But I don't mean by that term the same thing which Himmler and Thierack meant, in Document 654-PS, Exhibit 333, in Document Book 12, on page 14, where reference is made to anti-social elements --
Q. On page 23 of the English document book.
A. I want to emphasize the difference in the concept. By "anti-social elements" we never meant at that time the same thing which the document lays down. I thought that criminals and antisocial elements would remain behind as the political development went on.
A However, even they would have been adequate in normal times if, as a consequence of the mechanization of the plants, the requirements, for workers decreased. The primary idea of increasing production was, therefore, combined with the secondary idea of allocating inmates to this work.
Q You therefore think that from these ideas of Himmler's an order was issued to Pohl to have very highly mechanized plants established?
A I would assume so, yes.
Q. May I interpolate something here? You heard what the witness Bickel said, and we know that in some form or other the SS was linked to these plants. Is it your view that the SS represented the public ownership which Himmler thought of when he wanted to take over these plants?
A I should imagine so.
Q Therefore, the DEST owned its origin to Speer's demands to cover the enormous requirements in building materials for the construction plan and to use inmates was now to create the possibility of realizing these requirements in a productive sense?
A Yes, that is quite correct. But I believe that the use of inmates was regarded only as a temporary measure. Therefore, it would be wrong to assume that the BEST was an enterprise working inmates in the sense that the inmates were being exploited. The purpose really was to cover the requirements for building materials. Allocation of inmates was a temporary means for a certain purpose.
Q Herr Mummenthey, when the contract for this was drawn up was it laid down or even hinted at that labor was to be recruited from inmates?
A No, it was not contained in the contract.
Q. Can you tell this Court something about another decree in the rules of the DAW, according to which this idea is first voiced?
A I believe I have seen something in the Prosecution's documents that the DAW expressed in its regulations an idea of that nature.
Q Please continue.
AAs an economic enterprise the DEST was vitally interested in obtaining and preserving skilled workers and other workers, whereas the RSHA and its subordinate departments, particularly the commandants of the concentration camps, were in all cases quite obviously interested only in the security angle. Therefore, the obvious natural interest of the DEST on the basis of the regulations issued by the Reich Industry of Justice contradicted the practices of the RSHA.
Q Was it, in other words, the case, that the BEST faced the problem of the human beings, so to speak, whereas the RSHA had its problems only in security matters?
A That is quite correct, yes.
Q Therefore, you are really unanimously in agreement with what the witness Bickel has told us in another form?
A Yes.
Q Please continue.
A From this contradiction there developed in the course of years the conflict, as I would like to call it, which became particularly obvious in the plants. I could sketch it as follows: The commandants of concentration camps, as far as Himmler and the tendency of the RSHA were concerned, were pure power politicians. They confined their power not only to the concentration camps themselves but also to the allocation of inmates to enterprises. The climax of that development was reached in Pohl's order of the first of May 1942.
Q This is Document No. NO-1029, which is Exhibit No. 40, Document Book No. II, on page 70, and on page 74 of the English Document Book.
A Pohl has stated in this Court that by this order he wanted to interest the concentration camp commandants in the economic enterprises and interest them in the allocation of inmates from an economic point of view. In actual practice, however, the result of this order was, that the commandants of the individual camps, by their mentality.
regarded themselves more or less as the masters of the enterprises. They called themselves directors of enterprises, and they acted accordingly. By this order, Pohl, as he said, wanted to improve matters. But as things developed they took a very different turn. The influence and the power of these commandants was only increased to the detriment of the local plant managements, and also to the detriment of the main administration of the DEST in Berlin. On the basis of our numerous experiences I always regarded this Pohl order as a definite limitation of our authority. In the course of the numerous complaints and objections which I had to make to all the commandants, they always excused themselves with this order.
Q Now, did the various detachment leaders as far as you know, also adjust themselves to the altitude of the commandants?
A The detachment leaders who were in charge of the labor detachments in the plants should have confined themselves to only guarding the inmates and general security measures. The expert instructions and pragmatic directives were to be left to the civilians, managers, foremen and workers of the plant. However, in line with the attitude taken by their commandants, they kept interfering time and again, although this decreased as time went on, in things which were entirely up to the plant. They issued orders about a type of work they knew nothing about, and in some cases they even wanted to decide how fast a man should work. A super-military tone was used in addressing the inmates and Bickel made a similar statement about the acts of the guards which were a natural result of the altitude maintained by the commandants. Numerous tensions and differences of opinion between the management of the plants of the DEST on the one hand and the commandants on the other hand resulted. This struggle which lasted for about five years, without any exaggeration, completely undermined my health and nervous energy.
