse says on Page 474, if you bribed the Kapo, you only had to work if the chief capo of the Klinker Works came along.
A That was an experience which was only too usual in a concentration camp. Capos were inmates, foremen were inmates. The principle of the SS to play inmates against inmates was the most subtle in the whole field of slave work. And if Kruse talks of such an individual case here, he is perfectly right.
Q To clarify one point in this connection - it is true that the supply of shoes and clothes, as well as the supply of food, was up to the camp.
A Clothes, food, hygienic installations, etc., were entirely up to the camp, because the plants paid to the camp full compensation for the inmates, part of which was expressly, and I refer to various wages negotiations, calculated to cover expenses by the camp in that respect. Furthermore, the Klinker Works of Neuengamme, in contradiction to the obligations as imposed on them by the SS, and in the teeth of resistance Court No. II, Case No. 4.by the camp commandant, supplied inmates with food, clothing, and shoes.
In 1944 on one occasion we bought 400 or 500 sets of working clothes from the clothing works in Dachau. These working clothes had been earmarked for SS chauffeurs. It was stated at that time that they had been marked for civilians but they were actually given out to inmates.
Q The Prosecution asked you, witness, whether Mummenthey had known anything about the punitive detachment. You answered that question briefly but then the Prosecution interrupted you and changed the subject. I should like to ask you, was the term punitive company known to Mummenthey, in your opinion?
A In view of the importance of that question I cannot make a statement about something which I do not know from my own knowledge. Whether or not he knew about this he alone can tell you. I am not in a position to answer this question yes or no with a good conscience. As far as I know the situation at that time he would not have been given much information by the commandants.
Q Witness, in summation of your testimony, the climax of your testimony was perhaps the assertion that Mummenthey was a white raven, as you called him. Unlike the manner usually shown by SS officers towards inmates he did not only regard inmates as a commercial property but also as human beings, for which reason he did everything for the inmates which was in his power. Will you please make comments to this, my view point, which I have gained from your testimony. Is it a correct view?
THE PRESIDENT: This has all been covered, Dr. Froeschmann. He explained in detail just what Mummenthey tried to do for the inmates. I don't think it is necessary to repeat it, do you?
DR. FROESCHMANN: If the Tribunal please, I don't wish to repeat anything. I only want to have the point clarified about which the witness spoke on Friday and today, namely, the collective guilt of the German people, and would like to ask him if the defendant Mummenthey consciously and knowingly did all those things which one could expect him to do, in order to come to a final judgment in that matter.
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
THE PRESIDENT: But he has already said that Mummenthey did do those things, and he told us what they were. Now you say to the witness, "I have an impression from your testimony that Mummenthey did so and so, will you please comment on this?" That means that he starts right at the beginning and merely fortifies your impression. Well, we have the impression already from his first statement. I don't think you need cover it again.
DR. FROESCHMANN: If the Tribunal please, after what you told me my questions become superfluous. I feel and I believe the Court joins me in my opinion.
BY DR. FROESCHMANN:
Q Witness, I want to put to you a few brief questions. Did you when you were in your concentration camp hear anything about the air raids on Dresden, Hamburg, and our ancient Nurnberg?
A We heard about these air raids, the ones of Hamburg we saw and experienced ourselves. We experienced them in as much as we had to salvage the corpses from Hamburg, for which our Commandant received the Iron Cross, 1st Class, I believe.
Q What were the means you had to keep informed about what was happening outside?
A We received newspapers for our own money, the Uniform German newspaper. We had our wireless connections which we could use sometimes. Of course, we also had our secret radios and we listened to BBC and Allied soldiers stations. We had first rate sources of information from our own initiative.
Q These were secret radios which you had in the camp?
A Yes, we had secret receivers and transmitters.
Q And from there you gained your knowledge about what was going on outside?
A Yes, Apart from the fact that people would tell us things and we would tell people things. There was an exchange of ideas and facts going on because from that time onwards inmates worked among the people. I said before that the whole camp went out in so-called "con Court No. II, Case No. 4.struction brigades" to dig up the corpses after air raids and the people were kind and receptive after we dug up one of the corpses of their relatives.