A detachment of inmates also existed at the Berg Haus, from when onwards I am not quite sure. That detachment was not used for the home, but for agricultural purposes for which Teato had as a side line. That detachment was in operation when the Berg Haus became part of the Association of Recreational Homes, and there were never any negotiations about the inmates either through the Association or Office W VIII.
DR. BERGOLD: If the Tribunal please, in this connection I wish to refer to Exhibit 16, an affidavit by Gerhard Maurer. He was an inmate who worked in that detachment. I am sorry - his name is not Maurer, but Ruff. I am talking about Exhibit 15, Document No. 15; and he confirms that people were living under decent conditions, were well fed, that it was only a very small detachment.
Q: Witness, I am interested to hear from you about this -- We had a main department for special tasks, which later on was to become Office W VIII - Special Tasks. The term "special treatment" has become a notorious one. Can you tell me what the word "special" meant in your case?
A: In my case this term "special task" meant separate tasks. It should, therefore, be translated "separated tasks."
DR. BERGOLD: May I add here, since the interpreter corrected and translated correctly in the document it always says "special tasks."
Q: What was meant to be said was that your tasks were outside the offices?
A: Yes, the office, the duties of Office W VIII were outside the scope of the WVHA. They were neither Reich tasks troop administration, nor were they tasks which could be compared with the other tasks of the W offices.
Q: Witness, I shall now talk about the Wewelsburg problems. How was that agency organized with reference to Wewelsburg?
DR. BERGOLD: If the Tribunal please, there is a chart hero, which is Exhibit No. 1, in front of my document book.
WITNESS: Dr. Bergold, before we discuss the details of this chart may I perhaps make a small correction. It says on the chart "Concentration Camp Wewelsburg 1939 to 1942". That is not correct. A concentration camp in Wewelsburg, as I have seen from our documents here, existed at the earliest as from November 1941.
DR. BERGOLD: Please, it was a labor camp also?
WITNESS: Yes, it was a labor camp before, but the organization about the separating line is only correct for the period of time after the formal incorporation of the inspectorate of concentration camps into the WVHA; but, after all, the Tribunal knows all about these things and I need not go into details here.
BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q: What was the most important agency in Wewelsburg?
A: The commandant of the castle, SS Obergruppenfuehrer and General of the Waffen-SS Taubert. He had the same rank as Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl, or General Wolff who was a witness here. Obergruppenfuehrer Taubert was chief of the Office Wewelsburg on the personal staff of the ReichsfuehrerSS. That becomes clear from the right corner of the plan. I might add here that the actual conditions would be described more precisely if you put the personal staff nearer to Himmler, in the middle of the document, because the position was that the main office was regarded as the superior agency of all the other main offices. Within the Wewelsburg office there was a construction management of the Wewelsburg School under its leader SS STandardenfuehrer Bartels.
Bartels was only under the Office Wewelsburg. He had no position under the WVHA. My work - that is to say, that of the Office W VIII which appears on the plan, consisted of two things. First, on Bartel's request I had to sign contracts for the purchase of real estate as the legal expert with the farmers, whoever owned land in Wewelsburg. Two, I had to transfer money to Bartels. Bartels requested monthly a lump sum, for instance 100 thousand marks, or 200 thousand marks, and hat money was transferred to his account with the Deutsche Bank in Paderborn. Bartels had the full responsibility as far as the accounting and the factual side was concerned for the Wewelsburg construction project. That arrangement was laid down in writing between Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl as the manager of the monument society and Bartels. Bartels was Himmler's personal architect. He received his orders direct from Himmler either when Himmler visited Wewelsburg or when Bartels went to see Himmler in Berlin, or even in his field headquarters. I only attended one conference between Bartels and Himmler, that was in March of 1940, as I remember it; General Wolff has already testified about that. Bartels' position with Himmler was extremely informational. He knew extremely well how to handle Himmler.
Q: What about the position of the concentration camp, or labor camp, at Wewelsburg in that organization?
A: Until the outbreak of war there was in Wewelsburg a camp of the Reich Labor Service. Does the Tribunal wish me to explain what the labor service was? The Reich Labor Service was an organization where young men served before they were called up to the army, and together they worked on large agricultural schemes, draining of moors, or road building.