Q Now, what about a later period of time when armament production was introduced?
A Just as originally the production of bricks and natural stone was the primary task, the armament production in the interest of Germany became, later on, the most important task by order of Reich Minister Speer, and the head of the Fighter Staff, General Field Marshal Milch.
In that period, the struggle of the DEST for economic matters on the one hand and for political power on the other hand with the commandants continued without a break. In that period of time again the allocation of inmates was only a means to an end. For that time period any reproach that the BEST used inmates is, unjustified in my opinion. If you want to use the term inmates' enterprise at all, then the DEST was far from being the biggest employer of inmates. The German industry had to rely quite generally on that type of labor. The Messerschmitt Works in Augsburg, for instance, employed over 20, 000 inmates. But quite apart from that the DEST, and I shall speak about that in detail later, for economic reasons had a vital interest in speaking up for the inmates. If the camp commandants then followed the very opposite policy, a manager of a plant had to see to it that he did not have too much to do with the camp commandant. In that direction I worked myself.
Q Now, Herr Mummenthey, you have described the development of the DEST. I want to emphasize briefly that you should describe as briefly as possible the financial status of the DEST.
AAlthough the economic basis of this enterprise was very unstable before I joined it, its financing was equally unplanned and haphazard; economic ignorance led to the fact that the Dest was sounded with its little capital of 20,000 Marks, and in the course of the years it was increased to 500,000 Marks and finally to 5,000,000 Marks through various loans. The capital of 20,000 marks was, of course, hopelessly inadequate for the smallest building to be established, for the smallest shack, let alone a large enterprise. Consequently, it became necessary to take up loans.
Q What loans, to speak very briefly, were taken up in the course of the years? Don't go into details here but just give us a brief outline in chronological order.
A In 1939, the Dresdner Bank gave us a loan of 5 million marks at an interest of 5% and the usual provisions. The basis of that loan was a personal guarantee which Himmler gave, and which legally, financially, and practically was without any meanings. As far as the negotiations about this loan were concerned, I did not take part in them myself. I was merely informed that the loan had been granted.
In the same year, 1939, the German Verkehrs Kreditbank gave us a loan of about 1 million with an interest of about 10 percent which was arranged for by the organization Todt. The Deutsche Bank at Berlin in 1939 and 1941 gave us what was called an open loan to the tune of 16 millions in two installments of 8 millions each, the interest being 3 percent; later on it was two and three-quarters and in the end two-and -a-half percent.
The negotiations on behalf of the Dest were carried out by Dr. Salpeter mainly on the basis of extensive material about the purpose of the contract and various planning items and other details of the sort, before the loan was granted. In other words, the bank was fully informed. The Vice-President of the German Reichsbank, Puhl, and a few other gentlemen from the Reichsbank inspected personally a number of plants and expressed their approval of what they had seen.
The City of Hamburg in 1940 granted a loan to the Dest for construction purposes at four percent, in order to construct the Klinker Works in Neuengamme, and in order to rebuild the old Hanseatic town of Hamburg. This was within the scope of a contract to which I shall make brief reference later on. From the capital of the German Gold Discount Bank, the loans of the Dresdner Bank and the Bank in Hamburg were repaid. In 1939 the Inspector General for the Reconstruction of the Reich capital Berlin, gave 10 million marks in order to establish the brick Works at Oranienburg.
During 1939 and later on, a number of directorates of the Reich Motor Highways, the Reichsautobahnen, and also the city of Linz in order to establish the brick works in Frappachkirchen and the GWI granted further loans to the tune of several million marks in order to build up the granite works and the stone processing works at Oranienburg.
They continued to finance the pland and the Hermann Goering Works financed through its foundries in Linz the extension of the testing station at Linz. The loans were in part repaid until the end of the war or they were adjusted otherwise. Finally, we had the negotiations with the Messerschmitt Works and the Montan GMBH in Berlin which was an enterprise of the OKH and they had to carry out armament orders.
They were particularly difficult to handle because over a hundred agencies had to address themselves with orders, requests, and so forth to us. This brief light cast on the financial background of the Dest in 1938 and 1939 shows that capital was far too tight at the time for those big orders to be carried out on a proper commercial basis.