This was done on a voluntary basis. When war broke out -- Is it sufficient as a definition?
THE PRESIDENT: I think so.
A. When war broke out, the Reich Labor Service was taken away from Wewelsburg. Then a small detachment of inmates, numbering, as I heard about sixty, came to Wewelsburg. That detachment was brought there on the basis of a visit which Himmler paid in the summer of 1941 to Wewelsburg; and I heard that it was then increased to about 1,000 men. In my affidavit I gave the figure as only three hundred. My knowledge about the camp was then confined to the monthly reports by the building management; and in those monthly reports only inmates were listed who really were allocated to some type of labor. I had thought that figure was identical with the actual strength of the camp; but I later on heard from Wewelsburg recently that I have made a mistake on this point.
In the autumn of 1941, probably in November, this camp was declared to be a concentration camp; and it existed in that form until the spring of 1943. As I have seen from the documents here, it must have been in the spring of 1943 that it was dissolved. I have heard here that the inmates were transferred to Bergen-Belsen. Commandant Haas was also transferred; and about fifty Jehovah's witnesses remained behind in Wewelsburg. They were allowed to move freely there. Whether those inmates were used by the construction management itself or for the whole of the school is beyond my knowledge. The camp was later on used for people who were being resettled.
Q. Well, now, witness, you haven't told us how it was made part of the organization, the labor camp.
A. Yes, the camp as a labor camp was apparently subordinated to a different concentration capo. I think it must have been Buchenwald. Once it was changed into a concentration camp, it must have been immediately under the inspectorate of the concentration camps as it is listed here on the chart. After the concentration camp was terminated in the spring of 1943, the inmates probably were then again subordinated to Buchenwald; but I am not absolutely certain. The commandant of the camp was the above-mentioned Hauptsturmfuehrer Haas.
Obergruppenfuehrer Taubert, as the most senior officer of the garrison, was Haas's superior. I myself was never Haas's superior, nor could I be, because Haas as a Hauptsturmfuehrer of the Waffen SS was a soldier, whereas I was not in the Waffen SS, and as a member of the Allgemeine SS could not be the superior of a soldier.
Also, when I signed my affidavit in about the beginning of February and when I had made a remark to that effect, the interrogation officer, Dr. Ortmann, told me I need not make any statements about my relations to Haas. He said that the prosecution knew that a W Office Chief could never be the superior officer of a concentration camp commandant.
Q. You forgot to mention relations between the construction management and the Wewelsburg concentration or labor camp. What about that?
A. The construction management under Bartels was not the superior agency of Haas. All it had to do was request labor from Haas and then it could there and then tell the agency, "This wall has to be built today," or some such project. Over and above that, the construction management could not tell Haas anything.
Q. Could it not request an exact number of inmates? Didn't they have to say how many inmates they wanted?
A. I don't think that the construction management was in a position to say, "I want so and so many inmates per day". What they had to do was to rely on just how many inmates Haas could give them per day. But I did not attend these negotiations; and I cannot give you any authentic information.
DR. BERGOLD: In this connection I should like to draw the Court's attention to the fact that the affidavits of Herr Steuer and Herr Kraemer, Exhibits 7 and 8, unanimously confirm the fact that Klein was not the superior officer of Haas and had nothing to do with the concentration camp as such. Herr Kraemer was a member of the construction management; and Herr Steuer was, as it were, the defendant's secretary.
THE PRESIDENT: I have a question, Dr. Bergold.
EXAMINATION BY THE PRESIDENT:
Q. Witness, did you say that you were never a member of the Waffen SS?
A. Yes.
Q. You remained, then, a member of the Allgemeine SS?
A. Yes.
Q. And you never held a rank in the Waffen SS?
A. I once received an order to report to the Waffen SS by the middle of February 1945 as an Untersturmfuehrer of the Waffen SS, which is equivalent to the rank of a lieutenant; but I opposed that order and succeeded in having it rescinded. I shall explain that later on.
Q. At any rate, while you were Chief of W/VIII you were not a member of the SS, of the Waffen SS?
A. Not a member of the Waffen SS; but I was a member of the Allgemeine SS.
BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q. Witness, who carried out the construction in Wewelsburg? Was it the construction management in Wewelsburg, or who was it?
A. First of all, I don't know for certain who built the labor camp. It was either Bartels or the Reich Labor Service, when the inmates began to arrive in the camp. While the labor camp existed, I don't know whether any nor how many constructions were carried out for the camp itself. The construction management during that period of time, as I see it, was directed either from Oranienburg, the inspectorate, or by Bartels himself in charge. I am not quite sure about these things. During the period of time when Wewelsburg was a concentration camp, a new construction management under Office Group C must have carried out the constructions. I did not have any conversations with the members of that constructions.
I did not have any conversations with the members of that construction management. Once when after the summer of 1941 Wewelsburg was to be extended I received the order by Herr Bartels to have contingents for the barracks procured for Bartels. I did not carry out the order; and the excuse I used was that I could not get hold of any raw material contingents.
DR. BERGOLD: In this connection I might point out that according to the affidavit of Herr Steuer Klein 6, Bartels somehow obtained the barracks himself. Steuer, who is very precisely informed about the matters, says the secretary was in a position to confirm this.
Q. Witness, who led the negotiations concerning the request and employment of inmates?
A. Inmates were requested by Bartels or Taubert after their negotiations. They addressed themselves directly to the inspectorate in Oranienburg, or I assume even that Himmler had ordered that this should be addressed to the inspectorate.
Q. Did you?
A. I myself did not lead any such negotiations.
Q. Did the company or any employee of the company?
A. No, they did not.
Q. Now, I shall refer to your own affidavit, which is Document 1929. I'm sorry. I had to borrow the copy. Do you have the exhibit number? The colleague from whom I borrowed this copy did not enter the exhibit number.
A. It's Exhibit Number 20.
Q. In that affidavit you have admitted that the negotiations concerning the inmates might possibly have been led by your agency. Can you tell me anything about that?
A. Yes, this is how that sentence came about. The interrogating officer put it to me that, as I mentioned before, I had negotiations about raw material contingents with Kammler, which was an exception. He told me, "If you have discussed raw material contingents, surely you must have negotiated also about inmates; these negotiations must have been through you, at least."
I did not remember those negotiations sufficiently clearly to be in a position to deny that possibility altogether. Meanwhile my memory has been refreshed; and I am in a position to say today that no such negotiations were made through me.
Q. After all, you only conceded that the possibility existed?
A. Yes, quite. I was not in a position to exclude the possibility altogether at that time.
Q. Now, tell me, did you ever enter the Wewelsburg camp?
A. No.
Q. Never at all?
A. No.
Q. In this connection I'd like to ask you, did you ever reside in Wewelsburg?
A. I did not spend one single night of my whole life in Wewelsburg.
Q. What did you have to do with the agencies in Wewelsburg?
What did the so-called Monument Society have to do with it?
A. First of all, I had to transfer the funds to Bartels for the construction projects in the manner which I have described. Bartels requested those sums as lump sums without telling me what he was going to use them for. He could dispose of the money as he liked, nor did I have the possibility of checking up on his expenditures. Bills remained in Wewelsburg; and the only thing which I received back from Bartels were figures about the expenditures, which I received monthly, for me to make those figures part of the monthly balance sheet of the company. I could not refuse the money to Bartels, nor could I protest against anything he might wish to do. Then I had to carry out the purchase of land in Wewelsburg. What happened there was that the construction management led the preliminary negotiations. They informed me when these negotiations were approaching a conclusion; and I then went to Wewelsburg in order to conclude the contract as the legal consultant.
At the beginning of this work, they were only small pieces of land near the castle itself. Later on the plans of Himmler and Bartels for this project grew. Every time Himmler came, the plans were just about doubled. Himmler got Speer to say that he was ready to help under the law for the reconstruction of German cities. Shall I give you the details there?
Q. It doesn't matter.
A. By that law the possibility of confiscation existed; and this had not existed until then. When this was done on the basis of law, it could only be a confiscation against a full compensation which was concerned. Under the Prussian law of confiscation of 1882, together with Article 153 of the Reich Constitution, the person always had the possibility during the process of becoming a plaintiff about the amount of the compensation sum. He could address himself to the district courts.