Q Now, did the Dest receive any further support, materially, speaking from a third party?
A Yes. As I said before, the Dest was to cover these enormous requirements for building material. In order to fulfill that task, the Dest was largely supported by the Inspector-General for Construction who earmarked building material, machines, timber and iron for it. It also did the planning for the various plants and consulted them.
Q Now Herr Mummenthey, I do not wish to tax the court's time too heavily, and, therefore, I would like you to tell us briefly of what plants the DEST was comprised and tell us also because somebody said here -- I don't know whether it was the Tribunal itself or some witness -- what the capacity of the DEST was in order to show us what the plans of the DEST really were. Is it correct to say that the DEST on the one hand operated granite works and marble pits and on the other brick works?
A Yes. Before the end of the war, the DEST consisted of about 14 plants including small plants, but they were mainly brick and granite works and other plants which could use building material. From 1938 to 1942, the activity was mainly controlled by the taking over of new enterprises and the extension of the old ones. Numerous difficulties, especially since the outbreak of the war, delayed production considerably. Production was made impossible in fact in some cases as in the case of Oranienburg. The brick works, particularly those at Oranienburg presented technical problems which in some cases were insurmountable.
The most important works were the following: Orianienburg had a capacity, according to plan, of 160 million bricks. The Berstedt plant at Weimar had an annual production of 8 million bricks; the Klinker Works in Neuengamme/Hamburg were to produce between 30 and 140 millions of klinker. The granite works in Flossenbuerg was to produce annually about 20,000 cubic meters of granite stones. The granite works in St. Georgen planned to produce about 20-25,000 cubic meters of processed stones. The granite works at Gross-Rosen, Marburg and Beneschau planned to produce about 40,000 cubic meters of granite stones per year.
Q Were these the most important ones?
A Yes.
Q What about the smaller ones?
A The clay works at Stutthof, Hobbehill, Reimannsfelde with an annual capacity of about 15 million bricks, the gravel works in Auschwitz, the testing station in Linz, the debris-utilization plants in Essen, Duesseldorf, and Hamburg, the stone processing works in Oranienburg of which only the stone depot was established; further there was a plan to establish a big brick works at Dannenkirchen which however was not established.
Q Herr Mummenthey, we heard from the witness Schwarz all the details about the work in the stone pits and the granite works. I don't have to talk about that any more. I only want to ask tou, do tou have to add anything to the testimony of Schwarz?
A No, nothing very important.
Q We can now turn to another chapter which is the brick works.
THE PRESIDENT: We will recess until tomorrow morning at 9:30
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal will recess until 9:30 tomorrow morning.
(The Tribunal adjourned until 3 August 1947 at 0930 hours.)
Official Transcript of the American Military Tribunal in the matter of the United States of America, against Oswald Pohl, et al, defendants, sitting at Nurnberg, Germany, on 5 August 1947, 0930-1630, Justice Toms, presiding.
THE MARSHAL: 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.
DR. FROESCHMANN(Attorney for Defendant Mummenthey): May it please the Court, in the afternoon of 14 April 1947, we had as a Prosecution witness a man called Josef Krusiak in this Court. He is a German National and resides in Fulda. He was born in Dortmund. He stated at the time that for political reasons he had been committed to a concentration camp. Meanwhile I have received information, according to which Krusiak was committed to a concentration camp for embezzlement and other offenses that, as far as the veracity of the witness is concerned, are of importance. The witness has incriminated the DEST in Mauthausen and, therefore, I would like to ask for permission to submit an extract of the Penal Resister for this witness from the authorities concerned. I am unable to obtain this file from the Prosecution in Dortmund, but with the help of Defense Information Center, the documents can be obtained, if the court gives its permission. I therefore would like to ask the court to make a ruling about that.
THE PRESIDENT: You are entitled to produce that document to impeach the witness, if it's available. Will you have some way of proving the identity of the person in the document -- I mean, of proving that this is the same man?
DR. FROESCHMANN: Yes, I am able to do that.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well, you may have leave to produce the document.
DR. FROESCHMANN: Thank you very much, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: Let the record show that two of the defendants are absent from this session of court, Defendant Bobermin by leave of court on request of his counsel, and Defendant Volk because of illness.
DR. FROESCHMANN: May I continue with my examination of this witness?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
KARL MUMMENTHEY - Resumed DIRECT EXAMINATION (Continued) BY DR. FORESCHMANN:
Q. Herr Mummenthey, I shall first remind you that you are still under oath. Yesterday afternoon we stopped at a point when you gave us a list of the plants which were part of the DEST and I would like to ask you to tell the court, in addition to what the witness Schwarz has told us about the stone quarries, in a few sentences what happened in the clay pits, even if you are not an expert in this respect.
A. A brick works and a granite plant have something in common. Their raw materials are natural ones. This is a fact which applies all over the world. One must gain the raw material wherever nature has made it available, and it must be obtained according to where the material can be found in the earth. There are certain similarities as far as these raw materials are concerned. Therefore, the difference between the producing and processing methods are of some importance. Every brick works has a clay pit. From there the material is obtained which is processed in the plant. The clay pit, as well as the stone quarry are not plants or work shops and cannot be handled as such. Work is therefore always taking place in the open air, unlike the work in the processing work shops. This is inevitable and applies to any plant of that branch. Furthermore, work in a clay pit as far as the DEST was concerned, was never done without any definite system. It was done on the basis of plans checked by experts and then they were also submitted to the insurance companies for their approval and were checked continuously.
Every clay pit of the DEST was equipped with technical and mechanical installations, as far as they were necessary. The clay was produced by electrical appliances. Neuengamme and Berstedt were the only two shops here, and I remind you here of what I have described before about the peculiarities of these two camps; we had to have special machines here which had been ordered from various firms, but because of the military situation they could not be produced. I remember that Weserheutte, A.G., in Bad Oeynhausen had received an order and kept it four years, but was unable to carry it out because of the lacking priority. The clay was sent to the plant on push carts, first by human hand, later by steam or by electric lifts. Manual work on the whole was done only in special cases. In every clay pit there was a water installation, that is to say, ground water and surface water were pumped by electric pumps which worked automatically every day, including Sundays. The employees of a clay pit in a brick works amount only to a fraction of the employees of the whole plant.
A The clay pit was under the supervision of a foreman who was a permanent employee. He was responsible to the works manager, who continuously kept a check on him. When weather was bad or when it was cold, no work was done at all in the clay pits. Lest the weather would discontinue production altogether in that period, a so-called clay storage room was kept immediately next to the plant, in some cases under a roof, in other cases without a roof.
Q Herr Mummenthey -
A Excuse me, I should like to add something about the stone quarries. The witness Schwarz has omitted to mention something which seems to be important. From the GBI, the Inspector General for Construction, we had received a number of machines which proved their full worth in the plant. They were an American product; by Ingersoll of New York. Unfortunately we were unable to obtain a sufficiently large number of those machines on account of the war as they were being produced only in the United States. In this connection I should like to mention that the GBI arranged for a study trip to the States. Everything had been prepared for studying there the latest methods in the processing of stones.
Q Herr Mummenthey, yesterday afternoon you enumerated the various plants of the DEST. I should like to ask you now to take from those plants only those which will be of importance in this trial because of the allocation of inmate labor, about which I shall presently say more. As I see it, these are the following plants: the ones in Stutthof, in Gross-Rosen, Oranienburg, and Berstedt. Then, of course, there is Mauthausen. There is Neuengamme, which we can deal with very briefly because Herr Bickel, as a witness, told us so much about it. I believe that the Court will also approve my method here in confining the topic to these plants.
Q Please tell us about Stutthof first.
A The DEST acquired these plants in some cases by purchasing them and in some cases by leasing them.
In some cases they were newly established. Stutthof was a small group of plants. It consisted of the clay pit, Reimannsfelde, near Elbing; the plant, Hobbehill; and the brick works of Stutthof, to which I have had reference before. Reimannsfelde and Hobbehill were purchased from private owners. The brick works was leased from the Reich. Stutthof was planned by the Tiegenhoff area, and it was an Oranienburg on a small scale. I therefore at the time opposed both the purchasing and the leasing of those plants. After some hesitation I finally agreed to a short term lease contract. Reimannsfelde was not producing when it was acquired. Schondorff could do what he liked with these three enterprises. They were brought up to date, and a considerable number of new constructions and changes were carried out. Reimannsfelde and Hobbehill only worked during certain seasons, whereas Stutthof worked throughout the year as it had an artificial drying plant.