THE PRESIDENT: Now we'll take a recess.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal will recess for fifteen minutes.
(A recess was taken)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q. Witness, I believe that you have not yet finished the explanations of your activities in Wewelsburg. Please continue.
A. In Wewelsburg actually no confiscation procedure took place. That is to say, nothing was ever completed in this time. Only voluntary contracts of sale were concluded. That is to say the company offered the farmers and the real estate owners always such good conditions for sale that they seemed to think that these contracts were favorable. The last contract was the one which was made about the estate Boedecken in 1942, in the summer. It was concluded at that time. At that time it was no longer necessary to make contracts for sale since the Country Cultural Office in Muenster established a so-called transfer proceedings or amelioration proceedings in Wewelsburg. Thus there was no point in making any further contracts of purchase and my activity was thus concluded.
Does the Tribunal desire that I explain further what amelioration proceedings means?
DR. BERGOLD: That is a concept which, as far as I know, is known in America too.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, it is called condemnation proceedings. I think we understand.
A. (Continuing) Indeed buyers in Wewelsburg, or rather those who sold, were always very much satisfied. A survey over the contracts that were concluded can be seen from my monthly report which has been introduced here as an exhibit.
Q. (By Dr. Bergold) Witness, if I now summarize what you have stated, you said that you had nothing to do with the construction management; was requested by the management; you had to carry out the buying of the real estate on the orders of the construction management; inmate workers were again asked for by the construction management; and the real responsible management of the business was with the Amt Wewelsburg.
Why were you involved in this whole affair why how?
A. The construction management in Wewelsburg did not have any legally-trained person and nobody who could represent, would have been authorized to represent the company in real estate matters.
Q. That is an explanation in regard to your person, but why was the company involved?
A. Of course, for this construction enterprise they could have founded their own company, but this did not happen. There is a historical reason for that.
Q. Could the Amt Wewelsburg not have become the owner of real estate property?
A. The Amt Wewelsburg could not become the owner because that is apparent from the uniformity law. This was an office of the NSDAP, and in that case Reich Treasurer Schwarz would have had to agree to every transfer of property and every transfer of money to Wewelsburg. The Reich Treasurer Schwarz, as far as I heard about him, was a very strict gentleman and probably would not have agreed to this construction plan.
Q. Thus if I have understood you correctly, Amt IV-A was involved in order to make it more easily possible to have Himmler's plans realized. Please make a pause.
A. If I may say so, the Office for Promotion and Care was involved, and not Office W-VIII, this was also only a fiction.
Q. All right. To come back to the purchase of real estate, do you also carried out the purchase of church property too, is this not to be considered as prosecution of the church?
A. No, I have to explain this occurrence more in detail. Wewelsburg is situated on a mountain which is an extension of a larger mountain. If the Wewelsburg castle was supposed to be enlarged this could be done uphill because the nature of the territory made it impossible to do it in some other direction. The territory of the castle was cut off by the church and the parsonage on the uphill path, thus if it was to be enlarged this could only be done on the territory of the church and the parsonage.
In the summer of 1939 after I went to Paderborn, to the Archbishop, and explained the situation to him, which was a result of the geographical situation. The Archbishop had full understanding for the fact that the territory here made the purchase necessary and was not done for any religious or antiecclesiastical points of view and agreed to the sale of the church. The further conclusion of the contract of sale was carried out in Wewelsburg, with the Catholic ecclesiastical community, and I believe approximately eight other parties who participated in this contract. It was very difficult to draw up this contract, but it would lead us too far afield to go into details here. In the course of that contract I succeeded in having the Prussian state, to whom the parsonage and the nuns' residence belonged, agree to it, that the money from the sale be given to the catholic church immediately by the company. The reason for this was that the time of socialization by Napoleon in 1805 approximately, the Prussian State had taken over the obligation for giving a parsonage to the Catholic community and had not met its obligation during this part hundred years. The church, the contract -
Q. That is all right. That is enough. You said that you did not carry out a confiscation. Now in your own report, that we shall discuss later, a confiscation is mentioned, the confiscation of the Boedecken estate. What about that?