Q Herr Mummenthey, may I draw your attention here to Document NO2147, Exhibit 30? It is in Document Book II on page 42 of the English version. If you can see any more from this document or give us any comments about it, please do that now. It is Exhibit 30, NO-2147.
A This document shows that the taking over of the Stutthof camp was connected with the brick works. As far as the taking over of the camp was concerned, the brick works was not a necessity because there were only fourteen inmates working there when it was taken over and later on eighty.
Q What about the next plant?
A The granite work Gross-Rosen in Silesia was somewhat outmoded when we acquired it in 1940; and because it had been exploited uneconomically, it no longer brought any profits. The GBI was very much interested in the granite of Gross-Rosen. When the work was being reconstructed, the man in charge was Herr Guttchen as the technical head. With its machines and equipment and the social measures which were taken, Gross-Rosen grew into a veritable model plant.
During wartime production was confined only to the material and products required by the inspectorates, particularly the production of concrete stones.
Among the newly established works there was, above all, the brick works of Oranienburg. That plant, which, in the course of years became a matter of prestige as far as Pohl was concerned, owes its origin to a contract with the GBI made in the spring of 1938, which also financed the plant on the whole. Construction was begun in July of 1938. Among other things there they built a large factory of concrete material. It had twenty-four up-to-date furnaces, four workshops of giant dimensions, with all modern equipment.
THE TRIBUNAL (JUDGE MUSMANNO): Dr. Froeschmann, may I please interrupt you? Listening to this testimony gives me the impression that we are about to audit the accounts and the affairs of all these various industries from an economic and financial point of view, which, as you know, is not the issue in this case. I am wondering if in some way you can't abbreviate all this long story which the defendant witness is outlining. Wherein is it so essential toward the final adjudication of the issue in the indictment? It seems to me that much time is being consumed on details of the most minute and infinitesimal unimportance in so far as the indictment is concerned. I'm speaking only for myself.
DR. FROESCHMANN: If Your Honors please, that is the reason why I ventured to put a brief question to the Court just now, to the effect of whether it was agreeable to the Court that the witness very briefly speak about the most important plant which used inmates for workers.
THE TRIBUNAL (JUDGE MUSMANNO): But where you go into the number of stones and the number of individual bricks, it seems to me that can all be told in one rapid survey of a few words.
DR. FROESCHMANN: Certainly, and before I started my examination I discussed in great detail all this with Mummenthey and told him that I wanted to talk about that with him for informative purposes only because it was unknown to me whether or not the Court was interested in the special equipment which was available in the plants.
If the Court feels that the plants and their equipment should be touched upon only extremely briefly -
THE TRIBUNAL (JUDGE MUSMANNO): I do think that a reference to the type of equipment is important, certain labor-saving devices and appliances to save life and limb. That is important. But he was going into a long enumeration of the equipment, which can't be too interesting.
Q Witness, you heard what Your Honor has just told me. Therefore, let us be brief when we discuss this matter. Let us talk only about these things with regard to inmates and under what conditions they worked in these plants. Let me put this very brief question to you now: As far as Oranienburg was concerned is it true that between 1939 and 1941 there was a change-over from dry-pressing to wetpressing? Please answer that with yes or no.
A That was carried out because the dry-pressing method did not prove its worth.
Q Did the some situation apply at Berstedt near Weimar? Is it true that the raw material there was not particularly suitable for what was called the dry-pressing method and was this plant also reconstructed or supposed to be reconstructed?
A Yes, the same situation applied there. For that reason the same measures were token.
Q What about Neuengamme. Bickel as a witness pointed out to us that we must differentiate between the two phases, the old plant which became a testing station at the time when new constructions were carried out. Was Bickel correct on the whole?
A Yes.
Q Do you also share his opinion that the first please in 1939-1940 was a particularly difficult period of time for inmates working there because a large layer of earth had to be removed? As Bickel told us not for the DEST but by the DEST for the City of Hamburg, is that true?
A You mean the canal construction?
Q Yes, I mean the canal construction. Is that right?
A Yes, as far as the canal construction is concerned.
Q Then I think we have dealt with Neuengamme. Now we have Flossenburg left. About Flossenburg the witness Schwarz has made detailed statements. Do you have anything to add to what Schwarz has told us?
A Experts on frequent occasions checked the German Granite Works and they all said they were exemplary plants.
Q Then let us talk about St. Georgen. I want you to tell me what the so-called Wienergraben was, which was constructed at a later period of time.
A The Mauthausen plant consisted of several enterprises including the stone quarry of Kastenhofen which had been leased by the City of Vienna, and also part of the stone quarry of Kastenhofen which was operated by the DEST. As far as the so-called tunneling was concerned the DEST had nothing to do with it. It was carried out by orders of the Reich, that is to say the Ministry of Armament by Kammler's special Staff, the initiative was with the Fighter Staff, or with Messerschmitt. The subterranean halls were required because of the continuous air raids production above the ground became impossible after 1944.
Q Were inmates also working in the granite works of Rothau/Alsace?
A Yes.
Q Was that of any insignificance?
A Rothau/Alsace and Natzweiler never became very important because the pit had to be opened up first and shortly after opening it up the TVI discontinued this. For the rest Natzweiler was operated only with civilian workers at first and was supposed to continue to do so. Only when workers had been called up or detailed to other duties by the labor office a small labor camp was established there. From that labor camp a concentration camp was formed and as far as the DEST was concerned it was entirely unnecessary, nor was it in its interest. The reason why this camp was extended into a concentration camp I don't know.
Q Then I want to discuss with you now the two installations of great importance to this trial. One is the gravel works in Auschwitz. We can be brief about that. The other is the cinder works in Linz. Herr Mummenthey, is it correct what the various witness have told us here, namely, that in the gravel works of Auschwitz they had a river dredging plant?
A Yes. At no time did the DEST have a sand pit or a gravel pit in Auschwitz.
Q Were the gravel works in the plant independent of the plant manager there or were there close relationships between the DEST and that plant as they had been between Oranienburg, Neuengamme, etc.?
A They were partly independent, particularly in view of conditions in the East. The large distance from Berlin did not permit us to interfere in its management all the time. Also, according to reports and results which reached us the management was a very capable one. There were no difficulties on the technical side nor on the commercial side.
Q In connection with Auschwitz I would like to ask you to tell the Court about your knowledge concerning the groups of plants, Kielce, Pledzin, and Treblinka.
A In its places the DEST since 1943 had leased for a period of time a number of plants in connection with Kielce and a gravel pit in Treblinka. As far as Pledzin is concerned I remember that a high SS and Police leader there complained that the production of the stone quarry had dropped since the DEST had taken over in 1943. That statement was refuted by the works manager Rupprecht as you can see from Baier's reports in the documents of the Prosecution.
Q In that connection I want to put to you Document PS-3311, Exhibit 467, in Document Book 18 on page 62. This is a report by the Polish Commission for War Crimes and it is concerned with Treblinka. What can you tell us about Treblinka? Have you ever been there and what did you see?
A In this report the DEST is not mentioned. In 1943 I went once to Treblinka for the following reason. Pohl had ordered me to close down the sales store of the Allach works in Warsaw and I was to do that myself lest there should be any difficulties. Before that we had received in Berlin a report from the works manager of Auschwitz and a suggestion we should take over the gravel pit at Treblinka.
We had arranged to meet at Warsaw. The owner of the gravel pit Herr Rupprecht met my night train in Warsaw and he suggested that before we reached a final decision to go in there and inspect the gravel pit. We had a car at our disposal. It wouldn't be too far and we could return in the early afternoon to Warsaw. The trip took about two hours, as I remember it. We went first to Malcynia.
THE PRESIDENT: This is what we mean. This is a fair example - "went by car, took them so long, they got back in the afternoon, they went by way of another town." If we could just get him to say that "from Warsaw we went to the gravel pit."
DR. FROESCHMANN: If Your Honors please, this is a somewhat pedantic manner which is typical of him. It has been referred to on several occasions in this trial. This causes him to give details in a broad outline. I did not want to stop him myself but I should be happy to drop a hint to him to be a little more brief.
THE PRESIDENT: Just tell him to hurry to Trelblinka. I know that people -
DR. FROESCHMANN: I want him to leave Treblinka as quickly as possible.
THE PRESIDENT: That's good too. I understand that people are different, that they think differently, talk differently and you can't make them over, you can't change them. I am that way. You can't change me. But perhaps a hint, as you suggested, that we get to Treblinka and back again.
DR. FROESCHMANN: Certainly.
BY DR. FROESCHMANN:
Q Mummenthey, please be brief and concise. Don't tell us how you went please tell us what you saw and then leave as quickly as possible.
A I talked to the works manager and the commandant of the camp and inspected the gravel pit early and we left after a very short time.