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
A Dr. Bergold, perhaps I may add something to that last question briefly and say that until the last days of the war the church was used for services, that until the last day the minister lived in the parsonage, and that the execution of the sales contract remained theory to the extent that this company did not take over possession of the church and the parsonage. In order to answer your last question: a confiscation procedure of the Boedecken estate was introduced. The previous history was as follows: When Himmler once paid a visit he must have discussed with Bartels the fact that the Boedecken estate was supposed to be bought in order by subdivising it to give it to the farmers in Wewelsburg as a resettlement territory. Obergruppenfuehrer Taubert at that time was given the order by Himmler to start negotiations with Geheimrat von Vallingrod, the woner of Boedecken.
Q Do not go into so much detail but more to facts, to the point.
A These negotiations failed because von Mallingrod asked for too much money. Thereupon Himmler ordered the confiscation. Bartels informed me that he would have to make a request for confiscation to the Government in Minden. The confiscation procedure was started and in the course of time, however, an amiable agreement was reached. This was achieved by May or the companies offered such favorable conditions that Geheimrat von Mallingrod decided to sell. The contract was good business for von Mallingrod. The company obligated itself to see to it that he would get a substitute estate.
Q That is enough.
A Only the Mallingrod contract was carried out. It was only carried out in form. Actually Mallingrod remained in the real estate register as the owner.
Q That is sufficient. As I understood this was the last you carried out in 1942?
A Yes, that was in the spring of '42.
Q Did your financial activities make it necessary for you to go frequently to Wewelsburg?
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
A No, my financial activity on behalf of Wewelsburg didn't make it necessary at all that I was present there; the money could be transferred from Berlin, or later on from Kranichsburg.
Q Did you not also procure contingents for the construction management, witness?
A Only in one case. This was the situation. Basic competency for the contingents of the construction management did not exist and the construction management by way of exception had to obtain the contingents themselves. That is to say, on the black market, in a certain sense. Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl and I once negotiated with Kammler and told him that he should make contingents available for Wewelsburg. Kammler, however, assumed the position that he was only competent for the Reich construction and only occasionally he could put at the disposal the remaining contingents which he would sent to the construction management on his own initiative. That made further negotiations on my part unnecessary. Bartels then occasionally went to see Kammler himself.
Q You confirmed to me before that you never did war service in Wewelsburg and that your financial activities didn't make it necessary for you to be there either. Were you ever in Wewelsburg and how often?
A In 1939 or '40 I was in Wewelsburg perhaps once every 4 months. In 1941 and '42 I was perhaps there 4 times a year. In 1942 I was there once in March for the negotiations with von Mallingrod. In June and July I was not there at all. In the course of August I was in Boedecken for a brief period. In August 1943 was in Boedecken once and in 1944 I was in Wewelsburg twice.
Q Did you ever stay over night?
A No, my parents lived about 50 kilometers from Wewelsburg and I always stayed with my parents and in the morning went over to Wewelsburg and in the evening came back home.
Q You remember that Herr Schwarz asserted in the first affidavit that you were living in the castle. How often were you in the castle itself?
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
A I only visited the castle once, inspected it once, with special permission from Taubert. Bartels took me through the castle; in the ante rooms of the castle, I called on Taubert as a matter of politeness.
Q When you were in Wewelsburg did you observe inmates working? You were not in the camp as you already stated?
A I did observe inmates at work. I did so when Bartels occasionally led me to places that were especially interesting from an architectural point of view. The place where the construction was being carried out was not limited to the outside by a fence but by a thin chain of guards who were so far apart, they could just about see each other. Through this chain of guards due to conditions of the territory the Wewelsburg farmers went through with their carts. The inmates whom I saw at those places of work never made an impression on me as being undernourished and I never saw that an inmate was incited to work. I did not talk to the prisoners since Bartels told me this was strictly forbidden. The foremen of the prisoners were civilian workers of a private construction company by the name of Scherpel, the owner of the company. These foremen assigned the prisoners to their work.
Q Was the work which you observed of an unusual nature or normal?
A It was the usual construction work.
Q Do you know Document P-129? It is in Book No. II, German Page 70, English Page 66. This is the famous order regarding the exhausting work. Volume II, Page 70.
A I saw this document for the first time here. It was quite new to me.
Q All right. But I have to put to you that in the list of distribution, all W offices are listed. What do you have to say to that?
AAll W offices are listed but at that time it happened quite Court No. II, Case No. 4.frequently that W-8 was not on the distribution list, because it was regarded as little important.
This document is from May 1942. Moreover, in May 1942 I was for some time in Ar*o in Upper Italy in order to negotiate with the former owners of Strasser and to examine the possibility to use that house for a home.
Q The Tribunal will recall that Exhibit Klein No. 6 of Herr Steuer also gives information on this point; he made the same statement as the defendant himself does now.
Witness, did Bartels not perhaps tell you something about the work of the inmates, about the circulation of the inmates, or other matters.
A No, Bartels did not do so. Bartels complained to me only occasionally that he did not have enough skilled workers, that not a sufficient number were put at his disposal by the camp, and he complained that there were not sufficient guards there and the inmates could only work in one place instead of several places. Moreover Bartels told me at the time that the construction management had given a large field to the inmate camp as far as I remember, about 10 hectars, so that the inmates could grow some vegetables there for themselves in the country; it is usually quite difficult to obtain vegetables because it is too much work for the farmers to plant vegetables.
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
Q Did you, on your own, take any steps regarding the food of the inmates?
A Yes. I instructed the estate Boedecken to send vegetables to the camp and to cultivate the field in accordance with the wishes of the inmates of the camp.
Q Did you have anything to do with the food in the concentration camps?
A No.
Q Did you know the conditions?
A Not that either.
Q Well, why did you interfere here and nut something at their disposal? Then you must have heard something about it, that the food conditions were bad.
A I did not hear anything about it, but I wanted to assure myself a good customer who was near the estate. Moreover, I knew the general difficulties in obtaining vegetables from the homes of which I had been in charge. In regard to the field hospital divisions in Bad Nauheim and Homberg which were more than a hundred kilometers from the Boedecken, I wanted to supply them too with vegetables.
Q Thus you can say that you concerned yourself for food for your own reasons as a businessman and not because you knew the bad conditions in the camp?
A It seemed to me to be a sensible provision for both parties concerned.
Q Witness, what influence did the construction management have on the came management? Could they influence them for better or worse?
A. As far as I know, the construction management had no influence on the camp management. From occasional remarks made by Bartels I know that his relationship to Haas was not a good one, apparently, because either was concerned with his own field of competency, and once Bartels told me that he had used Taubert to mediate for him in some matter.
Court No. II, Case No. 4.
Q Who, in the last analysis, was competent for employing the inmates in Wewelsburg?
A That was first, of course, the camp commandant, Haas; further, Standartenfuehrer Bartels; and, as the senior officer of the garrison Obergruppenfuehrer Taubert.
Q And you, yourself?
A I myself was not concerned with that at all.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Bergold, what was the relationship between Camp Wewelsburg and Sachsenhausen?
WITNESS: I assume, Your Honor, that during the time when Wewelsburg was a work-camp, Sachsenhausen or Buchenwald, in a certain sense, was the parent camp. During the time when Wewelsburg was a concentration camp it must have been directly subordinate to the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps. That is apparent from the documents.
DR. BERGOLD: May it please the Tribunal, as to the word "Sachsenhausen" in Exhibit No. 1, entered there, the defendant told me he could not say with certainty whether it was Buchenwald or Sachsenhausen, and I believe that I could gather from the documents that it was probably Sachsenhausen.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, it doesn't make any difference. The point is that it was a labor camp; Wewelsburg was a labor camp subordinate to a large concentration camp.
DR. BERGOLD: Yes, yes.
THE PRESIDENT: All right.
BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q Witness, you just said three men: Haas, Bartels, Taubert. Now, please describe their respective fields of authority. What authority did Taubert have?
A Taubert was the chief of the Amt Wewelsburg on the personal staff of Reichsfuehrer-SS. He was the commander of the castle and the senior official at Wewelsburg. Bartels was the chief of the construction management of the SS School Wewelsburg. His official rank was SS Court No. II, Case No. 4.Standartenfuehrer, and his professional title was Baurat, Construction Councillor.